The Clock of the Long Now [Edit 11/16: RIP, Earthist]

[SquidInk]

This is fascinating. can there really be value in long term thinking - taken to this extent?

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines. Appropriately, bristlecone pines are among the longest-lived organisms on the planet. The designers of the Clock in Texas expect its chimes will keep ringing twice as long as the oldest 5 millennia-old bristlecone pine. Ten thousand years is about the age of civilization, so a 10K-year Clock would measure out a future of civilization equal to its past. That assumes we are in the middle of whatever journey we are on – an implicit statement of optimism. - source

Related:

http://www.10000yearclock.net/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/Clock-Long-Now-St ... 046504512X

From Publishers Weekly

The image of our planet on the cover of Brand's Whole Earth Catalog communicated a powerful symbol of the big picture. Brand's new, mind-stretching book challenges readers to get outside themselves and combat the short-term irresponsible thinking that has led to environmental destruction and social chaos. Brand also eloquently urges us to distill and preserve knowledge. Though we seem to live in an age of information overload (each new U.S. president leaves behind more papers than all the previous ones combined), Brand contends that we actually inhabit an age of rapid information loss. Because of changing storage media, as one researcher has quipped, "digital information lasts foreverAor five years, whichever comes first." Time capsules don't solve the problem, for 70% of them are lost almost immediately after being sealed. Brand envisages two monuments that will incorporate the long view into our common consciousness. The first is a giant, exquisitely slow clock. It would be big enough to walk around in, and it would display the year, positions of the sun and moon, generations and millennia. The second is the "Ten-Thousand Year Library," a vast underground labyrinth of books. Here we'd preserve enormous amounts of knowledge from history and other long-perspective disciplines. These ideas deserve more than 15 minutes of fame. Quotable quotes, plentiful paradoxes and humane values make this a book to be savored and discussedAslowly. (June)

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Touted as "the least recognized most influential thinker in America," Brand, creater of The Whole Earth Catalog, wears that mantle with aplomb in his latest offering. He takes on civilization's "pathologically short attention span" with a proposal to encourage us all to assume long-term responsibility for the continuation of the human species. How to do this? By creating both a myth and a mechanism with which to counter our short focus these days, which Brand names as the core of the problem. He spends the remainder of this rumination clarifying that thought and outlining the details of the myth and mechanism that he suggests as a catalyst: a clock that ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and cuckoos but once a millennium. The Clock of the Long Now is both fascinating and, yes, maybe just a bit revolutionary and is most likely to find a suitable home in academic and larger public libraries with readers who are fervent in the desire to see us go on. [See also Brand's "Escaping the Digital Age," LJ 2/1/99, p. 46-48.AEd.]AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, C.

-AGeoff Rotunno, "Valley Voice" Newspaper, Goleta, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Anyone have any thoughts about this project - it's feasibility? It's merit? It's implications? It's technical genius?

[Bobbi Snow]

Can't you see archeologists, 500 hundred years from now, hearing chimes ringing from somewhere, and they blow up the vault to find they have destroyed the instrument???

[SquidInk]

Can't you see archeologists, 500 hundred years from now, hearing chimes ringing from somewhere, and they blow up the vault to find they have destroyed the instrument???

Yes - I can imagine that...

[earthist]

Thinking Stonehenge is a clock of sorts, right?

Based on watching my kids grow up, and internalizing some of my observations to measure against my own experiences, I decided a while back that people cannot see further into the future than their awareness of the past allows for.

In other words, if one is aware of 20-years of her/his own past, s/he will be able to think 20 years into the future. Likewise, if s/he imagiines (remembers?) her/his own history to go back a thousand years, s/he can also imagine a thousand years into the future.

That may be the true importance of history. Not the specific content so much as the mind-stretch that goes into imagining it, and the future awareness that it brings.

Just a thought.

[voguy]

First I've heard of it. Sort of reminds me of a crazy idea I had years ago when I was designing my inn project. I thought of a clock on a wall, mechanical in operation, except the face of it would be made of solar panels which would then attach to a motor of sorts to keep in wound. When the sun goes out, so does time.

Earthist, Squid's story, and your mention of Stonehenge was what prompted my memory. The other half of this would be the clock would overlook a garden where obelisks with ornate decoration would be lined in according to solar observances. It would be a place to go, sit, lie down, and just reflect on live and our purpose.

[SquidInk]

I wonder... was Stonehenge a timekeeping mechanism? How about Giza? Chichen Itza? All of these have astrological implications - but were the builders of these early monuments charting the stars as a means of keeping time? Or was time keeping a secondary consequence that arose out of the use of these monuments? Or was it a corruption of the original usage - or, an abstraction away from the original usage because the original use for them had been forgotten?

