The Clock of the Long Now
The Clock of the Long Now was first brought to my attention by Future Boy when he returned from his Futurist Conference. I just didn't get it, which of course is no fault of mine. Future Boy bears all the burden for not being able to articulate the concept well enough to someone like me, who regards the future as tomorrow's problem. Since death is in my future, I avoid thinking of it all costs. After reading the Discover magazine article, Time Machine, I may start thinking of the future as more than just an impending nightmare.
The Long Now proposes to put our frame of thinking, 10,000 years into the future. Imagine if we could all collectively focus on such a future -- suddenly a lot of our problems in the here and now may take on a new perspective. From ethnic discrimination, wars, the environment -- humanity's future -- all become different, or so we would hope, when viewed from the perspective of the Long Now. The Clock of the Long Now proposes to give us just that kind of perspective.
The Clock of the Long Now will run for 10,000 years with perfect precision, resetting itself daily using the Sun. It will track hours, days, weeks, months, years -- leap years and leap centuries -- the precision of planetary orbits and the precision of the equinox. It will not need human intervention to continue operation, but will wind itself to continue keeping the time. It's being planned for the cliffs of Snake Range, in Nevada. There is no roads leading to Snake Range, and it would take a full day's hike to get to it. Within the cliffs, a visitor would have to move through successive rooms to get to the Clock of the Long Now -- each room revealing more and more of the clock -- its slowest parts first, tracking time at the largest scales -- the inner room with the shorter scales of time being measured. It will be a grand clock -- and while it will be well known to many, it will be in such a remote location, that most will not visit it, or seek it out, although it will remain in our collective psyche. Eventually, we may just forget about it, only to rediscover it centuries later -- or more. In fact, it might even become a object that many will make pilgrimages to in the future.
The idea is almost whimsical, if it didn't have some serious merits. It could actually work to inspire in each of us to think of the world now in the spans of our daily lives, or even our whole lives, but in terms of humanity's existence. It could become a focal point, a touchstone if you will, for thinking beyond our immediate time -- towards some long term thinking. What would we do with such thinking? Hopefully get it all right.
The Long Now proposes to put our frame of thinking, 10,000 years into the future. Imagine if we could all collectively focus on such a future -- suddenly a lot of our problems in the here and now may take on a new perspective. From ethnic discrimination, wars, the environment -- humanity's future -- all become different, or so we would hope, when viewed from the perspective of the Long Now. The Clock of the Long Now proposes to give us just that kind of perspective.
The Clock of the Long Now will run for 10,000 years with perfect precision, resetting itself daily using the Sun. It will track hours, days, weeks, months, years -- leap years and leap centuries -- the precision of planetary orbits and the precision of the equinox. It will not need human intervention to continue operation, but will wind itself to continue keeping the time. It's being planned for the cliffs of Snake Range, in Nevada. There is no roads leading to Snake Range, and it would take a full day's hike to get to it. Within the cliffs, a visitor would have to move through successive rooms to get to the Clock of the Long Now -- each room revealing more and more of the clock -- its slowest parts first, tracking time at the largest scales -- the inner room with the shorter scales of time being measured. It will be a grand clock -- and while it will be well known to many, it will be in such a remote location, that most will not visit it, or seek it out, although it will remain in our collective psyche. Eventually, we may just forget about it, only to rediscover it centuries later -- or more. In fact, it might even become a object that many will make pilgrimages to in the future.
The idea is almost whimsical, if it didn't have some serious merits. It could actually work to inspire in each of us to think of the world now in the spans of our daily lives, or even our whole lives, but in terms of humanity's existence. It could become a focal point, a touchstone if you will, for thinking beyond our immediate time -- towards some long term thinking. What would we do with such thinking? Hopefully get it all right.
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