Long Now Clock Advances With Bezos Cash 169
heptapod writes "Wired has an in-depth article about the 10,000 Year Clock and The Long Now Foundation which has begun moving forward with Jeff Bezos's investment of $42 million. Recently he put up a website with more information." My favorite-yet article about the 10,000 Year Clock appeared on Kevin Kelly's site earlier this month. (Kelly always seems to be involved in interesting projects, and is one of the movers behind this one.)
Saving the planet (Score:1)
This is important, by starting our own 10,000 year clock we should have plenty of time we can use once the Mayan calendar runs out.
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This is important, by starting our own 10,000 year clock we should have plenty of time we can use once the Mayan calendar runs out.
Get ready for Y10K, or the Chalam Balloon..
Re:Saving the planet (Score:5, Funny)
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The ultimate long-term troll!
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Someone will assume 12012-12-21 is a ternary date and panic 620 solar years too soon.
the minute hand is years? (Score:2)
Great, now I'll NEVER get to work on time
(on second thought, I'll take two, one to keep at the office to prove why I'm late)
Archeologic interpretation (Score:4, Interesting)
Will future archaeologists interpret this as a sign that there was a cult based around timekeeping in Texas in the 2000's?
Probably not, but it is an interesting thought that it may be the case that many if not all of the most durable and long-standing monuments of ancient times essentially tell us nothing that's representative about the ancient cultures that built them. Take Stonehenge for example. Imagine if Stonehenge was built by a small group of people with too much money or resources on their hands who thought that it would be awesome to build a really, really big stone circle.
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Stonehenge and easter island are some of the more obscure artifacts in the world, but its pretty well accepted that stonehenge was a somewhat mystic burial site, although its use changed over its long history several times.
Re:Archeologic interpretation (Score:4, Interesting)
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Saw your fields? Oh, you mean perhaps sow....?
Seriously, all of this nonsense about huge construction projects in ancient times JUST to tell them when to sow is utter nonsense that even the most casual observer knows is demonstrably not true, yet is it mumbled authoritatively by archaeologists as if it were the pinnacle of knowledge.
How did there come to be enough people to build such a project if they did not already have a clear understanding of the seasons and were not already good judges of when to pla
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You've bough into the same fallacy.
How did the survive long enough to build wooden structures to tell what seasons to sow?
Look, (puts on Gieco hat), its not hard to know when to plant. Snow melts. Ground gets warm enough to dig in with bare hands. Wild plants start growing all by themselves. Even a Cave Man could do it.
The very earth under your feet tells you when its time to sow.
Nobody needs an observatory.
Re:Archeologic interpretation (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, (puts on Gieco hat), its not hard to know when to plant. Snow melts. Ground gets warm enough to dig in with bare hands. Wild plants start growing all by themselves. Even a Cave Man could do it. The very earth under your feet tells you when its time to sow. Nobody needs an observatory.
To the contrary. For the better part of known, written history, mathematicians and astronomers fought for building better almanacs specifically to cater for the needs of farmers. Those where extremely important researches, funded by kings and worth a lot of gold for whomever came with an edge in predicting the solar cycle exact duration. The ancient chinese emperors were responsible for deciding when to plow the earth, for instance. The power of egyptians pharaohs was tied to the prediction of the flooding of the Nile. This is DOCUMENTED history. Kepler stumbled upon his famous orbital laws almost by accident, because he was building an almanac for farmers and seafarers. My grandfather bought yearly, between the 50s and 80s, a printed almanac with dates to sow various plants calculated for the coming year. Everybody in the countryside would do the same. For the longest of times, it was literally a matter of life or death.
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My grandfather bought yearly, between the 50s and 80s, a printed almanac with dates to sow various plants calculated for the coming year.
They are still sold today in my region (and maybe others) in Italy: publisher link [quarantina.it], translation [google.com].
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Wild plants start growing all by themselves.
