Chimes at Midnight

The Clock of the Long Now is a massive clock, powered by mechanical energy harvested from sunlight, currently under construction inside a mountain located at 31°26’54”N, 104°54’14”W. (If you’re wondering, this is in West Texas, on land owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.) The clock, a project conceived by Danny Hillis in 1989, was designed to keep accurate time for the next ten millennia. Alec Nevala-Lee tells its origin story, how Bezos came into the picture to fund its construction, and the clock’s role in humanity’s future.

In constructing the myth of the clock, Hillis had a specific audience in mind: “It’ll be worth building the clock if I can inspire ten percent of the engineers in Silicon Valley to spend ten percent of their time thinking about problems whose solution is more than ten years out into the future.” He once told Michael Lewis, “In some sense, in the world we’ve created today, technologists are the only ones that can think about the future.” In our interview, Hillis clarified, “I wouldn’t say that they are the only ones who can think about it, but I don’t think you can think about the future without thinking about technology. I think it’s the driving force of this transition.”