Neal Stephenson and the 10,000-Year Clock
The Long Now Foundation 03/09/2008 00:11
In 1998 Danny Hillis asked some friends to make sketches of what they imagined a 10,000-year clock should look like. Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, among others, provided several sketches. One of them outlines a clock contained in concentric circles of walls, which opens to outsiders at specific preordained intervals.
Stephenson’s handwritten notes on this sketch say:
Multiple shells of several closely-spaced cylinders w/ broad spaces between — perhaps arranged on terraced amphitheater w/ nest sphere in the center.
Outermost shell’s apertures open once an hour to admit & discharge tourists, school field trips, etc. — these can circulate around periphery, view the sphere, & depart. Moving inwards the intervals between openings get longer — perhaps these are inhabited by “clock monk” who devote lives to contemplation & to help maintain the clock & supporting institution.
In the ten years since then, Hillis and crew have developed engineering designs for the Long Now 10,000-year Clock. Currently the plan is to build the Clock inside a mountain at the end of a long vertical tunnel entrance. Some details of Neal’s ideas may yet be implimented, but the vast circular compound of gates and inner walls won’t be part of the initial Clock.
However, this wonderful Clock idea lives on and is rendered in much greater detail in Neal’s new novel “Anathem”. Like other Stephenson novels, the book is long and epic. The story is complicated and even confusing at first. The plot explores the friction between the scientific (”mathic”) monks inside the sanctuary of the Clock and the “saecular” superstitious folks living outside the walls in the “extramuros.” The clockers have a different sense of time and responsibility, trying to safegaurd civilization’s knowledge. But the two worlds come clashing together in cataclismic event.
At Long Now Foundation we’ve always resisted the idea of turning the institution into a religion — even though religions may have the best track record for long-term endurance. But the comparison to monks devoting their lives to maintain a remote and long-lived clock is hard to avoid, especially if you show up at a momentous clock event in a hooded robe.
Work on a prototype 10,000-year clock was completed in time for the millennial celebrations in 2000 (or 02000 as Long Now likes to write it). We installed the clock temporarily in Building 116 in the Presidio, San Francisco, where the Long Now offices were. Long Now was subletting office space from the Internet Archive, where the entire internet was backed up. So in a wonderful parallel to Neal’s later story, the clock was resting in a room only a dozen feet away from the modern universal library of our time.
Stewart Brand, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, had just returned from a vacation in Morocco the day before so he was wearing a djellaba.
I took this snapshot of Stewart contemplating the completed Clock just a few minutes before midnight on the New Year’s Eve of Y2K. The Clock had just been finished in the last few days. The attractive idea is that the clock would bong once for a new century, and bong twice for a new millennia. We were gathered around the prototype clock when it was due to strike twice — once for the century, and once for the Y2K millennium.
It was a very strange scene. Because of hysteria about Y2K, the Presidio was blockaded with a police checkpoint. No one else was around the usually busy park. It was a like a secret society meeting. A very few people, maybe a dozen in total, gathered at the clock as it struck the new year/century/millennia. Stewart looked like a monk overseeing the clock’s big moment. At the countdown there was a total hush because we had no idea if the chimes would really work. Then at midnight, the gears started clicking, whirring. One gong! Silence. Then another gong!
Then a collective sigh because we realized it would not happen again for another 1,000 years.
Neal was not present (and had never seen this photo), but when a second version of the Clock’s orrery was unveiled in the Marin county machine shop where it was assembled, Neal traveled from Seattle to inspect it. I took a few quick snapshots of the encounter.
Neal is a tinkerer. His dad was an engineer. He writes for a half a day and then works in a shop for the other half. He tinkered with hardware experiments for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket project, and now he is working at a lab for Nathan Myhrvold’s patent factory. He here is at Chris Rand’s machine shop, where the parts for the Clock were assembled.
A fuller profile of Neal Stephenson by Steven Levy appears in the September 2008 of Wired.
Neal’s book Anathem will launch in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 9th at the Regency building on Van Ness. Because of the overlap in interests, the debut party will be co-hosted by Long Now. Neal will read from his book about the Arbre Clock, Danny and Stewart will talk about the Long Now Clock, there’ll be a martial art demo (an art based on the story), and there will be a performance of unique music.
The Anathem has also spawned a CD of music recorded in the same manner of the music described in Neal’s book. This is mathic music, mathematically generated chants, created especially for Anathem by composer David Stutz. The designs for the chimes of the Long Now Clock are also mathic generative; a prototype of the chime generator is on view in the Long Now museum in Fort Mason. For another example of “mathic” music for a long clock, see Brian Eno’s CD of computational Long Now chimes (titled January 07003). David Stutz’s CD will be available at the event.
