The 10,000 Year Clock - A Concern

The Encyclopedia Foundation by its nature must attempt to take into account any possible catastrophe that might impede the mission of preserving knowledge for 10,000 years. We are different than the Long Now Foundation in a variety of ways, but perhaps one way is in philosophical outlook.

The Long Now Foundation is one of philosophical optimism, grounded in the theory that there is nothing particularly special about our time, therefore, instead of assuming we are at the end of time (the way Western Culture loves to imagine in the form of our various apocalyptic beliefs) they assume we are in the middle of two myrias. That is to say, they note that we have (roughly) 10,000 years of history behind us, and thus plan for 10,000 years ahead of us.

In an article in Details (January/February 2006) it was pointed out that most of us fatalistically expect the world to end. But the Long Now is trying, by means of its 10,000 year clock, to get us thinking about the long view of things, to realize that yes, there will be people here, so we need to start thinking about the future again. It points out the phenomena where we all got so used to thinking of the year 2000 as “the future” that it was kind of disappointing when it came and went!

At the Encyclopedia Foundation, we agree with this. And we do believe that humans will be around in 10,000 years. However, we aren’t quite so optimistic in general, because by the nature of our mission, we can’t afford to be.

You see, while the clock of the Long Now is admirably suited for getting people to think about the future, it is not so admirably suited for preparing people of the future to recover from disasters. That’s where we come in. Our point of preserving knowledge for 10,000 years is not simply so that advanced archaeologists of that time can have something fun to examine. It’s more along the lines of “In Case of Emergency Read This!”. We are – like in the “Foundation Trilogy” of the late Dr. Isaac Asimov, planning in advance for a collapse.

Which as far as we’re concerned, all history shows that there is always a collapse!
This tends to give us a certain philosophical “pessimism”, in that we must then orient to the negative “what ifs” and plan and guard against those.

I mention this due to reading about the 10,000 year clock being built in Texas. It is described as able to be self-powered, but to be accessible to people, so that they can help wind it up, literally. A journey of a day, and someone can look about the clock, examine it, wind it, read it, and come away inspired.

Of course, I am sorry to have to say this, but that is not all a person – or persons – can do in 10,000 years. There is a reason for there being a fence around Stonehenge.

Yes, I refer to vandalism. And while having the sphinx’s nose lopped off, or having “Go Mancs!” spray painted on a stone of Stonehenge may not actually interfere with the majesty of the Sphinx or the calculative abilities of Stonehenge, it does deface them.

And a clock is ever so much more sensitive to vandalism than a stone sphinx. Or a circle of stones. Or really, let’s be honest, it’s more sensitive than anything.
The solution that we have here at the Encyclopedia Foundation is to have a caretaker on site. To prevent that kind of thing. We also plan on redundancy, so that if one body of knowledge is destroyed, another still exists. We can – and do – hope that the Long Now Foundation is doing that. Oh, we know that they aren’t having a caretaker on the site – though we believe they should – but we do know that they are going to build more than one.

Of course, we don’t think the simple building of more than one really cuts it, given that 10,000 years is a long time for vandals to operate. And leaves out the possibility of a concerted effort, such as always happens with these types of things, every century or three. At the Encyclopedia Foundation, amongst the many apocalyptic scenarios we imagine, one involving a radical anti-time measuring movement is hardly very far fetched. Time measuring is, after all, responsible for no small portion of the woes of the common man, and such “common men” are always the shock troops of any revolution or anarchy that comes.

Is there a solution for the Long Now Foundation? Well, we understand how they can’t really have a caretaker there – though as far as we’re concerned, that might be more possible than they are thinking. But failing that, there are some things they could do. Three things, actually.

1. Have more than one clock. Ideally at least one per continent. And work to get the unit price down so that such clocks can be made smaller, more affordable, at least to the extent that you could have one in every library of every city over 100,000 people. The odds of every statue or picture of George Washington being destroyed are very, very slight. So make as many of these clocks. Sound fantastic? Well, they are planning on a ten thousand year period, and it would be surprising if they could not do this within the first 200 years. Frankly, we think they could do it in the first 100, based on certain variables of capital accumulation and public interest.

2. Have spare parts and tools for fixing the clocks on site. In a vault secure enough to deter the casual vandal. But with instructions for how to open it on the outside. Instructions? Sure. Just that it would be the type of instructions that only a serious scholar could provide. Basically, the combo – and we got this idea from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in “The Mote in God’s Eye” – would be the positions of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as of any year they cared to designate. Don’t laugh, you are thinking you know the order of the planets, I assure you that unless you are a staggeringly unusual savant, you sure don’t know what the positions were for the year 02000 or 01996 or any other year you care to think of.

Why this combo? Because besides discouraging vandals, it would do no good to have the tools to repair the clock without a way to figure out what time to reset it to. And the ability to chart the positions of the planets would tell such a person the very important piece of information needed – what time it is when they come across the clock. (More on this in a future article.)

Which leads to…

3. Have on site the written instructions for finding the positions of the planets. This could be engraved on the wall itself, on the clock itself, or on metal plates. Or all three. It would have instructions as to the math of calculating orbits, how to make lenses for telescopes, Newton’s and Einstein’s laws on how to figure it out, Kepler’s Laws of Planetary motion and such. Besides engravings, you could also have records – old fashioned records and an old fashioned gramophone – to tell them about all this. The verbal instructions need not be detailed, it would be enough if they were told the writings had meaning, that they were in English (and Spanish, Mandarin and Hindi) and they would – if they were scholars, not vandals – be able to take it from there.

You could also, if you really wished to be thorough, have glass slides and a mechanical slide projector and lamp to literally show them what you meant. This would allow them to re-discover astronomy (if they had lost it), calculate the current time, calculate the combination to the vault, access the tools and supplies and reset the clock. And close the vault door again.

All that said, and we are serious in suggesting it, they’d also do well to have some kind of group of people living on site. Such takes enormous planning and initial funding, but is what will inevitably be the only thing that truly works to avoid vandalism for the longest of terms.