photos by Kelly Ida Scope
In January 02014 Brian Eno and Danny Hillis, co-founders of The Long Now Foundation, spoke about The Long Now, now in our Seminars About Long-term Thinking series. Long Now’s third co-founder, Stewart Brand, joined them onstage for the second part of the talk.

Leaving the planet. . .   Read More

Last year I had the opportunity to give a talk and tour of the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC at the invitation of Demetrios Matsakis, the director of the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Time Service department.  The Naval Observatory hosts the largest collection of precise frequency standards in the world, and uses them to, among […]

Alexander Rose photo by Christopher Michel Alexander Rose: Designing for Longevity Building The 10,000 Year Clock Tuesday October 28, 02014 at 7:30pm at The Interval (check-in at 6:30) Advanced Tickets recommended Late in the last millennium, Danny Hillis told a small group of friends about his idea for building a monument-scale clock that would last for 10,000 years. The […]

One of the first things that visitors see when they walk into The Interval, Long Now’s new public space, is the Orrery–a prototype for part of the 10,000 Year Clock now under construction. The Orrery is a simplified mechanical model of our solar system, a precise and durable computer, and an eight-foot-tall kinetic sculpture. This […]

In October 02008 Edward Burtynsky spoke for Long Now on The 10,000-year Gallery. Burtynsky, an internationally-recognized photographer, presented his ideas for a gallery of images to accompany the Clock of the Long Now.

Watch video of Edward Burtynsky’s talk here.
Long Now members: login to watch in HD.

This is one. . .   Read More

We want to share some of the details about The Interval, our public space in San Francisco which opens this Spring. We’ve planned a series of updates that will include an introduction to our Chalkboard Robot, more about Brian Eno’s sound & light installations in the space, documentation of the final construction work, and details […]

Today we’re debuting a 10-second animated Long Now intro that will soon be seen at the start of all Long Now videos and clips. It’s a brief glimpse into parts of The 10,000 Year Clock in virtual form as you watch 20,000 years tick by. Sometimes the long-term can be contemplated in small increments… It […]

ThePresent from m ss ng p eces on Vimeo.
The Present is a clock with an annual dial that was funded originally through Kickstarter by design collective m ss ng p eces. The inspiration for this clock seems to come from a similar place as the Clock of the Long Now.

This was one of. . .   Read More

One of the early ideas for the 10,000 Year Clock was to simply endow a family whose job it would be for 400 generations to just shout out the time every day.  I had no idea there was already someone like that… RIP John Votta. “The Washington Square timekeeper was a link back to a […]

Long Now’s 10,000 Year Clock will tell time not in hours and minutes, but by keeping track of the astronomical cycles underlying those units. We can’t predict how the calendar and timing systems will change over the next 10,000 years, but we know they’re likely to be built on top of the very same things we’ve […]