Tickets for this celebration of long-term thinking — and launch party for a highly anticipated science fiction novel– are available here. They cost $11 for admission, and $45 for admission plus signed book. If you are a Long Now member, your ticket alone is free (but you have to RSVP. To become a member, join).
You can hear Neal read a bit of the beginning of his book on this Amazon video clip. He’s a better conversationalist than reader. It should be quite an evening. We’ll be filming the event as we do all Long Now Seminar talks; the video will be streamed LIVE at Longnow.org/anathem that evening at 7pm PST.
Long Now Media Update
The Long Now Foundation 25/08/2008 23:52
The latest Seminars About Long-term Thinking are now available as audio downloads or podcasts and in hi-res video for Long Now members.
*Edward Burtynsky on “The 10,000-year Gallery” - video now available
*Daniel Suarez on “Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality” - audio up now, video coming soon
Anathem event tickets now available
The Long Now Foundation 23/08/2008 02:01
Tickets and pre-signed books are now available for the Anathem book launch event on September 9th, 02008 in San Francisco. The evening will include a reading by Neal Stephenson, a followup conversation with Danny Hillis and Stewart Brand, and a short live concert of the music inspired by the book. There will even be a martial arts demonstration of Shovel-Fu from the the book.
Due to the size of the event, the only way to guarantee a signed copy of the book will be to pre-purchase one through the RSVP and ticket link.
As time allows, Neal has agreed to do some inscriptions after the reading.
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm, program begins promptly at 7pm
Long Now Members need to RSVP for their complimentary ticket, and to pre-purchase their signed book. (check your email for the instructions)
General admission tickets are $10, or with a pre-signed copy of Anathem (that you pick up at the event), $42.50 which is exactly the cost of the ticket, plus the cover price, tax and ticket fees.
Venue: The Regency 1320 Van Ness @ Sutter, San Francisco, CA 94109
Not in SF? You can watch the event live on the web at http://www.longnow.org/anathem, with streaming donated by Streamguys, and filming sponsored by Fora.tv. The video will also be available on Fora.tv starting the following day September 10th.
Iolet: The Music of Anathem
The Long Now Foundation 23/08/2008 01:27
In Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem, the Decanarian Erasmus’ daily chore is to ring the Clock bells in his “Math” in a special sequence each day as he chants out the sequence. Those sequences and chants are all based on mathematical formulae that composer and coder David Stutz has put together into an album called Iolet. Stutz calls the music “a pseudo-liturgical use of mathematics and higher thinking.” You can see more background from Stutz on the album here. (In addition you might find some of the excerpts recently released from the book’s extensive glossary worth a peek.)
Most wonderfully Stephenson and Stutz are directing the profits of the album (released through CD Baby) to us here at The Long Now Foundation to help in our efforts to build the Millennium Clock that was one of the inspirations of the book. We will also have a live performance of the album at the launch event on September 9th 02008 in San Francisco, and it will be available for sale at the event and on the web after the 9th.
And here is what some others have had to say about the album:
“It sounds like the neo-Gregorian chanting that accompanies ritual baby sacrifice in horror films.” -Steven Levy [in Wired]
“Ive just listened to several of the songs on this CD and, frankly, this is some weird shit.” - Al Billings [in In Pursuit of Mysteries Boing Boing]
Gavin Newsom interviews Stewart Brand
The Long Now Foundation 22/08/2008 13:00
Stewart Brand and Mayor Gavin Newsom talk about mass urbanization, the effects on the environment, and nuclear power.
Long Now Media Update
The Long Now Foundation 22/08/2008 05:52
The latest Seminars About Long-term Thinking are now available as audio downloads or podcasts and in hi-res video for Long Now members.
*Edward Burtynsky on “The 10,000-year Gallery” - video now available
*Daniel Suarez on “Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality” - audio up now, video coming soon
Gavin Newsom interviews Stewart Brand
The Long Now Foundation 22/08/2008 03:00
Stewart Brand and Mayor Gavin Newsom talk about mass urbanization, the effects on the environment, and nuclear power.
Very Long-Term Backup
The Long Now Foundation 21/08/2008 04:06
Paper, it turns out, is a very reliable backup medium for information. While it can burn or dissolve in water, good acid-free versions of paper are otherwise stable over the long term, cheap to warehouse, and oblivious to technological change because its pages are “eye-scanable.” No special devices needed. Well-made, well-cared for paper can last 1,000 years easily, and probably reach 2,000 without much extra trouble.
We can not say the same for digital storage. Pages stored on plastic DVDs are neither stable over the very long term, nor readable over the long term. Unless digital information is ceaselessly migrated from one fading medium to another new one, it will quickly cease to be accessible. Two decades ago the floppy disk was ubiquitous. Most personal digital information then was stored on this format. Today, any information stored only on a floppy disk is essentially gone. Imagine the incompatibility of today’s DVD in 1,000 years.
