Pace layers

What are pace layers?

Stewart Brand mentions ‘Pace Layers‘ in the book ‘The Clock of Long Now‘ as published in the year 01999, refer to this website. Stewart’s initial point was to give insight into how a healthy society works, but it also is a usefull overview for other purposes.

The six Pace Layer levels in descending order from the highest & fastest to the lowest & slowest are Fashion, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, Nature.

In a healthy world each level is allowed to operate at its own pace, safely sustained by the slower levels below and kept invigorated by the livelier levels above.

-- Stewart Brand

The normal pace of nature is in the order of hundreds to thousands of years, referring to the recovery speed of nature and recurring effects, such as ice ages. However, the developments that are subject in many studies show an accelerated pace. So what can we do about this?

Long time perspective

The most sustainable way for companies to work, to our opinion, would be to evaluate all decisions that are made against this pace layering model. Let’s take the development of a new high voltage substation as an example. We are talking about Infrastructure being built according to local and internal Governance. Some basic aspects regarding Culture and Nature may probably be taken into account, but how far do you want (or need) to go? Are you using raw materials or recycled? Are you compensating for SF₆ leakage? The ultimate approach would be to strive for zero impact (or even less).

In order to get the ‘long time perspective’ thinking in our thinking system, we should be aware of this and keep reminding ourselves. After that, practical actions may be follow more frequent.

Awareness

How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? The easiest step to take is to simply start using long term references. So instead of saying that you were born in 1983, use the notation 01983. It can be as simple as adding a 0, which is practically nothing!

1983 --> 01983

This is the simplest of ways to create awareness, and is why All Electron uses this format for year notation on the websites and in documentation.

Actions

We are currently working on concrete actions. This section will be updated accordingly.