@stevenaleach You're describing a goal we only have—at best—two social structures capable of achieving: a religion, or a royal family. Both of these have undesirable failure modes. (Most human social structures disintegrate or lose track of their purpose over roughly the same duration as a human life expectancy.)
@cstross @stevenaleach
Universities hang around. Building a department which can sustain an area of study through many generations of graduate students, PhDs and professorships wouldn't be trivial.
#Anathem doesn't seem ridiculous on that.
The Long Range Foundation is even better named for this than the Long Now, albeit the latter is real.
