Missing Link: To whom the clock strikes
How do you build a clock that runs for 10,000 years? By using knowledge that is thousands of years old, because maintenance is essential.
The astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral. It stood still for 54 years because nobody knew how to repair it until then.
(Image: trabantos/Shutterstock.com)
When the Protestant citizens commissioned the mathematicians Konrad Dasypodius and David Wolkenstein to build an astronomical clock for Strasbourg Cathedral in 1559, it was to last for "all eternity". The clock was put into operation in 1571. When it stopped in 1788, there was no one to repair it. The knowledge had disappeared. For 40 years, precision mechanic Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué studied the construction of the clock, which he restored to working order in 1842. In 1996, a similar project was launched with the construction of a mechanical clock that would run for 10,000 years. The Long Now Foundation wants us to understand the time span of 20,000 years that modern man could live on earth. The "long now" is the 10,000 years that the clock is supposed to accompany.
The rise of modern man began with the end of the Ice Age around 8,000 years BC and with it the period of the rise and fall of civilizations that the Long Now Foundation wants to commemorate. Since 1996, it has been working on a clock that can survive 10,000 years of operation if maintained by humans. Well-known supporters of the project are the musician Brian Eno, the computer scientist Danny Willis, and Stewart Brand, perhaps best known as the editor of the Whole Earth catalog or as the cameraman who filmed the mother of all demos. In 1999, Brand published the book on the project "Clock of the Long Now" with the subtitle "Time and responsibility". It contains the following sentence: "Our civilization is 10,000 years old and if we assume that we have just reached the middle, then we have another 10,000 years to work on civilization. Because the profound problems -- poverty and wealth, population explosion, famines and wars -- are solvable if you just take your time."
Civilization goes on and on
Brand formulated this view once again in his last essay, Elements of a Durable Civilization: "Civilizations come and go. Civilization goes on." Brand refers to the ideas of Jonas Salk, the doctor and immunologist who developed the polio vaccine, and his son Jonathan. In their book "A New Reality: Human Evolution for a Sustainable Future", they describe the new reality of a shrinking civilization that is reaching the limits of its growth, in line with the warnings of the Club of Rome in the early 1970s. Only long-term thinking can help to deal with this changing reality. According to Brand, this can be seen in the treatment of climate change. By referring to Salk, Brand is distancing himself from the long-termism that has taken on the traits of a substitute religion in Silicon Valley since 2015. This aspect will be discussed at the upcoming Chaos Computer Club Congress.
Rather, the idea of the long-term clock was rooted in the spirit of optimism on the internet before the first dotcom crash. With a lot of money from then successful company founders such as Mitch Kapor (Lotus Software, later bought by IBM) or Jay S. Walker (Priceline.com, now Booking Holdings), the Long Now Foundation was able to buy its headquarters in San Francisco's Fort Mason. This is home to the second major long-term company, the Rosetta Project. The Foundation also runs the trendy restaurant The Interval here. Another three sites were purchased in the Great Basin National Park, where the clock on Mount Washington is to be built together with an easily accessible visitor center.
The sun as synchronization
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This national park is an International Dark Sky Place, which is an important factor in the construction of the clock. According to the plans of Danny Hilles, the actual designer of the clock, the clock is to sit in a shaft in which the sun gives the signal at midday to synchronize the clock. The clock is kept in motion by a pendulum as a rate regulator. The shaft should be connected to chambers, in which the achievement of a millennium can be celebrated by those then alive. The installation was to be far away from cities or coasts that could be destroyed or change in the long term.
Hilli's plans to build a clock were prompted by the observation in the mid-1990s that many people were unable to imagine a date beyond the year 2000. They were living in what anthropologist Margaret Mead called a "tempo-centered culture". Hillis also noted how another great pointing mechanism was perceived over time. In 1599, the poet Samuel David described the Stonehenge site as a "great stupid heap of stones". Isaac Newton was one of the first to suspect astronomical purposes in the arrangement, recognizing its function at the summer solstice and describing it as the predecessor of Solomon's Temple.
Like the astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral, which had just become Protestant in 1571, the "Clock of the Long Now" is a sculpture of time. This is made clear by the first prototype, supervised by project manager Alexander Rose, which was completed on a reduced scale in time for the turn of the century and is now on display in London's Science Museum. The almost 2.5 meter high prototype is made of monel metal and weighs half a ton. At the turn of the year 01999 to 02000 – in the counting of the Long Now Foundation --[} a double gong sounded, only the cuckoo, which is supposed to appear on such centenary occasions, was missing.
The simplest possible design
Its simple mechanical construction alludes to the calculators designed by Charles Babbage a century earlier. The whole thing is quite deliberate: the clock is designed so that it only works if people take care of it over time. "All parts of the watch can be replaced using skills that have been known for thousands of years," said Danny Hillis in an interview at the presentation of the first prototype. According to Stewart Brand (PDF), this prototype was supposed to be presented in January 1999 at the World Economic Forum in Davos to the rich and super-rich who gather there every year to think about "global solutions". A look at a time span of 10,000 years was also intended to encourage them to think about longer periods of time. Unfortunately, the prototype was not finished in time.
One of the super-rich who did become enthusiastic about the idea was Jeff Bezos. In 2011, he donated around 42 million dollars so that the watch could be built, naturally, on his property in Texas. The shafts, access tunnels and millennium rooms have already been completed there, where his rocket company Blue Origin is based. However, they are not referred to as the clock of the long now, but rather the 10,000-year clock, according to an instruction from Bezos. The considerations of time and space and the civilization of mankind are secondary, as Bezos himself confessed: "When people get involved with the clock, they will tackle more things like Blue Origin." There are currently no updates on the status of things in Texas. But there's still time for that. Or is the whole idea, as Wired magazine now thinks, having previously published dozens of enthusiastic reports on the watch, a complete waste of time?
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