Those structures do achieve the same ends as the creators have in mind for their clock. We focus on a larger time-scale when we think of these things. Were our ancestors more focused on the long term? Or is this a coincidence of available building materials?

In fact, the more I think about it the more I think these folks might be on to something. As our conception of time is broken down into smaller and smaller increments, our focus is readjusted. This phenomenon might be the cause of much despair in the world - and much lack of vision.

I like macro photography, but if I wanted to 'see the world' I might choose a different lens. And if I wanted to see Jupiter, a would choose a different instrument altogether. To get a complete concept of existence, a mixture of long range and short range approaches is needed.

As we continue to place an artificially high value on short term speed, we continue careening down a pathway which will ultimately be fatal. We will soon need computers (in fact we do already) to design other computers capable of further dividing time into smaller increments with which to measure 'production'. Somewhere out there looms a technological singularity - the ultimate machine efficiency, gained in an ultimately small increment of time.

This pursuit seems to run counter to our intuition - an intuition which evolved to perceive things on the longer time scale of our original environment. It is our transformation from a 'tuned in' species (tuned in and entangled with nature, that is) to a economic one (insulated from our original environment) which has been responsible for our shift in the perception of time. We embrace technology as a tool to increase the efficiency of our techniques - or the combination of all of the increasingly efficient methods in every aspect of human activity. These methods (or, technique) are in fact transforming humanity into efficient machine-like "technicians".

In this sense I think the clock stands a chance - as would VOguy's reflection space at the Inn - stands a chance of causing people to question this transformation, or at least feel an even greater estrangement from the universal tide of existence. I think the Pyramids & Stonehenge currently have the latter effect.

As an aside, take a look at this:example1, and this example2 - even here at the FF we have put a premium on short term speed.

[SquidInk]

The robotic stone cutting saw and other clock related videos:

http://vimeo.com/24585679

[SquidInk]

Thinking Stonehenge is a clock of sorts, right?

Based on watching my kids grow up, and internalizing some of my observations to measure against my own experiences, I decided a while back that people cannot see further into the future than their awareness of the past allows for.

In other words, if one is aware of 20-years of her/his own past, s/he will be able to think 20 years into the future. Likewise, if s/he imagiines (remembers?) her/his own history to go back a thousand years, s/he can also imagine a thousand years into the future.

That may be the true importance of history. Not the specific content so much as the mind-stretch that goes into imagining it, and the future awareness that it brings.

Just a thought.

But... as a species we have a 'memory' stretching back at least a couple of thousand years, yet we fail to plan beyond one lifetime into the future.

FWIW, I think on an individual scale, your observation makes sense, although I have rarely met a single person who displayed any working knowledge of history beyond about 50 years past (or, beyond the lifetime of their parents) - no matter what the age of that person.

[earthist]

But... as a species we have a 'memory' stretching back at least a couple of thousand years, yet we fail to plan beyond one lifetime into the future.

FWIW, I think on an individual scale, your observation makes sense, although I have rarely met a single person who displayed any working knowledge of history beyond about 50 years past (or, beyond the lifetime of their parents) - no matter what the age of that person.

I understand (I think) your point. I would ask, though, whether you would recognize such a person if you met him? My guess is that he would appear to be a weirdo, almost as though he saw things "regular" people fail to see.

Food for thought. But, returning to the project:

The Earth itself is a clock. We are barely beginning to learn to read it: the layers of volcanic rock, covered by sediments from when it was under water, to intrusions from new eruptions, etc., etc.

The sky is a clock. We are barely beginning to learn to read it: the distant galactic stars, the more distant galaxies, the fact that the distant ones are receding, and are old almost beyond imagination; imagination that there must be even older ones we cannot ever hope to see.

The point is that it's not the clock, it's the ability to interpret and understand that it's a clock that counts. I admire Brand's ideas, but I think he's missing the point. No matter what he does, future short-term thinkers will tear down his clock for parts if for no other reason than that they have no understanding of what it's about.

Sad, yes, but what's needed is a way to convey the information about time; a way to convince people that the "Long Now" is an important and useful concept, and in so doing, to get them to see those things that "regular" people simply don't see.

Any ideas for how to accomplish that?

[SquidInk]

I understand (I think) your point. I would ask, though, whether you would recognize such a person if you met him? My guess is that he would appear to be a weirdo, almost as though he saw things "regular" people fail to see.

Well, you make a good point. I would probably not recognize such a person. In fact the 'numbers' are against my ever running across such a person - statistically rare is the person who has that kind of vision. I hope to have a long coffee with such an individual one day.

The Earth itself is a clock. We are barely beginning to learn to read it: the layers of volcanic rock, covered by sediments from when it was under water, to intrusions from new eruptions, etc., etc.