But that's too late... The question is when do you sow, not when will the plants come up...
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I wonder more about whether they'll be playing the Indiana Jones march when they open it up. I know I will when I visit it when it's completed! :)
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We don't interpret the great pyramids at Giza as having been built by a "cult". The scale and expense is far too massive for either the pyramids or this (giant Seiko watch) to be so misunderstood.
So, if lost to time and rediscovered, archaeologists will likely interpret this as a large governmental project, built by a large, relatively technologically advanced nation... which worshiped
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The region (well, 700 miles to the south) has been continiously inhabited by pyramid building tribes for the last 1200-2000 years. If anything, they would assume that this is simply an extension, or peak of that civilization. Assuming they find it. It is, afterall, buried inside of a mountain in one of the more inhospitable parts of the country.
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Well, they weren't a cult based around timekeeping in Texas in the 2000's, that's for damned sure.
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First priority (Score:5, Funny)
Should be abolishing daylight saving so you don't have to change it every 6 months
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From what I've read earlier (I'm now too lazy to check if that information is still up to date) this clock is intended to be automatically synchronized to the sun. Which should rule out daylight saving, I think.
it won't last that long because of humans (Score:1)
Even if the engineering challenges of it could be overcome (and I'm a little doubtful) humans will destroy it. Vandals 500 years from now, someone who thinks it'd make for a fun filled evening to piss on somebody's ambition.
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The headline and article ... (Score:1)
The headline and article should be taken out back and shot. It's the humane thing to do.
What the fuck is this? (Score:5, Funny)
Since the summary doesn't tell you, I will: it's a huge, useless clock being built in the desert. It's called the "10,000 year clock" because the hands of the clock move glacially slowly. It will truly be a wonder to behold, unless it stops working after 100 years and people forget that it's even there.
tl;dr version: big, useless clock.
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Yes. If it requires any attendance on the scale of 100 years, then i know many cheaper, more accurate and stable methods to do it. Clock normally work over 100s of years. and if you build them electronically using high-grade components and the right circuit type, then i have no doubt you can build them redundantly with power for a longer time. The clocks on the Voyager work for over 30years and they were limited by external limitations in a substantial way.
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No. If you try to repair it, then i predict really bad chances using bronze age technology. WIth bronze age technology, a clock consisting of electromechanical relais would be more realistic to repair. You can build circuits which are very tolerant to manufacturing deviations. If you use vacuum switches, this will work for a long time.
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Yeah, but those crappy Voyager clocks are always running a few milliseconds slow.
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O my god! that adds up to seconds in 10000 years! God they build a mechanical clock.
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The whole point of the 10,000 year clock is that it can work and keep extremely accurate time for 10,000 years with no intervention, at all. It is 100% mechanical. The clock resets it's time daily by the rise and setting of the sun causing expansion and collapse of tungsten, which is projected into it's protective cave through a 100% sapphire lens.
It is quite an ingenious project if you actually RTFA. The whole point of it is if there is some kind of worldwide wipe-out, at least we will have some remnant of
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No, i got the point. And the synchronization with the sun is also tricky. However if it needs to be wound up every hundred years, then its *not keeping the time without intervention*. And a 100% sapphire lens is *not* a purely mechanical technology.
Making lenses is much more complicated than making a simple wire-wound coil.
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I disagree with them building a durable physical clock and claiming success. But your post shows that you didn't get the first thing right about the Long Now project. Even this clock's design folly was useful, because it shows how far so many (probably practically all) of us are from having truly longterm vision skills.
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However, instead of focusing on building a clock, I'd focus on how to pass our current knowledge into the future so it may survive a possible collapse and re-building of civilization. This is of course a much harder problem than building a long-living clock, but also much more worthwhile.
There are three points to consider:
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However, instead of focusing on building a clock, I'd focus on how to pass our current knowledge into the future so it may survive a possible collapse and re-building of civilization. This is of course a much harder problem than building a long-living clock, but also much more worthwhile.
