A Clock That Can Run for 10,000 Years Is Being Built Inside a Mountain Owned by Jeff Bezos
August 17th, 2011I’ll note a few bullet points about this 10,000 year clock project that stood out for me. This is not an exhaustive list and I’m sure that people who know more about these topics will uncover other interesting features.
First, does anybody know about rituals that involve time and a participant wearing a blue hooded robe?
The photo below appears in Kevin Kelly’s Technium story on the 10,000 year clock. The caption text is quoted from there as well:
Stewart Brand, just back from Morocco, stands before the prototype clock minutes before it rings in the year 2000.
Kevin Kelly notes:
At Long Now Foundation we’ve always resisted the idea of turning the institution into a religion — even though religions may have the best track record for long-term endurance. But the comparison to monks devoting their lives to maintain a remote and long-lived clock is hard to avoid, especially if you show up at a momentous clock event in a hooded robe.
…
Stewart Brand, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, had just returned from a vacation in Morocco the day before so he was wearing a djellaba.
So, it’s just a bunch of wealthy, fun loving atheists, one of whom happened to have been visiting Morocco and kept his djellaba on for the big gong show at the strike of midnight… The resemblance of this scene to some sort of religious ritual is an unfortunate coincidence…
Ok, then, moving on: This clock is actually a celestial instrument. Here’s the face of the clock (also from Kevin Kelly):
Labeled Face of 10,000 Year Clock
The “capstone” of the device, if you will, is a sapphire glass cupola that transmits energy from the Sun to mechanisms inside the mountain. This is the only part of the device that is above ground.
Jeff Bezos established 10000yearclock.net to serve as the official website for this clock project. Let’s look at the quotes that greet visitors to 10000yearclock.net. Here’s a screenshot from the homepage:
We are as gods...
Yep, that’s old Stewart again, the guy wearing the blue robe in the picture above. I’d guess that, if asked directly, who he means by “we,” he’d say that he means humans, in general. I’d be careful, though, in thinking that people like you and me are part of Brand’s we-are-as-gods statements. I don’t dress up in a hooded robe to ring in the new year, in front of a celestial clock, or hang out with billionaires. Do you? I also wouldn’t be squandering precious time and resources on what amounts to a macro scale art object inside a mountain while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. Would you?
This is from a 1998 interview with Stewart Brand:
JB: What’s happening with the clock?
BRAND: Three years we’ve been working on building a 10,000-year clock and as of ’98, we’re building a prototype eight feet tall, probably about the size of two refrigerators back to back. We’ve got an invitation to debut it at the World Economic Forum in Davos next January, ’99 — the perfect place to get world leaders and corporate leaders and so on thinking in 10,000-year terms.
Definitely be careful with assumptions about who we refers to.
What’s the name of the mountain range in which the Long Now clock is located? It’s the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range. (You knew that the Debbil was going to pop up here somewhere.) I have not looked into it, but my guess is that there’s some ley line and/or geomantic component to the site that was selected.
How much will the project cost? $42 million. A 42 million dollar project in the Devil’s Mountains? Really? You gotta love these guys.
Finally, there’s the spiral staircase that surrounds the clock.
Now, these are just a handful of interesting things that I happened to notice, and I’m not even into this stuff very much. Let me know if you come across a full freak analysis of this thing. I’d like to know more.
Here are some non-woowoo links about the clock:
Kevin Kelly: The Clock in the Mountain
Wired: How to Make a Clock Run for 10,000 Years
A g-o-d is one who makes rules for others. Usurpers and pretenders do not acknowledge the One. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Selah.
The question that bugs me is, whether they will be satisfied with it just sitting there in the mountain without some kind of concocted event to survive through, to make it all worthwhile.
Bad taste of a generic Heston sci-fi movie plot.
There does seem to be a big digging/burying theme on the go these days, no?
I had to have the grandfather clock I inherited repaired. Numerous tries. Very Frustrating. But if anyone knows anything about non-electrical clocks this would be the go to guy. USA wide network he belongs to regarding clocks of all kinds. Will ask him this weekend and will try to reply whether he knows anything about this info.