Slashdot Mirror

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.

Well, we can eke out a little more time by using our bits more efficiently in a dozenal system.

BTW, some folks are already thinking about Y10K. See the Long Now.

While we're at it, we should switch to a 5 digit date for the year

You want the Long Now Foundation, just along the corridor.

Already addressed by these people.

Danny Hillis designed the Clock of the Long Now to keep time accurate to the second for 10,000 years, and it's completely mechanical.

Check it out.

on building to last for a long time is How Buldings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. by Stewart Brand (See also here, here and here

The book covers everything about buildings after they are built from leaks, technological changes to changing styles. Have a look at the Amazon link for the samples pages to get an idea of the content and especially the pictures. The book covers modern homes, office buildings, castles, farm houses. small shacks and everything in between. It is definately the place to start if you want to build something that will be around and used in 50 or 500 years.

It's not a howto or builders guide except in the general sense. However it covers the general picture of the things you need to think about and provides links to other sources with more specific information. Overall it is one of my favourate books.

The author is president of the Long Now Foundation which is building the 10 ,000 year clock so he's very much into thinking about the longer term.

Stewart Brand was the author of "The Whole Earth Catalog" and also a founding member of The LongNow, how appropriate...

The LongNow

http://www.longnow.org/

The clock for a longer now...

and some slow food to eat while we wait for now to pass us by.

That's what we need.

I remembered that The Long Now Foundation had done some work on problems like this. They have an interesting solution.

Storing your data in a format you can scan back in, yet it lasts for hundreds of years seems like a neat idea.

hi Pohl!

Some of the cool things on display at the Science Museum in London that would probably appeal to the Slashdot crowd are an implementation of Babbage's Difference Engine and a fully mechanical printer for it, and a prototype of Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now.

On a similar theme

From the rules: The goal of this competition is for the race vehicle to complete the course as fast as possible. Interfering with other race vehicles will not be allowed.

I think they just ruled out 90% of the best bot designers in the US. I mean, who wouldn't want to see Toro or Ronincharge up on some weinie scientist's bot and tear it to pieces?

Maybe this will spark a new arena for bot-combat.

Here. They seek to create physical items (clocks and libraries are two items they name) that will last for very, very long periods of time. This diagram shows what is meant by the "long now", and this is a link to their first prototype clock that is on display in the Science Museum in the UK (the second clock on the page).

Here. They seek to create physical items (clocks and libraries are two items they name) that will last for very, very long periods of time. This diagram shows what is meant by the "long now", and this is a link to their first prototype clock that is on display in the Science Museum in the UK (the second clock on the page).

This is exactly the kind of problem that Danny Hillis and the The Long Now Foundation have been pointing out for years. Digital data doesn't last.

"Science historians can read Galileo's technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minsky's from the 1960s."

That's why they started the 10k year library project. A part of this project that interests me especially is the Rosetta Project. It's a "near permanent archive of 1,000 languages". It's still a work in progress, so I hope they succeed. In my eyes it's definitely a worthwhile endeavour.

This is exactly the kind of problem that Danny Hillis and the The Long Now Foundation have been pointing out for years. Digital data doesn't last.

"Science historians can read Galileo's technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minsky's from the 1960s."

That's why they started the 10k year library project. A part of this project that interests me especially is the Rosetta Project. It's a "near permanent archive of 1,000 languages". It's still a work in progress, so I hope they succeed. In my eyes it's definitely a worthwhile endeavour.

They should speak to the Long Now Foundation. They've been doing some good long term thinking...

There are two facinating projects. The first is in response to your point: the need for a modern rosetta stone. The second is just darned cool.

Check them out:

Rosetta Project
Long Now Project

I thought the original goal of the doomsday project was to allow every school in the UK to have a copy. So there should be a BBC Master hooked up to a laserdisc player in almost every school ?

I thought the Long Now Foundation's 10,000-year clock was an optimistic project. Why would anyone, especially learned men of the Royal Society, postulate that human life will exist in its present climate-dependent position even a million years from now?

