Long Now's 10,000 year clock. (Photo by Rolfe Horn courtesy of The Long Now Foundation)
What if every time you wrote a check or signed a form you wrote the date in five digits (02011) instead of four (2011)? The Long Now Foundation encourages people to do just that, in order to solve the so-called “deca millenium bug,” not to be confused with Y2K problem– the deca bug will occur in 8,000 years.
This is just one of Long Now’s unusual initiatives to promote long-term thinking: the foundation is also building a 10,000 year clock under the Texas desert and is part of a project to preserve the world’s languages. We speak to executive director, Alexander Rose, about the foundation and its unusual philosophy on time.
