Cuckoo Every Thousand Years

I remember reading about the Long Now Foundation and the Millennium Clock in Whole Earth Journal (RIP).

The clock spun out of a 1995 essay by Danny Hillis. Here is how he describes it:

I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years. If I hurry I should finish the clock in time to see the cuckoo come out for the first time.
The Millennium Clock

The first cuckoo is still to be heard but the clock is moving along and land has been purchased in Nevada to house it. (Think monument.)

The clock is also billed as the “world’s slowest computer.”

Long Now also hosts other projects including Long Bets, and the Rosetta Project (building a repository of all documented human languages).

They have Seminars About Long Term Thinking (SALT) and they are available via podcast feed or for download. Presenters include Chris Anderson, Joan Baez, Brian Eno, Kevin Kelly, Jimmy Wales, Stewart Brand, and Bruce Sterling.

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