Taboo

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 ”The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The clock is one of several projects through which the foundation intends to promote long-term thinking. In the words of Stewart Brand, a founding board member of the foundation, ‘Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well-engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.’ The basic design principles and requirements for the clock are: Longevity: The clock should be accurate even after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts (such as jewels, expensive metals, or special alloys) that might be looted. Maintainability: Future generations should be able to keep the clock working, if necessary, with nothing more advanced than Bronze Age tools and materials. Transparency: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no functionality should be opaque. Evolvability: It should be possible to improve the clock over time. Scalability: To ensure that the final large clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested. No clock can have a guaranteed lifetime of 10,000 years, but some clocks are designed with guaranteed limits. (For example, a clock that shows a four-digit year date will not display the correct year after the year 9999.) With continued care and maintenance the Clock of the Long Now could reasonably be expected to display the correct time for 10,000 years. Whether a clock would actually receive continued care and maintenance for such a long time is debatable. Hillis chose the 10,000-year goal to be just within the limits of plausibility. There are technological artifacts, such as fragments of pots and baskets, from 10,000 years in the past, so there is some precedent for human artifacts surviving this long, although very few human artifacts have been continuously tended for more than a few centuries. ‘I want a build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millenium.’ - Danny Hillis, 1995.” - Wikipedia

 ”The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years.

The clock is one of several projects through which the foundation intends to promote long-term thinking. In the words of Stewart Brand, a founding board member of the foundation, ‘Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well-engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.’

The basic design principles and requirements for the clock are:

  1. Longevity: The clock should be accurate even after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts (such as jewels, expensive metals, or special alloys) that might be looted.
  2. Maintainability: Future generations should be able to keep the clock working, if necessary, with nothing more advanced than Bronze Age tools and materials.
  3. Transparency: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no functionality should be opaque.
  4. Evolvability: It should be possible to improve the clock over time.
  5. Scalability: To ensure that the final large clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested.

No clock can have a guaranteed lifetime of 10,000 years, but some clocks are designed with guaranteed limits. (For example, a clock that shows a four-digit year date will not display the correct year after the year 9999.) With continued care and maintenance the Clock of the Long Now could reasonably be expected to display the correct time for 10,000 years.

Whether a clock would actually receive continued care and maintenance for such a long time is debatable. Hillis chose the 10,000-year goal to be just within the limits of plausibility. There are technological artifacts, such as fragments of pots and baskets, from 10,000 years in the past, so there is some precedent for human artifacts surviving this long, although very few human artifacts have been continuously tended for more than a few centuries.

‘I want a build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millenium.’ - Danny Hillis, 1995.”

- Wikipedia