As durable as paper is, its inherent limitations in storing digital data are clear. Pity the person who would need to find something if the only backup of the web was a paper printout that filled several airline hangers. What we need are media that have the durability of paper and the accessibility of a floppy disk (or better!).
This problem of long-term digital storage seemed a crucial hurdle for any civilization trying to act generationaly. How could a society think in terms of centuries unless there was a reliable way to transmit and store its knowledge over centuries? This puzzle was the focus of a conference hosted by Long Now in 1998, dedicated to technical solutions for Managing Digital Continuity. At this meeting Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive suggested a new technology developed by Los Alamos labs, and commercialized by the Norsam company, as a solution for long term digital storage. Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.
Might it be possible to etch an entire library onto a set of disks? It might be worth trying. All we needed was a finite data set that a society might want to have backed up.
During a Long Now field trip to a southwest archeological site, the idea of a modern Rosetta Stone came up — a backup of human languages that future generations might cherish. At a winter retreat in 1999, Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already. We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.
Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep ‘em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages. We thought it might take a year to do.
Long story short, it took eight years. Last night at a ceremony at the Long Now museum in Fort Mason, one of five prototype disks Rosetta disk was presented to the Oliver Wilke Foundation, a Frankfurt-based linguistic center, who help support the project. The disk is 3 inches in diameter, and mounted beneath a glass hemisphere.
One side of the disk contains a graphic teaser. The design shows headlines in the eight major languages of the world today spiraling inward in ever-decreasing size till it becomes so small you have trouble reading it, yet the text goes on getting smaller. The sentences announce: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”
This graphic side of the disk is pure titanium. A black oxide coating has been added to the surface. The text is etched into that, revealing the whiter titanium. This bold sign board is needed because the pages of genesis which are etched on the mirror-like opposite side of the disk are nearly invisible.
This business side of the disk is pure nickel. Picking it up you would not be aware there were 13,500 pages of linguistic gold hiding on it. The nickel is deposited on an etched silicon disk. In effect the Rosetta disk is a nickel cast of a micro-etch silicon mold. When the disk is held at the right angle the grid array of the pages form a slight diffraction rainbow. You need a 750-power optical microscope to read the pages.
The Rosetta disk is not digital. The pages are analog “human-readable” scans of scripts, text, and diagrams. Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, pronunciation guides and so on. Some of the key indexing meta-data for each language section (such as the standard linguistic code number for that language) are displayed in a machine-readable font (OCRb) so that a smart microscope could guide you through this analog trove.
Our hope is that at least one of the eight headline languages can be recovered in 1,000 years. But even without reading, a person might guess there are small things to see in this disk.
All this took eight years because back in 2000 the Norsam technology could not handle the size of our library, and there was in fact, contrary to our assumptions, no library of already completed Genesis translations. There was no central depository of language information, either. So in order to gather 1,000 translations of Genesis and related linguistic information for those 1,000 language, Long Now created the Rosetta Project.
Heading the project was artist/linguist Jim Mason, who ran Rosetta at first like it was an art project. Which it kinda was. Working under the radar of the academic linguistic community, Mason began collating and scanning all known versions of Genesis, and later regional and ethnic creation stories in native languages. He collected maverick linguists and bridged the feudal factions in the academic linguistic community. Under Mason the project quickly morphed from art project into a major linguist initiative. Mason steadily won the support of the world-wide professionals as the Rosetta website grew into the “All Language Archive.” Eight years down the road, after major NSF grants and other funding the Rosetta Project now has a unified (such as it exists) set of information in 2,300 languages. At several points in its evolution, the Rosetta’s tiny non-profit offices were crammed with dozens of grad students scanning pages of wonderfully obscure languages as fast as paper could move. Over 100 people contributed work in the office and thousands more on the website. The intention all along has been to cram this all language archive onto a few disks. Or a tiny cube. Or maybe, art project at the core, etched onto a long wall.
This is a Long Now project, which means it is okay if it takes a while. It took 8 years to gather the scanned Genesis texts. During that time Norsam perfected their production. Now we have a disk.
But it was not the very first disk. That one is in space. In 2004 the Rosetta Space Probe was launched by the European Space Agency. This small craft was created to land on a comet in 2014. Before it blasted off, the ESA contacted us because we share names. They asked if we’d like to mount a version of the disk on their probe. Of course we would! We had manufactured a pure nickel disc with a subset of 6,000 pages of language translations, which was mounted on the payload section of the probe.
Rosetta Space Probe
So assuming the mission continues well, in 2014 the Rosetta Probe will land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will measure the comet’s molecular composition. Then it will remain at rest as the comet orbits the sun for hundreds of millions of years. So somewhere in the solar system, where it is safe but hard to reach, a backup sample of human languages is stored, in case we need one.
