Civilizational Optioneering

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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.

Why This Talk Matters Now

At a moment of climate breakdown and economic fragility, we find our institutions are optimized for short-term efficiency instead of long-term viability. Johar’s work offers a systems-level framework for escaping this trap. By exploring new legal and economic pathways, Johar imagines a world outside of the extractive, rivalrous logic of capitalism. His talk addresses the urgent task of rebuilding civilization-scale systems that can evolve, rather than collapse, over the long now.

The Long View

As an architect of planetary governance, Johar’s work asks a core Long Now question: how can we design institutions that preserve possibilities across generations? Through experiments in contracts, land governance, and collective “ledgers,” Johar interrogates how civilization can make generational responsibility more enforceable and relevant in our present moment.

About Indy Johar

Indy Johar is co-founder 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 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20. He has taught & 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.

Learn More

• LISTEN to Johar in conversation with forthcoming Long Now speaker and Council member .
• EXPLORE the mission of Dark Matter Labs
• READ about self-sovereign land in the paper

Indy Johar is co-founder 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 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20. He has taught & 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.

Our mission at is to foster long-term thinking and responsibility. Through our Long Now Talks series which began in 02003 and features speakers from around the world, we hope to ignite cultural imagination around long-term thinking. The talks are filmed live in San Francisco, and we release podcasts and videos from them which are publicly available online.

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