Well, according to his twitter stream, work has begun on its installation. In fact, you can watch a video of it below.

Installation has begun—500 ft tall, all mechanical, powered by day/night thermal cycles, synchronized at solar noon, a symbol for long-term thinking—the #10000YearClock is coming together thx to the genius of Danny Hillis, Zander Rose & the whole Clock team! Enjoy the video. pic.twitter.com/FYIyaUIbdJ

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 20, 2018

Long Now clock

Dubbed the 10,000 Year Clock, it’s a project of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit organisation that wants to “Serve the long view” and “Foster responsibility”. And Bezons is backing the idea.

The fully mechanical device will reach a height of 500ft and be powered by day/night thermal cycles, Bezos writes. It will be synchronized at “solar noon”.

You can read a lot more about the project on the Long Now website, and the wider – admirable – philosophy behind it.

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. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth.

There is currently no completion date scheduled, says the BBC.

Rosetta Project

And the Long Now is also planning a special library to go with the clock, the Rosetta Project…

Fascinating stuff, and I wish them well.

Who knows, perhaps the clock will still be going when Amazon makes a profit? Or maybe instead that’s how Jeff Bezos became the world’s richest man in the first place…

[Via The Verge]