Long Now

I'm not sure I posted about this before, but I think what Danny Hillis is trying to do with his clock and its foundation is simply awesome.

I first became aware of the Long Now prject in an article in Wired magazine (back when the magazine was really good) and have since seen a bunch of press in more mainstream places like Discover Magazine.

For those of you who don't like to click through, Danny Hillis is an amazing engineer who I admire greatly. In his previous life he was a desinger of parallel computing architecture and then became a Disney Fellow (back when they were cool). Now, his lifes work is on a clock that will keep time and last over 10,000 years. The clock will be massive and be carved into the side of a mountain. People will be able to walk inside of it and see it work. It will click very, very slowly so for instance every year one of the main gears will move one notch and eery 100 you may hear a gong. These events will be exciting for two reasons. The obvious first one being that they are so rare, but the second because they will give us a sense that the world and the universe is all about long time spans.. that we've been alive for a microsecond in comparison to the time the earth has been.. and that's pretty cool stuff.

Support the project if you can. If you can't, make others aware of it.