"For [Stewart] Brand, the solution is to expand our awareness..." — Douglas Rushkoff

For [Stewart] Brand, the solution is to expand our awareness of the larger, slower cycles. He is working with inventor Danny Hillis to build a 10,000-year clock—a clock of the 'long now' that changes our orientation to time. His hope is that by beholding this tremendous time-keeping structure in the desert (itself the product of a multigenerational effort), we will be able to experience or at least perceive the bigger cycles that evade us in our daily schedules. In addition, instead of writing our years with four digits, Brand encourages us to use five, as in 02020 instead of 2020, keeping us aware of the much larger timescales on which important activity is still occurring. We could still operate on the timescale of seasonally changing fashions or TV schedules while remaining cognizant of the greater cycles binding humanity to the cosmos.