I take it that you haven't bothered reading up on the Long Now Foundation.
Trying to pass on knowledge is in fact one of their earlier projects [rosettaproject.org], where they are trying to create the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, but with modern languages and the ability to translate between all currently known written languages. They are betting that one of these languages is going to survive for another 10k years or more (in some form), but they aren't betting just on English or even a European language. In addition, th
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You would have a point, there, if there were a reason why anybody would care about this clock 50 or 100 years from now anymore than they do now. This isn't a "make big investment, get long-term payoff" project. To put it crudely, it's dick-size stuff.
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It is obvious that:
1. You didn't read the article.
2. Even if you had read the article, and understood how they are engineering it to run for 10,00 years without human intervention, you are not the sort of person who would understand the "why".
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"tl;dr version: big, useless clock."
But pyramids are so 4000 BC.
Proving Themselves Shortsighted (Score:3)
A project to build a clock that will ring periodically through 10,000 years must include assurance that people will recognize the clock ringing, and what time it is on it, or it's just a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear. It would demonstrate nothing about a long duration "now" in planning, execution or just thinking through as a span, except that we presently suck at it.
Which is why this project is folly. All its effort is making a physical object durable, which is of course no assurance of longevity. The chances are high that sometime in the next 10,000 years some people (if not a nonhuman natural event, like volcano) will damage, dismantle or disable the physical clock - no matter how strong some of their ancestors once made it. But even if it does last, without ensuring people around throughout the 10,000 years can read it when it rings will mean they have failed to make a "10,000 clock", though they might have made a "10,000 year machine".
The project should focus on how to enable people to recognize that it's a clock ringing through its 10,000 year lifetime. And indeed the project could be limited to only that: ensuring that people can read how stars, the Sun, the Moon and planets align to "ring" when they reach certain layouts would use the much more long lived celestial bodies as a durable clock. If they want to build a machine that will point to the skies every decade/century/millennium that's a decent next step, even if the machine is just the caption to the real clock. And to the real achievement: planning 10,000 years of viable function.
All is answered (Score:3)
A project to build a clock that will ring periodically through 10,000 years must include assurance that people will recognize the clock ringing, and what time it is on it, or it's just a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear.,
Actually it generally does not ring without people there to provide energy for the chimes.
As long as there are people around, there will be at least some sporadic visitation.
The chances are high that sometime in the next 10,000 years some people (if not a nonhuman natural event,
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Not really. The "ifs" you postulate, whether energy for the chimes or sporadic visitation, are at odds with the remoteness strategy for preservation. But there's no reason to believe the location(s) will be remote for the next 10,000 years. It's not uncommon for an ice age to recede, civilizations come and go, and another ice age arrive over that scale. And we're just starting a significant climate change right now that can reverberate back and forth for the next 100 centuries.
Yet around the world are artif
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The beefs about location are overcome through multiple clocks being built; but beyond that the high desert location currently selected seems unlikely to be affected by a new ice age (and I agree that it's pretty likely one would be seen in that timeframe).
The preservation of the idea of any artifact as clock is the first order of business.
I respect your obviously greater and closer experience to the whole thing than myself; I have only read the book and followed the project with interest from afar.
But I'm n
On a whole other subject... (Score:2)
Which is why this project is folly. All its effort is making a physical object durable, which is of course no assurance of longevity. The chances are high that sometime in the next 10,000 years some people (if not a nonhuman natural event, like volcano) will damage, dismantle or disable the physical clock - no matter how strong some of their ancestors once made it. But even if it does last, without ensuring people around throughout the 10,000 years can read it when it rings will mean they have failed to make a "10,000 clock", though they might have made a "10,000 year machine".
