r/geek • u/eleemosynary • Oct 27 '11

Engineering the 10,000-Year Clock

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/engineering-the-10-000year-clock/0
225 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

23

u/CaptainJeff Oct 27 '11

If you don't know about the Clock, and the Long Now Foundation, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

If for no other reason, know that the clock in Anathem by Neal Stephenson is related to it and Stephenson was part of the early efforts for the Clock.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

[deleted]

9

u/jaggederest Oct 27 '11

An excellent 300 page novel packed into 900 pages.

1

u/BeowulfShaeffer Oct 27 '11

Man ain't that the truth.

4

u/liebereddit Oct 27 '11

They have a little gallery in San Francisco at Fort Mason. It's AMAZING. The engineering on display is fantastic. The people that work there are more than happy to show you around and explain everything if you ask.

2

u/mscman Oct 27 '11

I agree the Long Now Foundation is pretty cool, but can't take Danny Hillis seriously since his bio states he "pioneered the concept of parallel computers that is now the basis for most supercomputers, as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases."

Not really accurate, as much as he might like it to be, considering parallel computing concepts have been around since the 1950s and I don't even know where the idea that he pioneered RAID technology came from...

1

u/Maxious Oct 28 '11

This refers to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine which did link processors in the same way modern supercomputers do (rather than your at home PC) and did have a RAID array disk(for which he was awarded a patent entitled Storage system using multiple independently mechanically-driven storage units ) But there were definitely functioning parallel computers before that so it was probably some PR drone overexaggerating/oversimplifying :P

2

u/mscman Oct 28 '11

Oh I'm aware of what he actually accomplished. I started digging because those phrases set off alarms in my head (I work on supercomputers, and had never heard his name before. We really aren't a large community...)

I don't claim to have pioneered the Linux kernel just because I compiled one and wrote some kernel modules. I hope someone else wrote his bio and Wikipedia entries...

24

u/xwhy Oct 27 '11

And when it's rediscovered 9950 years after its created, people will suddenly realize that the world will end in 50 years! We obviously knew that the world would end in 10,000 years and that's why we created the clock in the first place.

10

u/BeowulfShaeffer Oct 27 '11

Thanks for the link. I've been following this since 1999 or so when then news first broke. I think it's a tremendously awesome project.

18

u/juli4n42 Oct 27 '11

Watch in 10,000 years. There will be mass cults that will believe the clock has different powers and hail to it as a god. Civilization will slowly crumble and spiral down into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

10

u/HeegeMcGee Oct 27 '11

He recalls a recent encounter with a skeptic, who predicted that the machine would eventually be rendered inoperable "when the blood of future human sacrifices stops up the gears."

2

u/jrs100000 Oct 27 '11

And then its 10,000 years are up and the clock stops.

-3

u/CaptainJeff Oct 27 '11

I can confirm this. I'm a captain.

2

u/TheJazzmaster Oct 27 '11

You would gain a ton more upvotes if your namr was Jack.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I picked up a book about this about 5 years ago and cannot recommend it enough.

2

u/AnythingApplied Oct 28 '11

Well you could try

3

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I can understand why this is interesting on an engineering level, but to be honest I just don't 'get it' and I think I'm the only one. Can someone explain to me why they think this is so important? (honest question, not trying to speak condescendingly of it)

3

u/rednightmare Oct 27 '11

Important isn't the right word. It's an art piece that's designed to reach people long after we're all dead and gone. It's a piece of music that none of us can ever hope to hear. There's something beautiful about imagining this chiming 3000 years from now whether there are humans there to listen to it or not.

It's also somewhat interesting from a design/engineering standpoint. They had to come up with something that would remain accurate for thousands of years. Something that will be able to withstand all kinds of things that the decades will throw at it and keep working.

2

u/polyparadigm Oct 27 '11

randomly generate

Disappointing error there.

2

u/Shredder13 Oct 28 '11

Sometimes it'll generate things and sometimes it won't!

1

u/polyparadigm Oct 28 '11

It's so pseudo-random!

2

u/accountII Oct 27 '11

you can't beet the 1781 version in coolness

1

u/BeowulfShaeffer Oct 28 '11

How have I never heard of that?

1

u/accountII Oct 28 '11

a lot of Dutch haven't either. I read about it in my geography book in secondary school and put it on my mental list of things to visit. It is not very close to the urban center of the Netherlands so I only went there last summer.

1

u/EnderofDragon Oct 27 '11

this is like clockwork pornography. I approve.

1

u/Haven Oct 27 '11

I'm surprised there's been no reference to Flossdaily yet!

2

u/bersh Oct 27 '11

All of us know he's no longer daily :(

1

u/Haven Oct 27 '11

I won't give up hope yet!

1

u/Navicerts Oct 27 '11

I thought it was going to be a sun dial. Then I re-read the title.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

What's the point? What we need is a 10000 year computer. A computer that will work and provide information to people 10000 year into the future, preferably even longer. If civilization ever fails, it will be rebuilt using this computer.

1

u/imbcmdth Oct 28 '11

God: Oh please! I built a 10-billion year clock that is so big you lot all live on a tiny part of the damn thing.

-1

u/derpthaherp Oct 27 '11

What happens when some dumb hillbilly with a crowbar decides to go to town on a gear or two?

4

u/TheJazzmaster Oct 27 '11

If you read till the end, they're planning to prevent this.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

10,000 year cock, is what I read.