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IIRC it was a small blurb in Scientific American a few years back (perhaps even pre-Y2K) where I first read of the LongNow Clock, and it got me interested in other long-term projects and ideas as well (which there aren't many).

There's a HUGE time capsule at Oglethorpe University called "The Crypt of Civilization". Most time capsules you may have read about are small things about the size of a shoebox meant to be opened 50 to 100 years after they are sealed. The "Crypt" was a (indoor, apparently) swimming pool (emptied of water, of course) loaded up with many artifacts and sealed in 1930, and scheduled to be opened in about 6,000 years.

Oglethorpe is also the home of The International Time Capsule Society. Notable pages on the website are Tips on Building a Time Capsule and The Nine Most Wanted Time Capsules.

As I discussed on the forum at that site, it would be interesting to couple one or more time capsules to such a clock, to have each capsule be opened at a pre-programmed time.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to Oglethorpe, just a fan of the site, and the "most prolific" contributor to the site's time capsule forum (three of the six posts).

The clock is certainly a "Next-Generation" design, bring the very first Y10K-compliant device.

Article is slashdotted, so I can't tell if this is the Clock of the Long Now, but it certainly sounds similar.

I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love. The scope of the project is amazing, the engineering that went into some of the pieces is incredible, and the final product (the first prototype) was gorgeous. I read everything I could about it & even had it as my wallpaper for a while. If you like mechanical devices, take some time to look at this project - it's well worth it!

Currently, you can find the project's web page at http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

The mechanical computer, the solar synchronizer, and the power mechanism are all very cool pieces of engineering. However, the most fascinating part of the entire clock is the "Equation of Time Cam". A bit more information about the cam follows.

The proposed clock not only keeps accurate solar time (it resets itself every day at noon via the solar synchronizer), it also keeps accurate "clock time". How it does this is pretty amazing:

In general, when the sun reaches its highest point ("solar noon"), you can look at your watch & find that it's not really noon. On any given day, the variation between "solar noon" & "clock noon" is +/- 15 minutes. Of course, this variation chanages through out the year, following a well defined curve known as the "equation of time" (http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm) (it looks like a 5th order polynomial equation).

So, when the mechanical clock resets itself at "solar noon", it's needs to account for this variation to determine "clock noon". One way to do this is to make a disc that is not perfectly round; it has a wider diameter at portions & a narrower diameter at other parts (something like a cross between a circle & an ameoba). This "disc" makes one revolution per year, and the variations in its diameter represent the difference between "solar noon" & "clock noon". So, at "solar noon", the clock resets itself & uses a feeler gauge on the disc to figure out how much variation to add or subtract to display "clock noon". So, assuming you have a sunny day every once & a while, you have a clock that will always have accurate clock time. Ingenious!

There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/i mages/general-EqOfTimeDtl1_00Lo.jpg

The Long Now's explanation can be found here (complete with Cad drawings!):

http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html

I hope everyone enjoys this project as much as I have - Have fun!

I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love. The scope of the project is amazing, the engineering that went into some of the pieces is incredible, and the final product (the first prototype) was gorgeous. I read everything I could about it & even had it as my wallpaper for a while. If you like mechanical devices, take some time to look at this project - it's well worth it!

Currently, you can find the project's web page at http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

The mechanical computer, the solar synchronizer, and the power mechanism are all very cool pieces of engineering. However, the most fascinating part of the entire clock is the "Equation of Time Cam". A bit more information about the cam follows.

The proposed clock not only keeps accurate solar time (it resets itself every day at noon via the solar synchronizer), it also keeps accurate "clock time". How it does this is pretty amazing:

In general, when the sun reaches its highest point ("solar noon"), you can look at your watch & find that it's not really noon. On any given day, the variation between "solar noon" & "clock noon" is +/- 15 minutes. Of course, this variation chanages through out the year, following a well defined curve known as the "equation of time" (http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm) (it looks like a 5th order polynomial equation).

