In this talk, Indy Johar proposes that civilization’s longevity depends less on stability or efficiency, and more on optionality.
Entropy drives systems toward homogenization and exhaustion, but life acts as a counterforce, generating new pathways for becoming. Johar argues that our current economic system collapses value into singular metrics like price, which renders our systems brittle and less capable of adaptation and optionality.
To survive the long now, we must transition to an "optioneering" architecture. Our institutions and economic grammar must be redesigned to increase the surface area of future freedom, not foreclose on it. We do this by shifting away from "closed projects" with finite ends, to "open gardens" where success is measured by the system's ability to evolve and surprise us. By valuing adaptation over control, we can build a civilization capable of coherence in motion.
The Q&A for this talk will be hosted by Denise Hearn, Long Now's Director of Strategic Initiatives.
Indy Johar is cofounder of Dark Matter Labs and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00. He is also a founding director of Open Systems Lab, seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) and Open Desk (open source furniture company). Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization. He is on the advisory board for the Future Observatory and is part of the committee for the London Festival of Architecture. He is also a fellow of the London Interdisciplinary School.
Indy was 02016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 02019-02020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 02016-20 and RIBA Trustee 02017-20. He has taught and lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School. He is currently a professor at RMIT University.
This talk was presented January 27, 02026 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.
Episode notes: https://longnow.org/talks/02026-johar/
This talk is part of Long Now Talks.
Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to our podcast and videos. Long Now Talks are brought to you by The Long Now Foundation, which has spent the last 25 years igniting cultural imagination around long-term thinking.
By inspiring thought and conversation about how we've been shaped by the last 10,000 years and what might be in store for us over the next 10,000 years, Long Now Talks seek to expand our collective sense of the present moment. Long Now Talks cover futurism and speculative fiction; time, nature, and contemplative practices; the intersection of the humanities and sciences; the evolution of counterculture to cyberculture; cultural imagination, land art and public monuments; and of course, long-term thinking and being a good ancestor.
In our age of compounding crises, The Long Now Foundation is a counterweight. We are a force that imagines new possibilities, thinks critically, and takes action over the long term. We believe that when we all come together, bound by commitment and curiosity, audacious things become possible. Will you join us? https://longnow.org/join
