The future cuckoo
Never backing out of a promise, here's the full story. I was aware of the existence of this project before long, but through a recent post on Kottke i found the homepage of the Long Now Foundation. Put this one in your long-term favourites.
The whole idea comes from computer scientist Daniel Hillis:
"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."
How's that for thinking grand? Instead of seeing us as the end-result of 10,000 years of culture (from the end of the last ice-age until now), Hillis puts us central in history. The next 10 millenia, mankind has to take care of his clock, and his belief is that mankind will last that long. To be honest about it, and not freaked out by global warming, i do too. He has built two prototypes of the thing already (the first is on display at the London Science Museum! Got to remember that), more are coming, and the final clock will be built before he dies. More in-depth information about it here.
Science, Future