So, when the mechanical clock resets itself at "solar noon", it's needs to account for this variation to determine "clock noon". One way to do this is to make a disc that is not perfectly round; it has a wider diameter at portions & a narrower diameter at other parts (something like a cross between a circle & an ameoba). This "disc" makes one revolution per year, and the variations in its diameter represent the difference between "solar noon" & "clock noon". So, at "solar noon", the clock resets itself & uses a feeler gauge on the disc to figure out how much variation to add or subtract to display "clock noon". So, assuming you have a sunny day every once & a while, you have a clock that will always have accurate clock time. Ingenious!

There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/i mages/general-EqOfTimeDtl1_00Lo.jpg

The Long Now's explanation can be found here (complete with Cad drawings!):

http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html

I hope everyone enjoys this project as much as I have - Have fun!

Readers of Wired Magazine (both of them!) have known about this since 1995. Go to this page and scroll down to "The Millennium Clock/An essay by Danny Hillis from 01995" They were already Y10K compliant ten years ago!
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

The fate of really old things leads me to think that the clock should be copied and hidden. The idea of hiding the clock to preserve it has a natural corollary, but it takes Teller, the professional magician, to suggest it without shame: "The important thing is to make a very convincing documentary about building the clock and hiding it. Don't actually build one. That would spoil the myth if it was ever found." In a way, Teller is right.

I may have missed it when reading the article, but what drives this super clock? If its mechanical, I will assume that its going to rely on some sort of kinetic/potential energy transition, but I don't see a pendulum or a power source, nor can I think of one that will last 10,000 years.

I must admit I forget myself, but if you go to the Website Of The Clock:

http://www.longnow.org/

you will find writings on a prototype discussing this very problem and various possibilities for powering it.

Looks like they redid the website since I was there last, the main clock page is here:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

Here are some of the details on possible power sources and other design decisions:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/principles/

I may have missed it when reading the article, but what drives this super clock? If its mechanical, I will assume that its going to rely on some sort of kinetic/potential energy transition, but I don't see a pendulum or a power source, nor can I think of one that will last 10,000 years.

I must admit I forget myself, but if you go to the Website Of The Clock:

http://www.longnow.org/

you will find writings on a prototype discussing this very problem and various possibilities for powering it.

Looks like they redid the website since I was there last, the main clock page is here:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

Here are some of the details on possible power sources and other design decisions:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/principles/

I may have missed it when reading the article, but what drives this super clock? If its mechanical, I will assume that its going to rely on some sort of kinetic/potential energy transition, but I don't see a pendulum or a power source, nor can I think of one that will last 10,000 years.

I must admit I forget myself, but if you go to the Website Of The Clock:

http://www.longnow.org/

you will find writings on a prototype discussing this very problem and various possibilities for powering it.

Looks like they redid the website since I was there last, the main clock page is here:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/

Here are some of the details on possible power sources and other design decisions:

http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/principles/

http://seminars.longnow.org/

I have to wonder if this has anything to do with the the Long Now Foundation.

Star axis is a huge sculpture in new mexico that measures the woble of the earth's axis. The artist, Charles Ross, is associated w/ the long now foundation that did the clock. http://epoch.longnow.org/share/longnow/landart/Sta rAxis.JPG http://www.kunstraum-innsbruck.at/foto/landart/pic 06g.jpg Website w/ geometric explanations: http://www.staraxis.org/index0.html

We've known about this since when? Oh yeah, since 1996. Yawn...

Some of the goals of this project parallel those of the Long Now Foundation: http://www.longnow.org/ Seems like they should have been able to bid, if they did not.

The articles were light (to the point of vacuum) on details about the approach proposed by the company.

From the article: "The system's architecture makes it flexible enough to accommodate evolving policy change," including the importance of "providing public access while protecting privacy and sensitive information." From the sound of that I'm betting its some wonky and ridiculous XML format infected with a sadly pathetic little DRM imp.
The fact is that I can read anything if I have a copy of the software that originally viewed/created it and the machine (or an emulation of the machine) on which the software ran. Adding one more format to the mix just means we have to emulate one more machine and keep track of one more piece of software and all the doubtlessly expensive effort which will be spent in conversion is wasted.

It's great to see the National Archives working on this but I would rather see the tax money farmed out in challenge grants to organizations like the
Long Now that have a chance in Hell of delivering something useful than pouring money into yet another defense company to ensure that whatever technology we use to store records can be properly sanitized and locked away according to the whims of government and "changing policy."
The biggest issue facing us right now is that most of the music, words and images created by our civilization are illegal to preserve. Ridiculous copyright extensions have ensured that the huge mass of data for which no rights owner can be found will simply rot instead of being digitized and stored.