The weird thing is that some people think this will be a failure because of possible natural disasters and people possibly not being able to read this clock etcetera, and get hissy fits about it, while the many of the same people don't mind at all that really, REALLY, REALLY!! dangerous nuclear waste has to be safely disposed of for about 25 times as long as the period this clock is designed for and still insist nuclear energy is safe.
People are weird!
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There are many, many toxic substances in the earth. Many
sundial (Score:2)
Although he might have the one-hand patent?
This is a great start (Score:2)
As I have no intentions of dying any time soon, I hereby volunteer: Please vote for me,
Most be built as something temporary (Score:3, Funny)
If you want this to last this long and not have somebody salvage it for the metal, you must make it temporary, Example: The Eiffel tower.
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Or put it into a high orbit around the earth, and make it reflect the sunlight. At least when civilization collapses, it will be out of reach of scavengers.
Eiffel Tower was sold for scrap in 1925... (Score:2)
Well, someone tried at least. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig [wikipedia.org]
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I dunno about the great wall, but the pyramids were salvaged for stone.
What's left now is just the inner cores. Most of the pyramids were covered with smooth, white stone and capped with a metal tip.
Mayan Calendar 2.0 (Score:2)
The Long Now is truly awesome, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Winding the clock (Score:3)
FTA:
It takes two or three visitors to push around the capstan of the clock and to lift its 10,000-pound stones.
The real question is: do they need to sing?
Art project, not a working 10k clock (Score:2)
For a real working clock, I would power it with U235, kilogram produces about 1 MW of power, half life 770 million years, use custom designed sub-threshold MCML circuit that uses maybe 5 nanowatts of powers, suitably redundant and protected against, trace migration, micro thermal cycling, micro accelerations, cosmic rays and so forth and boost it into an orbit outside of geosynchronous so that it will take a million year plus orbital decay.
Re:Art project, not a working 10k clock (Score:5, Insightful)
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The reason for the interaction it to make sure that the location is something that people will want to preserve if they happen to stumble across it. If it is something mundane looking and ordinary, or perhaps appears incredibly valuable in terms of something that can be stripped for resources rather than being admired for what it does, then this project will have failed.
There was a huge push for "time capsules" in the 1950's, which a whole bunch of them that were scheduled to be opened at the beginning of
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For a real working clock, I would power it with U235, kilogram produces about 1 MW of power, half life 770 million years....
Fission or decay?
What's Bezos cash? (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:3)
Anyone else find it troublesome that Bezos is putting $42M into THIS? Or more troublesome still, that Bezos HAS $42M. Or that he has $42M to THROW at anything?
At 4% that money could generate $1,680,000 per year for scholarships, or school renovations, health education or or or or or.
*sigh*
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Stop salivating about how nobly you'd spend someone else's money.
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No, I don't find it troublesome that he spends his cash they way he sees fit. What I do find troublesome is the amount of hypocrisy it takes for you to complain about Bezos spending while still spending money on an internet connection instead of saving some starving children with that money instead.
You see, if you come by money or goods voluntarily you are free to spend it the way you see fit. You should afford the others the same freedom.
Condescending, moi?
Anathem (Score:2)
This is a DIRECT rip of the Millenial clock(s) described in Neal Stephenson's Anathem [wikipedia.org]. As a community of geeks, I'm surprised nobody else has made the connection.
The millenial clock in anathem:
- was synchronized by a shaft of sunlight
- triggered an 'event' (in this case opening a door) every 1, 10, 100, and 1000 years (ok so he didn't describe how the 1000 year door worked)
- was human-powered, and wound by people working on a capstan-style winder
- had a backup power supply, i
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The similarities are so close that this is actually a direct copy, not original work. And in the absence of any kind of credit or mention of Neal Stephenson's name, the word plagarism leaps to mind.
No at all, Stephenson in fact does properly assign credit [nealstephenson.com]. I'd consider him entirely in the clear.
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Stephenson was involved in the early discussions of the 10K clock, and he has stated that Anathem is intended as a tribute to the project.
