Amazon.com Founder Jeff Bezos is Bored

[shadowgrin]

So he's building a clock that will run for 10,000 years.

Clickity-click.

We are building a 10,000 Year Clock. It's a special Clock, designed to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking. It's of monumental scale inside a mountain in West Texas. 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. I've been helping Danny with the project for the last half dozen years. As I see it, 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.

[Andrew]

As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems.

Shouldn't we be trying to solve civilisation-scale problems? Not to downplay the creativity of the idea, the engineering involved or anything like that, but surely that time and money could be put towards projects that are more likely to benefit the human race sooner and in a more meaningful way.