What Time Is It?

The Encyclopedia Foundation has as its goal the preservation of knowledge for 10,000 years. All well and good, but when will that be up? One could imagine that it would be 10,000 years from the date of our incorporation, or 12,008. Or 12,007 from our earlier incorporation. Or perhaps even 11,941, reflecting the year the late Dr. Isaac Asimov first published “Foundation” detailing our plans.

Dr. Asimov even anticipated the difficulty in labeling years in his book “Second Foundation” when he showed that the date of the start of the Stettinian War (in which the Mule’s successor on Kalgan attempted to take over the Foundation Federation) was given as 11,692 of the Galactic Era, but also 419 After Seldon, 348 Year of the Foundation or even 56 FC (Year of the First Citizenship of the Mule).

Likewise on our planet, at this time, we have a variety of year systems, and a variety of ways of starting the clock. However, and mercifully, a general acceptance of what used to be AD (Anno Domini or Year of our Lord) has been accepted, though is called CE or Common Era. And in that, the year as I write is 02011.

All well and good, but human systems of time measuring can – and usually do – vary greatly. Can we really assume that we’ll all still be using Common Era in the year (to us) of 12,011? At the Encyclopedia Foundation, we think that this would be a poor bet to make.

You see, in the past 10,000 years, it has not been common to list years out. For many thousands of years, there was no need for a tally, things were simply in your own personal past, in “my father’s time”, in the “time of my father’s father” or “in ancient times”. Later, in Biblical times and all the way through Roman times, it was common to name years after the rulers. Such as in the “fifth year of the reign of Solomon” or “the second year of the rule of Tiberius”. Or even events. “The third year after the Battle of X”.

Egyptians and many other cultures did this, too. So much so that it was a major task of historians to synchronize all those various years into our Common Era dating system. Which itself led to problems. Such as when it was realized that when Dionysius Exiguus invented the Anno Domini system, he matched it with the Roman system of “Anno Urbis Conditae”, or Year of the Founding of the City of Rome. However, he regrettably matched it wrong, so that is why even today the birth of Christ is listed as 4BC. Dr. Asimov had an excellent article on this in his essay “Of Time and Space and Other Things”, in which he described all this in detail.

But none of that actually gets us closer to the real question – what time is it?

Well, one can get almost endlessly metaphysical – and that’s always fun! – but one could say, in general, that time for our purposes is measured by astronomical bodies. The “time” it takes the Earth to rotate once (or from a human perspective, for the Sun to rise in the east, set in the west, and rise again) is a “day”. A “year” is how long it takes the Earth to revolve once about the Sun (or from a person’s perspective, for the seasons to come back around to the beginning, in ancient times, the Winter Solstice, when the Sun started getting higher in the sky again). Even a “month” was derived from the length of time the Moon goes through its phases, which while actually 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2 plus seconds, is arbitrarily defined as four seven day “weeks” or various amounts of days varying from 28 to 31 (also known as “calendar months”).

Were we not to have astronomical bodies to measure the rates of, we’d not have “time” as we know it. Instead we’d simply have that “several winters ago” and “in my grandsire’s day” stuff that is way to imprecise for our modern purposes.

But that’s only how we measure rates of time. What shows, in a neutral, objective, non-arbitrary way, exactly what time it is now? For we can see that no matter how well we count the number of times the Earth has rotated or revolved since Rome was founded or Jesus was born, that errors do creep in. Mostly for us being admirably exact in knowing how long the periods of time are, but very inexact in the historical events we are speaking of.

When was Jesus born? And it’s not just the Christians, when was Mohammed born? We don’t have exact dates for either. Nor is it only a religious problem, there is dispute not only over George Washington’s birthday, but even Isaac Asimov was unsure as to his date of birth!

The Encyclopedia Foundation offers several things, that should be used together, to derive an “objective time” that can be agreed on, and not change, and be likely to be understood in the coming millennia.

First, a list of very important historical dates, from all around the world, in the major languages, all on one durable metal plate. It would show what year it was in Common Era for things like the founding of the city of Rome, the birth of Christ (as normally given), the year Mohammed and his followers went to Medina, the year of Johan Gutenberg’s printing press, the first man landing on the moon and such like that. It could be a large list, so that one of the cultural/historical events would be sure to be known to the person looking at it, and such a person may already have a “year” in their own system for it. Battles, discoveries, inventions, great leaders, all the usual things should be included.

Second, it would be given not just in the Common Era year, but in the Jewish year (2011 is 5771), the Hindi year (5112), the Muslim year (1432) and such. We cannot currently know what culture will be dominant in 5,000 years. Or even 500 years. Or, though it may seem hard to believe, even 50 years from now. The world has changed faster and more dramatically in less time than half a century before.

Third, and most important, it would then include a static image of the Solar System at various intervals, for our purposes, once per millennia. Thus an image of the planets as they were aligned if one was looking from “above” for the year 1,000, 2,000, 3,000…to 10,000 Common Era. Also for the year 0, 1,000 BCE (Before Common Era) and back to 10,000 BCE. That would be a good 20,000 year spread.

Included in these static pictures would be all the information necessary for calculating such things. This would be important, so they’d know “when” they were seeing this. Space and desire permitting, we could have static shots of the 100 year intervals, too. But the real trick is to show them the data and give them the instructions on lens crafting, telescope making, star gazing and the math (Newton, Kepler, Einstein) to let them do this themselves.

For it is the last that shows definitively exactly what time it is. They would know what time it was for them. And they could then know exactly when all those historical events listed took place. And they – our descendants – would know when the 10,000 year period was up.

The Encyclopedia Foundation proposes having such a metal plate or plates with such information on it. But we’d like the Long Now Foundation to have such at the sites of their 10,000 year clocks. For reasons mentioned in another article, this would be handy in case the clock needed to be reset due to accidental or purposeful damage.

It would also be handy because if this were not there, then even if nothing was ever broke on the clock, you would only have a clock, and it wouldn’t actually be measuring anything. Picture, if you will, a timer. It shows 4 millennia, 274 years, 4 months, and 8 days have passed. Passed since what? Since the Mayans ruled? Since we landed on the moon? Since the Mars colony was seized by Quato and his gang of mutinous dissidents?

A 10,000 year clock needs context. The idea of it, for encouraging a long term thinking, is accomplished by its very existence. But the addition of the metal plates described above is necessary to it having utility in the coming millennia. And again, to fix it if need be.