Long Now

http://www.longnow.org

From the website...

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase.

Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed---some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Clock/Library proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis. He wrote in 01993:

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. Now, thirty years later, they still talk about what will happen by the year 2000. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of the Millennium. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

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I think a more effective method may prove to be the coming (and going) of the year itself. Perhaps being faced with a new, untrampled snowfield full of years beginning with the digit '2' will help humans feel as though they are at a beginning, rather than an end.

<cynicism>Hah! Don't bet on it.</cynicism> At least here in the Good Ol' US of A we can always find something to whine about. I try to keep injecting new stuff into the system that people can't whine about because it all works and tries very hard to keep you alive. Someday in the not too distant future all my work will be considered Stone Age because it will be replaced by nanotech robots running around inside your body. They will try very hard to keep you alive. That'll take a little pressure off of me.

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This sort of aligns with one of my goals for grandfatherhood - I want to own a large level field with unobstructed views of the horizon. When my grandchildren are old enough to help, I want to build a Stonehenge-like structure, starting with a menhir in the center, and over the course of several years add stones to mark the equinoxes, solstices, and other events. I hope that this will give them a greater understanding of the grand scheme of things, the long slow pulse of life on Earth. --PeteHardie

I have a photocell taped to my window which I sample every minute. This becomes a pixel in an image that I've been developing for several years. I similarly sample webcams around the world on an hourly basis.

The data exposes both latitude and longitude. I like it because with simple shell scripts I can watch the celestrial world. But, mine is only a baby step compared to the long now. -- WardCunningham

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