8 ms·
The 10,000 Year Clock
- hawktheslayer 9y agoFacinating concept. I like how they embed their philosophy into the article by saying the idea was thought up in 01995.
- coldacid 9y agoI wish they would have gone with Holocene Era epoch for the year instead of using the same BC/AD // CE/BCE one we currently use padded to five digits. Makes a lot more sense to me if we think of this year as 12017 than as 02017.
- kijin 9y agoIs there broad consensus on exactly when the Holocene Era began? The best that I can tell is "approximately 11700 years before 1950", which means we're approximately in the year 11768. But approximate years are not enough for people who actually need to type them into calendar apps. It doesn't even have to be measured from any real event as long as everyone is on the same page. Jesus wasn't born on December 25, 1 AD, either; but nobody cares.
- coldacid 9y agoThat's why the epoch was arbitrarily set at 10,000 years before the BC/AD epoch. A rough approximation that lines up with the current calendar works a lot better for everyone than a more accurate approximation.
- spaceten 9y agoAgreed, with one caveat: we should probably think of THIS year as 12018! The 10,000 Year Clock extends our perception of time further into the future. Adopting the Holocene Calendar, as proposed by the geologist Cesare Emiliani in 1993, would extend our understanding of the "long now" further into the past, which I would argue is equally as important. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar]
- coldacid 9y agoOops, you're right. Somehow I got transported to last year while I was writing.
- yellowstuff 9y agoI'm still writing Pleistocene on my checks.
- im3w1l 9y agoAll I see is an octal number. C ruined me.
- Someone 9y agoA very special octal number, having two nines in it.
- pklausler 9y agoWhich of course was fine in original C.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lucb1e 9y agoPHP ruined me too. And basically any other language supporting common number notations.
- jacobush 9y agoPHP ruined everything
- majewsky 9y agoI'm seeing a zip code.
- doh 9y agoThe creators of the project also wrote a book about their thinking [0]. I highlighted the hell out of this book. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Clock-Long-Now-Time-Responsibility-ebook/dp/B003P9XCY4/ https://www.amazon.com/Clock-Long-Now-Time-Responsibility-eb...
- lelandbatey 9y agoThe very first thing that I thought of was the massive clocks in the book Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, clocks which could run in a kind of "low power mode" for at least 700 years.
- mulmen 9y agoAnathem was inspired by his involvement in this project. http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book-launch/ http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book-launch/
- mulmen 9y agoHas this been completed? I have followed this for years on their webpage but the only information I can find says it is "under construction".
- discorderant 9y agoNot yet. Still likely some time before it will be finished.
- beaconstudios 9y agono publicly posted progress since 2011, here's hoping it's finished before the year 09999 so we can celebrate the decamillenium.
- sshine 9y agoI can't help but think: Are they taking earthquakes into account?
- Cyberdog 9y agoIn Texas? Probably not.
- pselbert 9y agoThere was a Stuff You Should Know podcast about this just recently [0]. An impressive amount of engineering has gone into something that seems much more artistic than scientific. 1: https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/whats-the-10000-year-clock.htm https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/whats-the-10000-...
- NaOH 9y agoThere's also a 2004 podcast episode on the clock from a Long Now Seminar. http://podcast.longnow.org/salt/salt-020040910-hillis-podcast.mp3 http://podcast.longnow.org/salt/salt-020040910-hillis-podcas...
- drallison 9y agoI'd like to recommend The Interval at the Long Now, a bar that's integrated with Long Now's presence in Fort Mason in San Francisco. If I were living in SF, this would be my hangout. Parts of a prototype 10K clock were used to construct some of the bar furniture--very cool and modern. The bar is small, intimate, and can be crowded but is usually filled with interesting people. Fridays brings Off the Grid at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, a food truck event, in the parking lot near the Interval.
- hagurganus 9y agoI can attest to the fact that this is one of the coolest places in SF if you’re into futurism—which I think is saying a lot. It’s the first place I take guests from out of town.
- dogecoinbase 9y agoI can attest to two things -- the Interval is a great spot to grab a good drink (and the talks they put on are great, and attract a great crowd)... and I lost a ton of respect for the Long Now Foundation when they pivoted from the future of humanity to conspicuous consumption three feet above sea level.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoThe ideal spot for a bar is near people, regardless of whether that location will be underwater in a century. It would be a lot more expensive and irresponsible to move every one of the visitors than to move the bar uphill every decade or two.
- Abekkus 9y agoSociety will need to overcome endemic unemployment and autonomous weapons before San Francisco will have to worry about sea level rise.
