from being the main source of society’s ever-shortening attention span to becoming a reliable guarantor of long-term perpective

How can we invest in a future we know is structurally incapable of keeping faith with its past? The digital industries must shift from being the main source of society’s ever-shortening attention span to becoming a reliable guarantor of long-term perspective. We’ll know that shift has happened when programmers begin to anticipate the Year 10,000 Problem, and assign five digits instead of four to year dates. “01998” they’ll write, at first frivolously, then seriously.

--Stewart Brand http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm