The Clock of the Long Now
Apr. 13th, 2002 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anotheranonA fascinating book about time and responsibility. About how Western society has embraced a very short-sighted view of.. just about everything. Read this sort of for work, and sort of for myself.
Very inspiring and thought provoking - the writer and the Long Now Organization are working on a clock and library that they are trying to design to last 10,000 years - planning for repair, maintenance, keeping the attention of people so that it won't be forgotten, etc.
I've always been fascinated with the idea of things that last. I swear, sometimes I think that in a previous life I worked in the Library of Alexandria, or was a monk copying manuscripts, or something similar given my incredible impulse to save things, catalog things, and make things that will endure.
Highly recommended book. I highly recommend this excerpt [PDF format] if you work in the computer industry, as it discusses the incredibly rapid rate of computer obsolescence. Did you know that a lot of information stored by electronic technologies is now totally inaccessible, due to it being stored on swiftly outdated machines/created in amazingly outdated software, used by machines that are no longer made? The mind boggles....
Very inspiring and thought provoking - the writer and the Long Now Organization are working on a clock and library that they are trying to design to last 10,000 years - planning for repair, maintenance, keeping the attention of people so that it won't be forgotten, etc.
I've always been fascinated with the idea of things that last. I swear, sometimes I think that in a previous life I worked in the Library of Alexandria, or was a monk copying manuscripts, or something similar given my incredible impulse to save things, catalog things, and make things that will endure.
Highly recommended book. I highly recommend this excerpt [PDF format] if you work in the computer industry, as it discusses the incredibly rapid rate of computer obsolescence. Did you know that a lot of information stored by electronic technologies is now totally inaccessible, due to it being stored on swiftly outdated machines/created in amazingly outdated software, used by machines that are no longer made? The mind boggles....
