The 10,000 Year Clock

Danny Hillis, an inventor, computer engineer, and designer, Stewart Brand, a biologist, rock musician Brian Eno, and Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, are building a clock for the Long Now Foundation inside a mountain in western Texas.

It's a special clock, designed to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking. The father of the Clock is Danny Hillis. He's been thinking about and working on the Clock since 1989. He wanted to build a Clock that ticks once a year, where the century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium.

The vision was, and still is, to build a clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years. Humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems. We're likely to need more long-term thinking.