Alexander Rose

Artist, Connector, Consultant, Designer, Engineer, Event planner, Explorer, Idea generator, Inventor, Technologist, World traveler

Following a quarter century of leadership of The Long Now Foundation, Alexander Rose is now the Director of Long-term Futures at Automattic and continues to write and speak about his work and experience. He continues to finish The Clock of the Long Now, and his research to discover the stories and lessons behind the world’s longest-lived organizations. Alexander is an industrial designer and worked with The Long Now Foundation and computer scientist Danny Hillis since 01997 to build a monument scale, all mechanical 10,000 Year Clock. Alexander speaks about his work all over the world at venues ranging from the TED conference to corporations and government agencies. As the director of Long Now, Alexander founded The Interval, The Organizational Continuity Project, and has facilitated a range of projects including The Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Alexander shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the early prototypes of which are in the Science Museum of London, The Smithsonian, The Interval SF, and the monument scale version is now under construction in West Texas. Alexander writes about building artifacts and institutions that last, co-curated the Long Now Seminars , as well as The Conversations at The Interval and continues to curate talks with other organizations such as The Battery SF. Alexander is also an advisor to the METI project . Alexander graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 1995, as well as attended the Art Center College of Design. He was an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., and a founding partner of the robotics company Inertia Labs. Alexander’s combat robots have won over six world championship titles appearing in the hit TV show BattleBots . He has built large pyrotechnic displays for the Burning Man festival, robotic bartenders and other dangerous machines. Alexander was a world champion paintball player holding multiple world titles with his team the Ironmen from 1990 through 1995. At Carnegie Mellon University Alexander was the lead designer for a record setting human powered vehicle team. Alexander lives in California in Marin County and enjoys mountain biking, mountaineering and other back country activities whenever he can get out.

Long-term thinking

I am working on a book about the longest lived organizations in the world.

I first went to TED in 2000 with the prototype of the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis and I spoke the following year on the main stage. I hosted Ether Dyson at TED Vintage, and attended TED in 2023.

I have championships in fighting robots, paintball and human powered vehicles. I have built giant flamethrowers for Burning Man.