Or you can have one on earth, if you want, acting as an additional node in the distributed archive. There are still two disks available from this prototype run. Currently, for all its high techness, each disk is hand crafted, and so they have a corresponding high hand-crafted cost: $25,000. Contact the office if you are interested in caretaking an archive of all languages. Long Now hopes to produce additional copies in the future, so that these small globes will be scattered across the world in nondescript locations; that way at least one will survive their 2,000-year lifespan.
There’s a small hidden cavity inside the globe where owners can inscribe their name, with room and encouragement to have the next owners inscribe theirs. This is a multi-generational device. As Oliver Wilke said when he picked up his glass sphere last night, “This is one of the most fascinating objects on earth. If we found one of these things 2,000 years ago, with all the languages of the time, it would be among our most priceless artifacts. I feel a high responsibility for preserving it for future generations.”
Standing in front of sample pages from the Rosetta disk, Oliver Wilke holds his new sphere and Laura Welcher, Rosetta Director, holds the nickel disk.
Be sure to read the fine print!
The Long Now Foundation 21/08/2008 03:33
Yesterday at the Long Now Museum, board members, staff and guests raised a glass to celebrate the completion of the first version of the complete Rosetta Disk. Over eight years in development, the Disk is a physical, microscopic library of information on over 1,500 human languages. 14,000 text and image pages are etched into the surface of a 3” diameter nickel disk, which can be read with approximately 750x (optical) magnification.
The nickel disk has a high resistance to corrosion, and can withstand temperatures of up to 300 oC with little to no change in legibility of the text. Kept in its protective sphere to avoid scratches, it could easily last and be read 2,000 years into the future!
Joining in the celebration was Oliver Wilke, proud owner of a new Rosetta Disk (shown reflected in the Rosetta sphere on the left, above). The disk will be a centerpiece for his new foundation in support of endangered and minority languages around the world.
So… if the Rosetta Disk is a prototype and facet of the Library of Ages (companion to the 10,000 Year Clock), what goes into the fine print next?
Check out our pictures of the event on Flickr
Also this article on the Rosetta Disk launch event in the San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 02008
Neal Stephenson - King of the Worlds
The Long Now Foundation 19/08/2008 22:21
Steven Levy has an excellent piece on Neal Stephenson’s Anathem in the September Wired. The article includes in depth back story on the Long Now related inspirations for the book. If you are going to be in San Francisco on September 9th 02008, we will be hosting the launch event for the book with a reading and concert. You can sign up here for updates.
You can also see a reading and interview with Neal on Amazon.
Stephenson says the story was inspired by the real-life Millennium Clock, a project thought up by inventor Danny Hillis and developed by the Long Now Foundation. The nub of the endeavor is the construction of a clock that has the mother of all warranties: It’s built to last 10,000 years. Hillis conceived it to mitigate the mega-rapidity of the digital world. He was working on a massively parallel supercomputer, the Connection Machine, designed to scale to a million processors, and found himself obsessed with speed, slicing seconds into billions of pieces. “I was going for faster, faster, faster. But something in me was rejecting that,” Hillis explained to me back in 1999, when he launched the project. “It wasn’t clear that the world needed faster, faster, faster. So I began thinking about the opposite. Working on the fastest machine in the world got me thinking about the slowest.” How slow? Hillis’ timepiece would tick once a year, its insides would bong once a century, and the cuckoo would appear once a millennium.
Building the clock, it turns out, has been an antidote to the toxic fixation on short-term thinking that permeates our culture. Hillis and the friends who joined himlike fellow Long Now cofounders Stewart Brand (who wrote a book about the project) and Brian Eno (who composed a CD of chimes inspired by the clock)found that its design and construction required recalibrating one’s own mental clock to envision what things would be like in the distant future. Ideally, that mindset encourages behavior that tends to preserve the environment for clock customers in the year 12000, instead of gobbling up resources and leaving behind trash that tends to mess things up for those folks. Or so goes the thinking of the project’s goofily optimistic supporters. Back at the launch, Brand marveled at the notion of looking so far beyond the temporal horizon. “It’s the only 10,000-year-forward thing I know of,” he said, “outside of science fiction, where it’s fairly common.”
Enter Neal Stephenson. He first heard about the clock from Hillis and Brand at the annual Hackers Conference, and in 1999 the Long Now asked him and a few others to share some thoughts for its Web site. “In my little back-of-the-napkin sketch, I drew a picture showing a clock with concentric walls around it,” he says over lunch in downtown Seattle the day after the book club meeting. “I proposed that you could have a system of gates where it was open for a while at a certain time of year, or decade, or whatever, when you could go in and out freely. But if you were inside it when the gate closed, you’d be making a commitment to stay in until it opened again. And I talked about clock monks who would tend the clock. I put that idea in cold storage because I was working on the Baroque Cycle. When I recovered, I decided, what the hell, I’m just going to try writing this.”
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