The sky is a clock. We are barely beginning to learn to read it: the distant galactic stars, the more distant galaxies, the fact that the distant ones are receding, and are old almost beyond imagination; imagination that there must be even older ones we cannot ever hope to see.

The point is that it's not the clock, it's the ability to interpret and understand that it's a clock that counts. I admire Brand's ideas, but I think he's missing the point. No matter what he does, future short-term thinkers will tear down his clock for parts if for no other reason than that they have no understanding of what it's about.

Sad, yes, but what's needed is a way to convey the information about time; a way to convince people that the "Long Now" is an important and useful concept, and in so doing, to get them to see those things that "regular" people simply don't see.

Any ideas for how to accomplish that?

Are you suggesting that time is the fundamental ... what's the word... the fundamental 'grounding force', or the ultimate word, & universal descriptor? I'm not disputing anything, just trying to understand your thoughts.

It seems to me that time is a marker of change, but I am suspicious of time (as a natural construct) because of it's apparent linear nature (rather than circular, or spiral). Because of this I suspect that time might be a sensory perception, evolved among some 'intelligent' life forms to encourage certain perceptions & prevent a type of perceptual insanity.

If this is the case, I wonder if a large clock is the correct monument - in fact, if we are a healthy species & if our cultural perceptions about the universe are correct, then why do we need to build a clock at all? It seems akin to building an encyclopedia to explain encyclopedias. The question would then become: what can we do to restore peoples' awareness of what is already 'written', and why have we lost our ability to perceive this to begin with? In other words, what is corrupting our perception?

It may be equally probable that the makers of the clock, who have stated that they believe themselves to be living in a 'time of great change', are perceiving an evolution of sorts among humanity.

For as long as we can 'remember' our perception of things has been 'timed' according to the most massive structures we could see in the universe around us - structures like the sun, stars, etc. Monuments were built to provide humans a more direct link to these structures, and those structures became sacred, and central to our culture. But this method is inherently inaccurate - possibly due to the lag in perception caused by distance, or various celestial eccentricities, among other oddities - I don't know... I have very little understanding of physics.

The evolution is occurring as we switch to a civilization which is 'timed' according to the smallest structures we can see. A species timing itself this way would look, act , and perceive the entire universe in a completely different way. Among other changes this brings, is a change in tempo. A photon moves faster than a planet, so the culture unconsciously 'accelerates'. Monuments to this new cultural standard are also being built, and are becoming enshrined in the sacred heart of the human culture (think networks). These monuments are also allowing people a more direct link to the new standard.

The clock is an attempt to preserve for posterity, an example of the old cultural tempo, just as Giza and Stonehenge are reminders of a yet a further different cultural tempo. But, unlike the Stonehenge, the clock is flawed. It is flawed because it is forced to use the techniques of the accelerated society in it's attempt to display the priorities of the past. It is however, a potentially great example of how the newer accelerated technique can be re-purposed to help us return to our original cultural tempo, this time with all of the efficiency of a technologically advanced species.

How do we encourage people to consider the 'Long Now' as something to be deeply contemplated? I have no 'friggin idea, beyond doing my best to foster interesting conversations in visible places like this. Or maybe a superbowl ad.

I could be (probably am) all wrong, and my brain is now liquefied and running out my nose, shorting my keyboard. Ick. I need some of those Lysol 'wipes'.

[Lore]

Can't you see archeologists, 500 hundred years from now, hearing chimes ringing from somewhere, and they blow up the vault to find they have destroyed the instrument???

But....Archaeologists rarely blow anything up.

They dig and investigate very carefully so as to be able to read the whole story.

I think this a wonderfully creative idea that, barring destructive natural disasters should stand as a testimony of our time, if our civilization persists, and of a very interesting past civilization if we don't.

[Bobbi Snow]

I wasn't referring to OURS... I was referring to explorers/scientists from somewhere else...

[earthist]

Originally posted by SquidInk

Are you suggesting that time is the fundamental ... what's the word... the fundamental 'grounding force', or the ultimate word, & universal descriptor? I'm not disputing anything, just trying to understand your thoughts.

It seems to me that time is a marker of change, but I am suspicious of time (as a natural construct) because of it's apparent linear nature (rather than circular, or spiral). Because of this I suspect that time might be a sensory perception, evolved among some 'intelligent' life forms to encourage certain perceptions & prevent a type of perceptual insanity.

If this is the case, I wonder if a large clock is the correct monument - in fact, if we are a healthy species & if our cultural perceptions about the universe are correct, then why do we need to build a clock at all? It seems akin to building an encyclopedia to explain encyclopedias. The question would then become: what can we do to restore peoples' awareness of what is already 'written', and why have we lost our ability to perceive this to begin with? In other words, what is corrupting our perception?

