The organization behind this device, the Long Now Foundation—cofounded by Hillis, Eno, Stewart Brand, and a few other visionaries—aims to build a number of ten-thousand-year clocks. (The first one is being constructed for a mountainside location in West Texas.) Why go to such extravagant lengths to build a clock that might tick only once in your lifetime? Because new modes of measuring force us to think about the world in a new light. Just as the microseconds of quartz and cesium opened up new ideas that transformed everyday life in countless ways, the slow time of the Long Now clock helps us
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