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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: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:11AM (8 children)
A site which was active since 11,000 years ago with some basic stone working and societal organization? No, it doesn't show what you claim it shows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:50AM (7 children)
And "basic stone working" doesn't even begin to describe it; there are some massive megaliths that would have been difficult to position (let alone procure) even with modern equipment, and there are 3D stone carvings of animals. It shows that there must have been some advanced societal organization well beyond "simple agriculture".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:17AM (6 children)
Not seeing it myself. Simple agriculture allows for higher populations and the ability to do modest group projects like this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:57AM (5 children)
Göbekli Tepe is an enormous site, much of which is still buried according to ground-penetrating surveys; it would be a very large project even by modern standards.
You're just making a fool of yourself.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:53AM (2 children)
No, khallow is right. I by myself picked up and moved a bunch of 20 to 50 ton stones last weekend when I was building a druids circle in the backyard last week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:10PM
Have you seen the videos about the Michigan guy who moves giant chunks of concrete by himself,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs [youtube.com]
> Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:23PM
OMG you must be one of those bug-eyed green monsters from Enki Bilal's cartoon Ship of Stone [wikipedia.org]!!1!
How's life in Argentina?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:18PM
Come on, the site was in use for 2000 years. Even a small organized group could move a lot of stone in that time, if they were so inclined.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:29PM