Entry tags:
Long Now
The definition of nerdy irony? Visiting the Long Now blog daily to see if there are updates.
In the current froth of immediacy and short-term returns, I find it heartening that some folks are planning on a scale where they need an extra digit in the year. There's a gentle audacity that makes me smile deep inside. Climate change? We'll probably start to see that licked by 02300 or so, maybe a little later. Doesn't seem so long once that extra digit is in place: everything gets a historical, almost Culture-scale perspective. The Clock won't even be halfway to its 03000 "millennial bongs" by then.
The secular often has trouble with these sorts of time-scales. Religion has been doing this forever, of course: gravitas born of "In the Beginning" and with a history that rolls back recognisable and ancient. Maybe the Clock can fill that niche in the secular psyche, that deep-time anchor - Dawkin's Moses, if you like.
In the current froth of immediacy and short-term returns, I find it heartening that some folks are planning on a scale where they need an extra digit in the year. There's a gentle audacity that makes me smile deep inside. Climate change? We'll probably start to see that licked by 02300 or so, maybe a little later. Doesn't seem so long once that extra digit is in place: everything gets a historical, almost Culture-scale perspective. The Clock won't even be halfway to its 03000 "millennial bongs" by then.
The secular often has trouble with these sorts of time-scales. Religion has been doing this forever, of course: gravitas born of "In the Beginning" and with a history that rolls back recognisable and ancient. Maybe the Clock can fill that niche in the secular psyche, that deep-time anchor - Dawkin's Moses, if you like.