- torstenvl 9y ago
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoHere's the story from Wired in 1995: https://www.wired.com/1995/12/the-millennium-clock/ https://www.wired.com/1995/12/the-millennium-clock/ I remember reading it and being inspired, even then. It's taken more than 20 years to bring it to life, which I suppose is appropriate. Why hurry?
- larkeith 9y agoThis project is very cool, but the writing style of the website puts me off too much to read through the whole thing. Is there another source of info about this?
- pqs 9y agoThe wikipedia article is quite good as a general introduction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now The official website is badly designed. It is difficult to learn about the general design of the clock. I couldn't find it!
- larkeith 9y agoThank you for the link, what a fascinating project!
- Animats 9y agoIt's not finished yet?
- rtkwe 9y agoNews on the actual clock has been a little sparse over the last couple years but last I heard they had finished drilling out the main entrance and vertical shafts for the clock and some of the large central components had been created (iirc the winder and the escapement). The latest update on their long now clock Texas website is from 02011 though. Biggest problem with having your project be a pet project of a mega-rich guy like Bezos, it can die/wither on a whim, not sure if that's what's happened but it's been a _long_ time with no news.
- andyjohnson0 9y agoThe last update to the members-only clock blog was three years ago. It mentions that the tapering spiral staircase around the main shaft had been cut. and the 80 foot high chime generator mechanism was completed.
- rtkwe 9y agoThat's great. I wish they'd put more stuff out to public spots though. PS when you say members only blog that's a Long Now membership?
- andyjohnson0 9y agoYes, I'm a member.
- 6d6b73 9y agoI can assure you that the project is alive. Danny Hillis gave a quick status update to Long Now Boston group last summer.
- lb1lf 9y agoJens Olsen (Danish locksmith and (I believe largely self-taught) watchmaker designed and (partially, as he died before it was complete) designed what is to me the most impressive mechanical clock in existence today - Jens Olsens Verdensur, housed in the lobby of the Copenhagen town hall. It keeps track of several astronomical events, easter &c - and is, as mechanical clocks go, allegedly the most accurate clock in existence. It will only have completed its largest cycle sometime around the year 27000AD - as long as someone sticks around to wind it weekly and perform maintenance, that is. Not quite the same philosophy behind it as the Long Now - but amazing engineering porn nonetheless, and definitely recommended to drop by if you ever find yourself anywhere near Copenhagen. Brief video showing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2CtSWchTIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2CtSWchTIs
- deeporist 9y agoThere is an album related to this project. https://www.amazon.com/January-07003-Bell-Studies-Clock/dp/B0000ACXT6 https://www.amazon.com/January-07003-Bell-Studies-Clock/dp/B... I known it from a TED speech https://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_on_the_long_now https://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_on_the_long_now
- mpweiher 9y agoAt this point and to me, the clock itself is almost an afterthought compared to the Seminars About Long Term Thinking (SALT): http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/ http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/ Amazing talk series.
- 6d6b73 9y agoFor anyone in New England - new Long Now chapter is now forming in Boston and we have an upcoming seminar on Feb 5th. http://bit.ly/2n2Kc0R http://bit.ly/2n2Kc0R
- app4soft 9y agoAfter reading this article I still don't understand it's mechanism. Just got free PDF from it's "Prototype1" webpage[0] for dive deeply in its mechanics... [0] http://longnow.org/clock/prototype1 http://longnow.org/clock/prototype1
- mtreis86 9y agoI scanned through the PDF and it looks like the main mechanisms are torsion pendulums. I am assuming that's what the two towers with weights are.
- kiddico 9y agoI can't wait for the progeny of clickspring to make a video recreating this step by step. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE
- dandare 9y agoWhat is the purpose of this project? Is it just art? I can not help but think how much good could have been done with the money.
- imglorp 9y agoI feel it's more. We have so many short term ideas: chasing quarterly profits, carrying a national debt, passing climate decline to our kids, designing garbage appliances and vehicles that fail right after warranty, and on and on. This is showing us where the other side of the road is with long term thinking. How do you keep an institution running--physically and socially--for 10 ky? How do you even communicate with people 10 ky from now? We can't even read half the stuff written in stone 2 ky ago about big things like kings and wars; forget about writing a detailed maintenance manual, or describing tools or materials they'll need in a language probably dead for thousands of years. Will they even want to? So by having examples of both kinds of organizations, the middle of the road is more moderate, moved away from disposable, self serving, instant gratification and more towards sustainable and altrustic.
- iwsfutcmd 9y agoI had similar misgivings until I saw a presentation on the clock by the designers. It's, in a way, a bit like the space race - we've as a species have never attempted to intentionally build something that would last 10,000 years, and in the process of building this clock we'll learn a lot about how to think in that kind of timeframe and how to build things that last.