A software emulator can ensure that historic file formats are readable in the future, but Big Media would rather squeeze our history to death before it letting go of the rights.

This is like 1000 fires at the Library in Alexandria. Future generations will curse us for every scrap of information we allow to rot while we squabble.

Danny Hillis of the Long Now Foundation has been pointing out these kinds of problems for years.

Most types of digital storage is not good for conserving data in the long run. Hardware changes. File formats change. Most digital media have a very limited lifetime.

As an example: We have a very good record of the letters that Greek philosophers wrote to each other 2000 years ago. On the other had there's loads of important research data from the early days of computing that's already lost forever.

I just wanted to be the first to mention this site, someone wanted to view the previous leap second, and that became an obsession.

Okay, here's a clickable link:
http://leapsecond.com/

An obsession in another are of time is this Y10K Compliant clock:

http://longnow.org/

I am thinking of burying a 200gb hard drive in a time capsule encased in a weather proofed unit with a 10 year lithium battery powered transmitter of some sort as a tactile representation I could work on with contemporary materials so I could better understand the complexities to make information last 1000x longer. The Long Now's rightfully acclaimed clock is the foundation of research into human-created information longevity.

A good example is the Mayan Codices. Records seem to indicate there were thousands, however Spanish priests burned them as "works of the devil" during the European conquest of the Americas. Today only 4 remain.

If the destruction of our civilization is going to be as sudden and complete as this one, the few surviving texts will definitely include works of questionable value like The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. Later civilizations may indeed think of this age as a dark one.

You don't have to have something on an immutable, indestructable medium for it to survive.

The question is whether and how later generations want to remember us. The church and dark age kings did pass on some of the greater works of Greeks and Romans because the value of those works was at least recognized by some throughout the two millenia that have passed since their time.

History has been far less kind with the losers of history like the Egyptians, Sumerians, Mayas, Incas, etc.

The Nordic Legends weren't written down for centuries, yet today we still have them.

Germanic oral traditions are far less reliable as history. Note that there are also many reproductions of apparently classical and dark age works that are not taken seriously as a historical source. There is a variety of reasons to forge historical works.

Engravings on headstones, or big stone buildings in inobtrusive places like deserts seem to last very long. Unfortunately the texts people carve in stone (sentimental and religious drivel) are usually not the knowledge one would want to preserve for posterity.

The Longnow Foundation has the right ideas for making sure that posterity will rank us with the Eqyptians and Greeks. I think it's a good idea to add some nuclear fallout near to the monuments as a disincentive (or 'curse') for reusing materials, which has completely messed up the archeological record in densely inhabited places like Europe, India, and coastal China.

The bet is part of the Long Bets project, which is run by the Long Now foundation. The permanent URL for the bet is http://www.longbets.org/2.

The Long Now Foundation has done some thinking about these issues. It appears that part of the solution is to engrave everything onto a 2" metal disk.

It might be pricey, but wouldn't it be worth it for your 400th great grand-children to be able to listen to your New Kids on the Block collection?

http://www.longnow.org/

Maybe in 100 years or so. Not many companies plan for time periods that long. Heck most companies it certainly seems like they don't plan longer than a year.

Bring up your idea with some science fiction writers to flesh out the details and then talk to The Long Now about the pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Thanks.

They are.

This idea made me immediately think of the Clock of the Long Now project. I wonder what they're up to these days... and if the clock will ever get built!

Actually, it seems that there won't be a population problem after all. Here is a seminar from Phillip Longman on the 'depopulation problem' in pdf, mp3 and ogg, all from the Long Now Foundation.

Actually, it seems that there won't be a population problem after all. Here is a seminar from Phillip Longman on the 'depopulation problem' in pdf, mp3 and ogg, all from the Long Now Foundation.

Actually, it seems that there won't be a population problem after all. Here is a seminar from Phillip Longman on the 'depopulation problem' in pdf, mp3 and ogg, all from the Long Now Foundation.