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The idea is to build a clock that lasts that long, not pay for repairs and maintenance to run a clock for 10.000 years. RTFA
You'd think that kind of information would be in TFS so we know WTF they're talking about. OMGWTFBBQ.
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No, you'd think that kind of information would be in TFA or else TFS would be rather un *summary* like.
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You'd think that kind of information would be in TFS so we know WTF they're talking about. OMGWTFBBQ.
I'd say something about how you must be new here, but I think that a six-digit ID indicates otherwise (even if it's hardly something to brag about).
Merely leaving out critical information is pretty good for a slashdot summary. I've given up complaining unless the summary actively lies or misleads. (This still leaves me plenty of opportunities to complain!)
I'm just glad the Long Now Foundation is getting some publicity! Too many people in the industry have a hard time thinking past the next couple of year
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I'm just glad the Long Now Foundation is getting some publicity! Too many people in the industry have a hard time thinking past the next couple of years. 10k years may seem like a lot when you're dealing with human history, but in other fields (astronomy, geology, archeology), it's an eyeblink.
Astronomy, geology, and archaeology deal with things created in the long past, most of which were not created by people, and those that were human creations served their purpose in their own time. (Someone is sure to mention the Pyramids, which were supposed to protect their dead inhabitants for an unspecified long time, but which were mostly looted often within living memory of the death).
Will future generations even want a 10k year clock? Other than a curiosity, do the Jaipur Sundials [wikipedia.org] serve any purpose?
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Maybe it will, based on their site, they're making it as reliable as it's possible, with multiple power sources and timekeeping instruments. I don't think the costs or the knowledge will be an issue: by design, it's made to be maintainable with Bronze Age tech and its purpose and workings are to be as clear as possible to allow even a primitive civilization to take a look at it and figure out what goes where, and what does what.
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it's made to be maintainable with Bronze Age tech and its purpose and workings are to be as clear as possible to allow even a primitive civilization to take a look at it and figure out what goes where, and what does what.
Bronze Age tech? I don't think so. Have you even looked at all the stainless steal in it?
The most likely fate will be that it will be melted down after the last tourist loses interest.
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It has stainless steel in it now. But it can run with other materials too, I suspect the choice of materials now is optimized for initial longevity: the later they need replacements, the better chance of someone with the appropriate tech being around to fab them.
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The whole thing has a post-apocalyptic mysticism about it.
Why would anyone suspect that it has to last a long time before anyone would be able to repair it?
Were you expecting the end of all human civilization and the rebirth there-of in the next 10 thousand years?
Someone has been watching too many movies.
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The more appropriate question is: Can you exclude the possibility? Ten thousand years ago, we were still in the stone age. There have been civilizations which appeared and collapsed since then. And there's always the possibility of a global thermonuclear war destroying our civilization (although honestly I wouldn't expect the clock to survive an atomic bomb).
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Oh, I think it would survive easily. It's not near any important targets, has no military value to warrant pointing a warhead at it, and it's buried pretty deep to survive strikes nearby (up to certain values of nearby). Point is, there's no reason it shouldn't survive The Button.
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And no reason for it to survive either. There is simply no need of a musical clock in a post-apocalyptic world.
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That's true as well. But we were talking about whether it would survive the war itself. What comes afterwards is another thing, and it's quite possible that it'll be melted down for the raw materials to be used in rebuilding.
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Yeah, because we all know there won't be any metal laying around once the bombs go off.....
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Oh, there will be scrap aplenty. Twisted, rusted, neutron-activated radioactive scrap. Quit splitting hairs, and try to maintain mature discussion!
Re:Cool idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
At no time did civilization collapse.
Societies and governments have collapsed, but civilization persisted, machines still ran, farmers still planted, and clock makers still made clocks. Nothing was un-invented. Various disasters made small localities uninhabitable, often with loss of life, but people moved on, their education (such as it was) and capabilities intact, and civilization always survived. At no time did mankind say you know what, this isn't working, lets all go back to caves and rocks, and rules of behavior, and to hell with this whole mess.
