Be Here Now reads the title of the famous 1971 book on spirituality and meditation by Ram Dass – but do we all agree on what is meant by now? To avoid argument we could accept a range of nows with the infinitesimally small point between the past and the future being only the shortest possible now. The “Long Now,” alternatively, is a concept put forth by musician Brain Eno where he defines now as the last 10,000 years of human history and the next 10,000 years.
The Long Now Foundation, formed in part by Eno and headquartered in San Francisco, employs this Long Now as a basic principal and is working to foster long-term thinking and responsibility in this expanded frame. Their central project, or, as co-founding member Stewart Brant puts it, “the maypole around which half a dozen other projects dance and sing and cavort and wrap their multi-colored tape” is the 10,000 year clock.
Conceived of by computer scientist and another co-founder of the Long Now, Danny Hillis, the 10,000 year clock is more of a problem than a solution. Luckily the foundation is made up of problem-solvers. Be they scientists, artists, engineers or explorers, the endeavor that unifies them all is thinking about, and proposing solutions to, the problems that we may face in the next 10,000 years. Whether they be obvious environmental issues, or more intangible threats like an asteroid strike, the Long Now Foundation is thinking about them. Ultimately, their goal is to strategize ways of acting in the short term that will facilitate our existence in the long term.
The clock itself is much easier to understand as an instance of conceptual art wherein the ideas underlying it are far more important than the physical object; already there have been multiple prototypes and there may be many more before any final design is settled upon. The current iteration on display in their museum headquarters is a wholly mechanical device that is powered by seasonal temperature fluctuations, represents time by updating the relative positions of the planets in an orrery and can automatically reset itself when the sun passes overhead at midday. Obviously the product of many genius-level intelligences, the clock is astounding not by merely working, but by how many different levels of contingencies have been considered in its design.
Ultimately the fate of the clock is unknowable. But in the short now, the conversations swirling about it represent a true optimism for our collective fate. While every generation has its doom-sayers claiming their generation to be the last, it is refreshing to encounter a group devoted to disproving that sort of short-sightedness. Regardless of whomever is right, there is valuable comfort to be gained in embracing concepts so thoroughly thought out as those put forth by the Long Now Foundation.