Actually, it seems that there won't be a population problem after all. Here is a seminar from Phillip Longman on the 'depopulation problem' in pdf, mp3 and ogg, all from the Long Now Foundation.

Huh. Somebody needs to visit the Long Now foundation and recalibrate their idea of what "long term" means.

Thirty years is "archival?" The crappiest stuff in the world will last thirty years. Canon is bragging about thirty years?

And that's probably an exaggeration. There are probably a lot of asterisks about humidity, and what kind of glass it is stored under. (A lot of those CD-R's that manufacturers said were going to last a century are starting to fail in less than ten years).

Light purple spirit duplicator documents will last thirty years. Even if they're a lighter purple than the day they were printed.

Books printed on World War II paper have lasted more than thirty years.

Any old black-and-white photo will last a century, easy. After a hundred years or so it may not have a full rich Ansel Adams tone scale, but you can see that your baby has Great-Grandma's dimple just fine. And that's the one that was sitting in that leather frame on Grandpa's office desk for all those decades...

So, these inkjet photos. Sure, you can always print them out again... except that our supposedly permanent digital media are, of course, only permanent if we are vigilant conservators ready to recopy everything over to a new format every decade or so as technology advances.

Two hundred years from now historians are going to know more about the 1800s than they do about the 2000's.

I hope this isn't redundant already, but I thought The Long Now Library discussion of this topic was pretty good.

For suitable definitions of "rapidly".

These folks might be able to help with plans for long-term backups of WikiPedia content.

-Mark

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

The Clock of the Long Now is a clock designed Danny Hillis to last 10,000 years with maintenance using only Bronze Age technology. Ticking will be avoided. The century hand will advance every 100 years, and the cuckoo will come out on the millennium. The first 9 foot tall prototype was built in time for "New Year's Eve 01999" (note extra digit, and the second is under construction now.

One might argue that the clock incorporates firmware, in the sense that there will be relatively complex algorithms to maintain accuracy by comparing different timing signals, and simpler algorithms to decide when to move the century hand, or cuckoo the millennium. It's not a stored-program system though, so it doesn't meet the criteria that the Babbage engines meet. Nevertheless, this is a good example of hardware designed realistically to operate continuously for 10 millennia. For this project Hillis invented a mechanical serial-bit-adder, a mechanical digital logic element, which evidently lacks the "wearing problem" of a standard clock mechanism. The clock knows about leap years and such.

The website has images of the prototypes and the design, but I'm on dialup so I didn't look at them. The Principles Page discusses some of the problems to be overcome. For example, power source - right now Hillis is tending toward a temperature-based power source - and maintaining accuracy, which may be based on a phase locked loop using a mechanical oscillator and solar alignment. There are ways to support the foundation, such as buying Brand's Book, or Eno's tunes

IMHO he might want to use three or four other checks as well. An extension of phase locking can work well with multiple nodes in a network, e.g., the multiple nodes in the human heart rhythm controller. Such networks rapidly converge to a common cycle, and this would provide additional reliability. The NTP network time algorithm is based on multiple sources of the same type, but analogous in concept. Just for fun, it'd be great if the clock also included a display of the 64-bit Unix time, in binary!

This Wired article was written by Danny Hillis about his original idea. The Long Now Website has other interesting links about long term stuff. Hillis has some interesting friends, like Brian Eno who named "The Clock of the Long Now", and Stewart Brand. Other links: Intro to Brand talk, The actual talk. Buy the book, or the Eno CD "January 07003" to support the foundation.

Their web site has been mostly broken the past two years. No one seems to maintaining it.
They built a clock prototype, but the overall project seems to be moribound.

Their web site has been mostly broken the past two years. No one seems to maintaining it.
They built a clock prototype, but the overall project seems to be moribound.

One of their projects was to build a clock that could last a thousand years.

Their current project is to build a clock that would last 10,000 years. It would tick once per year and the cuckoo would come out on the millenium.

More successful clocks are the ones in Salisbury and Wells Calthedral. They've been in more-or-less continuous operation since the 1380s and are working now.

The Wells clock looks like it was more ambitious than the Long Now project. "As well as telling the time on a 24-hour dial, it shows the motion of the Sun and Moon in the sky, the phase of the Moon and the number of days since the last new Moon."