We have gone from living at the mercy of the elements to building living environments in space in the span of only a few millennia, with the bulk of the technology being developed only in the last century. And now we stand poised to rewrite our own genome. Does anyone expect that, if mankind still exists five billion years hence, that it will be limited to this puny ball of rock, entirely dependent on this one yellow dwarf? Or that we will even resemble our current selves, either physically or intellectually?

Mankind may indeed pass through many cycles of near-extinction before the next million years pass. Look at our current speculative fiction. Scarcely anyone attempts to write about the future beyond a few thousand years, because we know it is beyond imagination.

Perhaps it would be best to say of stories such as this, that the Sun is still expected to continue, without substantial changes, for any conceivable lifespan of the human race as we now know it. Beyond that, we're whistling in the solar wind, for only God can know.

Back 5 (or so) years ago Amazon.com brought the world of (english language) books to the internet, and many have claimed the events of Septerm ber 11th brought the world of internet based news put pf the shadpws into the mainstream. Non-English language literature however, has not seen it's internet coming-of-age.

Perhaps, however, this is a good thing, not that non-english language literature isn't as widely availble on the net, but the fact that it isn't suggests a continued focus on treditional puslishing for such literature.

Whatever your view on electronic puslishing (eBooks, etc...) you must agree that electronic pusblishing is transient. when 'sponsorship' for a publisged work dries up, that work simply would simply disappear. Gone will be the days of 200 year old books being discovered in the musty corner of some atic, many years in the future. If the qualkity of a published work isn't recognized within the lifetime of the author, the work may disappear without a trace, without a single printed and bound copy to be found. While it's true that media (which un-like a website, doesn't require sponsorship to exist) containing the work may exist for a few years after the death of the author, even that is transient. Organizations such as the Long Now Foundation are working to preserve the vast expanse of knowlege published on the internet, but without such organizations, works not published in a physical sense may be lost to time.

For this reason, it's somewhat heartening to see that not all publishing is moving to the internet, even though it may reduce the exposure of the works in question. Granted it's more desirable to gain the widest exposure in the shortest period of time such that the publisher can turn a proffit on works of literature but that proffit margin shouldn't be at the expense of future generations' access to the work.

--CTH

Engraved Nickel

The Rosetta Disk

AJ

For those interested in the challenges of really long term preservation, check out the Long Now Foundation, who are building a variety of interesting projects, including a 10,000-year clock (designed by ubergeek Danny Hillis) and an updated version of the Rosetta Stone. I've seen these pieces in person, and they're very cool.

For the clock, they mention they are using "Monel alloy, Invar alloy, tungsten carbide, metallic glass, and synthetic sapphire" in the prototype.

For those interested in the challenges of really long term preservation, check out the Long Now Foundation, who are building a variety of interesting projects, including a 10,000-year clock (designed by ubergeek Danny Hillis) and an updated version of the Rosetta Stone. I've seen these pieces in person, and they're very cool.

For the clock, they mention they are using "Monel alloy, Invar alloy, tungsten carbide, metallic glass, and synthetic sapphire" in the prototype.

For those interested in the challenges of really long term preservation, check out the Long Now Foundation, who are building a variety of interesting projects, including a 10,000-year clock (designed by ubergeek Danny Hillis) and an updated version of the Rosetta Stone. I've seen these pieces in person, and they're very cool.

For the clock, they mention they are using "Monel alloy, Invar alloy, tungsten carbide, metallic glass, and synthetic sapphire" in the prototype.

For those interested in the challenges of really long term preservation, check out the Long Now Foundation, who are building a variety of interesting projects, including a 10,000-year clock (designed by ubergeek Danny Hillis) and an updated version of the Rosetta Stone. I've seen these pieces in person, and they're very cool.

For the clock, they mention they are using "Monel alloy, Invar alloy, tungsten carbide, metallic glass, and synthetic sapphire" in the prototype.

They're making a millenium clock and library complex to give us all a sense of history. Very interesting and insightful project.

