Not quite a book but I thought you might like this...

DeVore

This is a project I have been following from afar because it represents a certain feeling I've had since I got involved with computers.

In its simpliest form it is about a scientist who is building a clock that will tell the time accurately for the next 10,000 years with minimal tending. Not that hard you might think but the issues he faces are incredible when you sit down and think about it. Here's a snippet from their website which is a must-see.
http://www.longnow.org

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase.

Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed---some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Clock/Library proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis. He wrote in 01993:

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. Now, thirty years later, they still talk about what will happen by the year 2000. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of the Millennium. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

DeV.



[This message has been edited by DeVore (edited 15-04-2000).]

Paladin

u forgot the "/" in [/quote]

Its intresting, but then it wont really make a difference to this century. Perhaps when Im brought out of cryogenic freezing in 5000 years it will be as famous as stonehenge?

Manach

Newgrange?

DeVore

yes, I wrote to them to tell them about Newgrange but its not quite the same. Its a fascinating project with issues that are only apparently when you think hard about it...

What language do you write the manual in? Presumably english but even Mid-2nd millenium english is hard to make out now.
There are all sorts of issues the team has had to address...

DeV.

Canaboid

Yeah, and what kind of paper to use if it's got to last that long.

Coyote

The best thing to write Information on to last a long time is believe it or not is clay tablet or carved in to stone much better that paper and much much better that computers.

WhiteWashMan

can you say ozimandius?

at the end of it all, all thats left is sand and maybe a half remembered memory....

Manach

This is from memory but there was a story in Analog awhile back about how you could use the apparent empty space in a DNA sequence to encode Information.
Advantages being self-replication and genetic drift is minor over even after a few million years.

FreaK_BrutheR

Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.

Gamblor

How about maths .. the universal language .... i know contact used this .. but i thought it was a really cool idea !!

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***** Feel my Evil Neon Claws *****