Re:Cool idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Cool idea, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's certainly not true. There are a great many discoveries, tools, machines, and more, which were known to ancient societies and lost to time. Some of which have been rediscovered and become central to us in modern times. Others were obsoleted by modern instruments before they were rediscovered, etc, etc.
Concrete is perhaps the most striking example, used extensively until the fall of Rome, lost to time, and only (independently) rediscovered in the 18th century, and which is again, a fundamental building block of nearly all modern buildings, and very, very extensively used.
Among the others, the Baghdad Battery, The Antikythera Mechanism, and innumerable other machines, formulations, stone-mason tools, etc. Some of the most persistent mysteries about ancient people are how they A) Built large, complex stone structures more quickly than we would be able to even with modern tools, and B) Moved and manipulated into-place very large objects significant distances without more modern technology we don't believe they had, and with far fewer people than we believe they could have had available. So there are likely still many technologies out there yet to be rediscovered. These all may, in narrow instances, in fact be superior to our modern alternatives which perform similar tasks.
Re:Cool idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Concrete is perhaps the most striking example, used extensively until the fall of Rome, lost to time, and only (independently) rediscovered in the 18th century, and which is again, a fundamental building block of nearly all modern buildings, and very, very extensively used.
I'm sorry, but you have totally misstated the history of cement. It was not lost to time upon the fall of Rome, and continued to be used in Europe, China, India, from medieval times right up to modern times.
The only thing that happened in the 18th century was someone wrote down a formula, but that formula was well known by the building trades throughout medieval times and in continuous use in various places in the world. Further the trend to poor grades of cement began DURING Roman times, not after.
I refer you to Lea's Chemistry of Cement and Concrete By Peter Hewlett.
There is an unfortunate tendency to believe any technology tried and abandoned centuries ago represents a lost art, knowledge of the ancients, somehow lost to modern man due to the collapse of a particular society. When in fact those technologies were never cost effective even when they were in use, and required the enslavement of huge numbers of people. Surviving examples such as the Pyramids, the Colosseum, are pointed to as examples of every day miracles of the ancients, when in fact much of roman architecture simply fell down due to bad mortar and was incorporate into other buildings, or used as rubble fill.
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There may be some truth to that, but there are a number of counter-examples. The contrary belief, that little or nothing of value has been lost to history is absolutely and provably wrong.
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No.
I'm sure there was lots of cheap labor, and that may have contributed indirectly. But actually building the pyramids was just a few thousand skilled craftsman. The slave labor didn't enter into it, at least not directly.
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I'm sure there's a book in that.
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We have CT machines and we still can't figure out exactly what the Antikythera device did. On the plus side the LNC will be quite a bit bigger and will (perhaps) not be flooded with ocean water.
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Last time I checked, it was an astronomical computer and mechanical calendar rolled into one. Granted, this came from the translation of what was left of the inscriptions, which match up with some months of the Metonic calendar...
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We have CT machines and we still can't figure out exactly what the Antikythera device did.
Well, Wikipedia has a quite detailed description [wikipedia.org] for something which we don't have an idea of what it does. And that's for a device which is not complete, and no longer working.
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Sure, it would only be prudent. The same way they recommend testing out your newly built RepRap by printing yourself a new one.
Maybe they will leave a cache of parts, maybe just the vital ones that make the whole thing go. After all, leaving basically a duplicate of the 60-meter clock you just built would likely be prohibitively expensive...
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It is in Texas because it is land that Jeff Bezos already owns. RTFA to see the details of why, but I'd argue.... why not?
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The new site is for this specific implementation of the clock. They are also likely to put another version up in their Nevada site, which is more of what the Long Now website focuses upon. It really is two projects where the one that Bezos is working on is also helping to finance the one in Nevada as well.