I'm not sure it's the most worthy recipient of your Christmas contributions, but the Long Now Foundation is an interesting organization that seeks to raise awareness of very long-term planning issues.

Their centerpiece project is the Clock of the Long Now, a clock with an extremely long period, made to last 10,000 years. The idea is to make it a destination that will inspire visitors to think about their place in time and their responsibility to the future.

Very interesting project.

-

CDs/DVDs are a terrible medium for this. They should do the same thing as the Clock of the Long Now does with their Rosetta Disk (life expectancy >10 000 years). Actually, the Long Now foundation is well positioned with such luminaries as Stewart Brand, Danny Hillis and Mitch Kapor on its board.

They should include a Rosetta Disk.

My ex-roommate has a 4WD '76 Ford Bronco that he takes off-roading when going camping/caving. It gets like 12mpg, but is built like a tank. After reading, among other things, The Clock of the Long Now, about a group of people who started a non-profit foundation to build a giant clock out in the desert designed to last 1000 (!) years, I got to thinking about making my next car purchase something that could long outlast the 180,000 mile mark you mentioned. At the time, I was driving a '96 Saturn SL1, a great car, but a perfect specimen of the "disposable car" phenomenon that you point out.

I ended up buying a used '97 BMW 328i last February. Sure, it cost twice as much used (excuse me, "pre-owned", which means it came with a kick-ass 100k mile warranty) as my Saturn did new, but I think it was well worth it. Here in L.A. I regularly see 15-year old Bimmers in excellent condition on the road. Plus they go something like 9000+ miles between oil changes, and there's a little LED strip on the instrument panel that counts down from 5 bars to let you know when it's time for service, using a customized estimate based on your gas consumption. What geek couldn't appreciate that? :-)

On the downside, when you do go to change the oil, you need a special "reset tool" to reset the indicator lights. This is designed to discourage Joe Luser (or the guys at the Jiffy Lube) from doing oil changes without doing all the proper BMW-sanctioned things. You may think this is lame, but considering that I read in Consumer Reports that they found that quick-lube places have a nasty tendency to put the wrong grade of oil in about 50% of the time, I don't blame them. Brand-new, a reset tool costs $100, but I've seen them on eBay for $20.

Better quit now before I get too far off-topic, but I hope you'll agree that this is the sort of stuff that matters to a potential car buyer much more than mere mpg.

We had some discussion about the Long Now library on Slashdot a while back. Much of it is relevant to your question.

I know! Just yesterday, I had to run to Fry's and get Microsoft English 2000 Pro so I could read this book (dead-tree) I bought at Amazon.

Meesa be thinking yousa should be reading the link before commenting.

...the book about the Clock of the Long Now, which is well worth a read.

If Mr. Hillis is the genius you say he is, then perhaps he has a better idea of what might be important in the future than you or I.

Possibly true, but his day job is at Disney. Hard to see that working for Disney offers much opportunity to change the world. Rather, it appears to be the move of a man who found that his doctoral work was not wanted by the market. The "Long Now Foundation" and it's big clock is an interesting experiment in pyramid building, but the learn a little about the history of the pyramids to see just how pointless it is trying to build anything less rugged than a huge stone pile.

try Longnow.org for more ideas along those lines.

The guys at The Long Now Foundation seem to think that digital media will deteriorate. They have a plan to counter it.

The guys at The Long Now Foundation seem to think that digital media will deteriorate. They have a plan to counter it.

You might look into the storage products offered by Norsam Technologies, such as HD-ROSETTA. The idea is to basically etch either bits or actual text (readable under a microscope) onto a metal disk. This technology is being considered for the library envisioned by the Long Now Foundation.

Several groups are looking into this technology as a possible way to stably maintain their archives over a very long period of time. Take a look at the Long Now Foundation library for an example.

Also check out "The Clock of the Long Now" by Stewart Brand. Very cool. Web page at www.longnow.org.

Also, I'd like to point out that Danny Hillis was the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, not "Connection Machines". The Connection Machine was TMC's core product. One of his current projects is to build a clock that will run for ten millenia.