Somewhat belatedly, I came across the Long Now Foundation, a group devoted to promoting long term thinking. When I say long term, I mean 10,000 years, not 8, as goes the political definition. They are that “dances around the maypole” of the 10,000 year clock, as conceived by Danny Hillis. The clock has been written about extensively in magazines, including Wired, way back in 1995 (or 01995, as the group refers to it), but most recently here’s a great writeup in Discover.
This is a picture of a prototype clock that now sits in the London Science Museum, which cost a few million dollars and is expected to run with 1 second accuracy for 10,000 years. It uses only ingenious engineering, not atomic oscillations, as do most super-accurate clocks. This clock is also a splendid piece of technological art. As will be its successors; the final clock will be built into a cave in the Nevada desert and will stand 60 feet high (I’m reminded of Deep Thought).
Long Now also provides a great lecture series on Futurism that touches on science, technology, politics, and religion. It’s wonderful to see people take a different view of humanity. After all, humans have been technological creatures for 10,000 years or so, so it’s not too much to think that 10,000 years in the future we will still be around.
Speculating this far out is normally the realm of science fiction, but there are some things that do seem almost certain (to me at least) in that time frame: 1) our current countries and borders will be long gone, 2) we will have moved into space, and more humans will live there than on Earth, 3) our science will give us capabilities that to modern humans would seem magical, 4) robotic technology will be able to produce for us anything we possibly want without any labor costs (thus production will require only capital, making productivity infinite by 19th century economic definition).
Other changes are much more difficult to guess at, for instance, what about religion? No religion has lasted longer on earth than about 4,000 years, will we still worship the same diety(ies)? Capitalism has only been around for a few hundred years, will we organize our economies around some entirely different standard without the need for the profit motive? With technology advancing so rapidly, will we hit and pass through the technological singularity and remain unchanged in the process? Will we have implants and genetic modifications that increase our lifetimes, capabilities, and capacities? Is our future posthuman?
That’s a cool clock. I want one. If there’s an earthquake, does it get all messed up? Is it powered by those weights? How often does someone have to reset them? And I’m just going to say that God was there since the beginning of time and leave it at that
My cookies are also accepted for blogger… but I still can’t post with firefox. Could a hosts.txt file be the cause?
Tom,
Apparently the clock will be designed to handle earthquakes (not sure how), and they say that that it can be powered by pressure changes in the atmosphere. Also, they talked in the article in Discover about resetting the clock every so often by the light at noon on some day in some given year shining down through a tiny hole, heating a little metal piece which then expands and resets the clock to noon. That way, it can be accurate over the long haul, even though it’s nowhere near as accurate as an atomic clock.
About God, people have believed in some form of being since the beginning of recorded history, perhaps our (imperfect) vision of a supernatural being(s) will change as we advance as a technological society.
Not sure about Firefox, I am not doing anything with a hosts.txt file on mine, so that could be the crucial difference between our browsers.
he light at noon on some day in some given year shining down through a tiny hole, heating a little metal piece which then expands and resets the clock to noon.
DO YOU MEAN THIS???
I’m thinking that maybe the guy making the clock has seen Raiders…just maybe.
[…] My First Article at DamnInteresting.com [Damn Interesting, Futurism, Long Now]I’ve recently been offered a chance to be a regular contributor on the group blog DamnInteresting.com, and today my first piece appears, entitled New Year’s Eve 11999. It’s about the Clock of the Long Now, which some of my “long-time” readers may remember I blogged about last October. […]