“A monument scale mechanical clock, built inside a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next ten millennia.”
That’s the description for The Clock of the Long Now. It’s a project by The Long Now Foundation, whose purpose is to inspire long term thinking.
A natural reaction to super-long-term projects like this is, “Why? There are so many urgent and important problems today. Why not spend money and resources on those instead?”
And that’s a fair comment.
But what I love about this project in particular is how it helps us—the ones who are alive now—connect with the future via a tangible touchpoint. It’s hard to picture what the world will look like in 100 years, let alone 10,000. So by imagining this clock, still ticking 5,000 years from now, in the depths of a mountain, suddenly we have a point of connection with the future. As we picture it ticking, we can ask what will people, the environment, and life be like then?
When long term to us feels like 5-10 years, a 10 millennia juxtaposition puts things into perspective.