It may be equally probable that the makers of the clock, who have stated that they believe themselves to be living in a 'time of great change', are perceiving an evolution of sorts among humanity.

Actually, yes. "Grounding force" works very well here. Time is a sequencing mechanism, yes, but there's more to it than that. Let me attempt to paint a picture of what I see......

I think time is the way we distinguish between what's us and what's other. We perceive things that are not us after the fact. This is easy to see when we view something light-years away as in stars and galaxies. What we see in the present actually happened a long time ago. It's a bit harder to see that the same holds true for literally everything that isn't us. Even scrutinizing a bug from a distance of a foot or so, the light we see takes a tiny bit of time to reach us, and the bug we perceive is not the bug that is there now. Thus, the only present is the self. I would propose that awareness of self, consciousness, is dependent on this mechanism. With no separation between self and other, there is no awareness of self by definition.

A byproduct of time, then, is an awareness of other. The more I become aware of time, the more I become aware that there are others in the universe, and the larger the universe becomes. The awareness of time grounds me in the sense that I gain perspective as to who/what is me, and who/what is others.

This is the meaning behind space and time being inseparable: "space-time". It locates me. It grounds me. And understanding it, I can more easily imagine how things look from other viewing points. In other words, I can better understand, and tolerate, differences and similarities among people (and all life forms).

Time as a measure of change is then added to that view. Sequencing does allow us to make sense of things, keep us "sane," but it is not an illusion. Change does occur. Recalling the first definition of time, I can see that you might become aware of a change either before or after I do. In other words, your measure of time, your clock, if you will, "ticks" differently than mine. Again, I gain perspective and tolerance -- and understanding by seeing time.

As to your comment about linear vs spiral, you are correct that space-time is (at least) 3 dimensional, and that another problem we seem to have is that we tend to see it in only 2 dimensions (linearly). This is, I think, a limit imposed by our assumption that we are our bodies. Once again, perceiving time in 3 dimensions leads to an even greater awareness. And that awareness, even more than the others above, leads to seeing things that "regular" folks don't see (aka the so-called spiritual).

Let's address gravity for a minute. Newton's observation about gravity was, essentially, that every "thing" (all mass) attracts every other "thing" in the universe. Put another way, everything "thinks" it is the center of the universe. Note that this is nearly identical to saying that the self is the only thing we "see" in the present, and that everything "other" we see in the past. Einstein took it a step further, and said that every "thing" distorts space-time such that every thing is essentially at the bottom of a "well" looking up.

I'll assume we've all see demonstrations of gravity where the demonstrator has a rubberized sheet with a ball on it. Wherever the ball is, the sheet is deformed by it such that we have a cone, or a "well." The sheet is supposed to represent space, and the ball in the well is supposed to represent how mass shapes space.

reference: http://mygravitywell.com/

It's easy to imagine ourselves at the bottom of the well looking up, but it's very hard for us to imagine that the well is on all sides of us at once. In other words, we are looking "up" out of the well whether we look up or down or right or left, or any direction. That's what I'm trying to say when I say we percieve space-time in 2 dimensions rather than 3. It's a limit of our physical bodies. In order to imagine the well in all directions at once, we must, I think, get out of our physical perspective, and assume an etherial one in which we can see ourselves as a point without shape; as a non-physical thing.

Then we can "see" other points/wells, each one distorting space-time with itself at the "center of its own universe." We can also better perceive groups of these distortions circling/spiraling together through space-time.

Sorry, that last part is less clear than the first parts, but then, as I said, it's one of those things "regular people" don't see -- at least not very often.

On a more mundane level, the need/desire for instant gratification (rapid change) corresponds to a lack of awareness of other(s). It's selfish, short-sighted, and harmful to society in general. (Define society any way you want). An interesting question might be whether a "time of rapid change" amounts to the same thing as a "time of short-sightedness"? Then we could get into the "chicken/egg" question: which one is the driving force, and which one goes along for the ride? I would opt for concentrating on the one each of us can control: namely, the selfishness/short-sightedness; and let the pundits have a field day with the chicken/egg argument. It's irrelevant, I think. We need action rather than argument (or is that short-sighted? LOL!)

So, returning to your original question at the beginning of the thread:

This is fascinating. can there really be value in long term thinking - taken to this extent?"

my answer is a resounding, yes, but that the clock per se is probably not going to achieve the stated goal (as you have also suggested).

[SquidInk]

Wow... thanks earthist, for taking the... time... to lay all of this out. It seems we share an interest in the nature of time.

This thread has provided a lot of research material.

[megman]

So, why bury this thing in a mountain in the middle of nowhere that takes 2 days to get to by pack mule and practically nobody will ever see?

Why not display it prominently for all to see and marvel?