Quite some time ago, though not long in the context of the 10,000 year clock, I read The Clock of The Long Now: Time & Responsibility, by Stewart Brand. In it he described this wonderful project, the creation of a clock designed to work for 10,000 years, and identified civilization’s “pathologically short attention span” as the impetus for the project. Brian Eno has been involved with the chimes for the clock, which will play a different series of chimes for each year, so 10,000 variations – the clock only chimes once a year. Nice!
The clock works by gears and levers, and is something Galileo or Da Vinci would recognize. Screen Shot from Public Record Video.
Now, 15 years on, there is a short movie which chronicles the story so far. It is a project for optimists, people who have confidence in mankind’s ability to solve any problem we may face.
“The Clock of the Long Now is a portrait of Danny Hillis and his brilliant team of inventors, futurists, and engineers as they build The 10,000 Year Clock—a grand, Stone Henge-like monolith, being constructed in a mountain in West Texas.
The film, like the clock itself, celebrates the power of long-term thinking and mankind’s insatiable thirst to solve life’s biggest problems.” Public Record
clock of the long now
from Public Record on Vimeo.
A tremendous project, forcing our thinking into a more reasoned, rational view of our world and its challenges.
The Long Now Foundation **
Long Now Foundation Facebook Page
Long Now Foundation Website
Images attribution:
* Image from the Long Now Foundation Video. Image copyright: The Long Now Foundation, Creative Commons Licence – no commercial use.
**by Scott Beale; Creative Commons Licence – no commercial use.