The lesson for the Long Now folks is that if you want to build something that runs forever, build it out of cast iron and replace the parts every few hundred years.

"The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to todays 'faster/cheaper' mind set and promote 'slower/better' thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

* The Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

See also The Long Now Foundation.

I read their book in college and, though it is a bit pie-in-the-sky, I thought it raised some interesting ideas. One of their projects was to build a clock that could last a thousand years. When I moved to London one of the first things I did was go to see the thousand-year clock in the National Science Museum. There it was, it all it's broken-non-time-telling glory. About a month ago I checked up on it again. Status: still not fixed : \

what if some ancient civilization was just as advanced as us but nuked themselves out of existence?

SETI@home has been getting dissed a lot lately. "Why are you wasting your cycles on this useless project?" some geeks ask. "Why aren't you spending them predicting climate change, fighting AIDS or curing Alzheimer's? You could be saving people from anthrax, smallpox, Ebola, or SARS."

These are all noble goals, worth pursuing. But SETI has a noble goal that doesn't get talked about very much.

Most SETI research so far has been focused on the so-called "Water Hole", the quietest part of the radio spectrum which happens to fall between the radio spikes of hydrogen and hydroxyl, around 1.4 gigahertz. If there's another water-based civilization out there, it's easy to see that this is a logical place to broadcast or listen. (Projects like Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now enable me to imagine a future in which we broadcast a message of our own, someday.)

"So what happens if you listen and you don't hear anything?" you ask. Well, even if we drain the Water Hole and find nothing, we'll still have learned a great deal from the process. We'll know there likely aren't any civilizations remotely like us in our galaxy. We'll know that previous civilizations, if there were any, were not able to sustain themselves. We'll know that intelligent life is fleeting and precious in the universe. And this should make us think hard about our own civilization.

If we're ever forced to acknowledge that there are no intelligent radio signals in the universe, then we must also acknowledge that the odds of our own survival just became much bleaker. Knowing that space is quiet means it's more important for us to be careful than we thought. The longer we search without finding any intelligent signals, the more likely it becomes that intelligent civilization isn't some pretty 4th of July sparkler; it's nitroglycerin, waiting to explode. This is incredibly valuable knowledge, life or death knowledge that's worth going after.

The biggest reason to look for a signal in the first place isn't to commune with E.T., but out of pure self-interest. Any number of systems failures could wipe us out as a species, from a single well-designed terrorist plague to GMOs with unforeseen environmental consequences. How do we as a society learn to play nice with technology? Has anyone else in the universe done it? If we found evidence that someone out there had, it would stand as a beacon, showing that we can probably do it, too. And if we don't find a signal, it means a bell is probably tolling our end somewhere, and we'd better think long and hard how to change that.

So feel good about SETI. It's not just about searching for aliens, it's about searching for a cure for extinction.

While I certainly appreciate the Long Now's aims, I think there is probably a cheaper way of publicising this issue. Money that could be ploughed into encouraging indigenous societies to use their own languages, or to document them properly. Also, why the bible for fuck's sake? Just imagine, if (and this is a big if) some alien cunts were able to decipher one of the languages on the disk, and then had the dubious joy of reading the first three chapters of Genesis. If they manage to stay awake they will certainly conceive of some very strange notions about us.

I'm sure they will wonder how we created space flight when we appear to believe that some Deity created the world in seven days. Or turn up asking us who this God dude is, and can they commission him to create some more worlds. They'd have been better off using some other work or fiction or mythology.

My question is when will the long now foundation build their 2nd prototype of their 10,000 year clock? Building something that lasts beyond the language, culture, and technology of the society that built is to create art in the pursuit of science.

-calyxa

check out the Long Now organization...

-calyxa

It looks a lot like Long Bets, which has been around for quite some time. It was launched as a spin-off of Danny Hillis's Long Now Foundation. Other interesting projects of theirs include the Rosetta Project and the 10,000 year clock.

It looks a lot like Long Bets, which has been around for quite some time. It was launched as a spin-off of Danny Hillis's Long Now Foundation. Other interesting projects of theirs include the Rosetta Project and the 10,000 year clock.