I don't agree with the philosophy behind the Clock of the Long Now, for
several reasons.
The clock is a monument to stasis. Its whole point is that it is supposed
to be operating in approximately the same way 1000 years from now as it
is today. The only way this will happen is if people 1000 years from
now decide to keep it around. How can we pretend to know what people
1000 years from now will do? Do we think we have the right to bind them
to following our will?
The future is about change. Any philosophical endeavor which
attempts to sugar coat or hide this fact is fundamentally mistaken
(see Star Trek for an example). Take a look at Robin Hanson's graph
at http://hanson.gmu.edu/grow/longgrownew.html. Once the next growth
mode hits (call it a singularity), in five years we will have as much
progress as in the entire course of human history up to that point.
And then things really take off. Whether the Clock or any other structure
survives that transition is not something we can predict or control.
The clock seems designed to make people feel ephemeral. You go see it
and you are supposed to think, wow, this will be here long after I am
dead and gone. But this is not a feeling we should celebrate. It is
a terrible tragedy that people today are trapped in such short lives.
We should work on making ourselves last 10000 years, not a clock.
That would be a truly worthy endeavor.
What we need is, prompted by Robin's file naming convention, a Clock of
the Long Grow. It should be an artifact that does give us a long term
view, but that view is not one of a static structure which stays around
for 10000 years. It should show us that the one constant in life is
change, and that we must expect changes tomorrow that exceed those we
have had in the past.
Perhaps it could be a clock which is designed, as surely as modern
technology permits, to destroy itself 20 or 30 or 50 years in the future.
Only some super-advanced technology could prevent its destruction.
Maybe it could have an embedded nuclear bomb. Or maybe it could be
launched into space, to wander aimlessly until someone gets it into his
head to expend the trivial expenditure to find and return it to earth.
(Often people would ask, with the Pioneer space probes which were the
first to leave the solar system, where will they end up eventually? To me
the answer has always been obvious, they will end up in human museums.)
The point would be to create an artifact which only made sense if the
future was one of unimaginable power and wealth. This would be a far
more inspiring and hopeful effort than making a clock which is only
going to fool people into picturing a future that is just like today.
Hal
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