Ghost of a flea

The Clock of the Long Now

"When Danny Hillis first started talking about his 10,000 year clock, many of his friends worried that he was going through some kind of mid-life crisis. I was one of them. But eventually we all started listening. A group of Danny's friends, led by Stewart Brand, got together and created "The Long Now Foundation" (http://www.longnow.org/) to build the clock, and also to begin to address the bigger issue involved: how to get people to think in a longer term, how to stretch out their sense of time."

Stewart Brand works on the Clock of the Long Now, a timepiece that counts down the next 10000 years.

"20 years ago computer scientist Danny Hillis thought up a monument scale slow moving mechanical clock to serve as an icon to long-term thinking. 10 years ago a first prototype was completed and put into the Science Museum of London. 5 years ago the full size clock project began design. A few months ago that project began construction. Project manager Alexander Rose will discuss the process and methods underway in the Clock of the Long Now."

Stewart Brand was a friend of Gregory Bateson. This makes sense of the project. I heard the same story about the oak beams of New College, Oxford twenty years ago from one of Bateson's students, the professor responsible for the doctoral theory course I still think with every day.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 27, 2011 06:28 AM