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Construction begins on Jeff Bezos' $42 million 10,000-year clock
Installation has finally begun on Jeff Bezos' 10,000-year clock, a project that the Amazon CEO has invested $42 million in (along with a hollowed-out mountain in Texas that Bezos intends for a Blue Origin spaceport), with the goal of building a mechanical clock that will run for 10 millennia.
It's a monumental undertaking that Bezos and the crew of people designing and building the clock repeatedly compare to the Egyptian pyramids. And as with the pharaohs, it takes a certain amount of ego — even hubris — to consider building such a monument. But it's also an unparalleled engineering problem, challenging its makers to think about how to keep a machine intact, operational and accurate over a time span longer than most human-made objects have even existed.
Consider this: 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had barely begun making the transition from hunting and gathering to simple agriculture, and had just figured out how to cultivate gourds to use as bottles. What if those people had built a machine, set it in motion, and it was still running today? Would we understand how to use it? What would it tell us about them?
The actual idea for the clock comes from Danny Hillis, who originally proposed a 10,000-year clock in 1995 in Wired as a way to think about the long-term future of humanity and the planet. That idea grew into the Clock of the Long Now, a project by the Long Now Foundation, which Hillis went on to co-found to build an actual, working version of the proposed clock.
Also at CNBC.
(Score: 4, Touché) by frojack on Monday February 26 2018, @09:42PM (7 children)
And it will probably be pilfered just as were the ancient Egyptian tombs. Probably sooner rather than later if history is any guide.
As the nation crumbles the drilled out cave will become some factions hole in the wall, change hands by force, stripped of titanium, and trade goods. Bezos can't build in the death traps the pyramid builders got away with.
But hey, let him build several hundred of these. It's a great jobs program. Probably no better way to return all that loot he sucked out of the economy over the years.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday February 26 2018, @09:55PM (4 children)
The Great Pyramid was once clad in white marble.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by minegoat on Monday February 26 2018, @11:23PM (3 children)
Actually, the pyramids were clad in polished white limestone (not that it detracts from your point).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:01AM (2 children)
I once owned an impressively detailed book about the great pyramid. I don't know what eventually happened to it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:46AM
Fucking tomb robbers probably got it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:02PM
Muslims moved into your house, stole your stuff, raped your wife, killed your dog, kicked your cat and demanded you pay them rent?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:03PM
Like the pyramids, the were constructed with the thought that future generations would hold the same values as the current ones.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by nwf on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:50PM
That was my first thought. When there are 20 billion nearly starving people on the earth in the year 3000, a silly clock becomes a source of valuable material. Unless it has some sort of death ray, but then it will find other uses in the future. If they install it in Camden, it will be stripped in one night.