The Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument located in Amarillo, Texas holds 4 time capsules in stainless steel that should be opened after a duration of 25, 50, 100, and 1000 years after they were locked in 1968.
From Cabinet Magazine (so glad I still have the printed version of this timeline at home):
The problems presented by 20th-century versions of the timeline arise from different sources. In most important respects, the conceptual issues were already on the table in the 18th century. But the 20th century brought developments in time reckoning that gave timelines new poignancy. In 1945, it became relevant for the first time to tell world history in terms of milliseconds, and, very soon, it also became necessary to start thinking in practical terms about the transmission of information over the course of the very long term. There is something more than a little sobering about the recurrence of the cyclical form in the US government glyph for the declining radioactivity of nuclear waste stored in Yucca Mountain. In it, there may be an echo of Joseph Mede’s indecision about the appropriateness of applying the linear form to an apocalyptic narrative.
Standard Time [standard-time.com] involves about 70 workers who built a large (4x12m), wooden “digital” time display. Which they then updated in “real time”. All of this resulted in a unique urban screen that involved about 1,611 tedious changes within 24 hour period.
“The spectator looking at Standard Time does not only see the time, but also the people constructing it. People who, with a stoic sense of duty, are wasting time on an apparently useless activity that fulfills only one function: to display time.”
![Standard Time [standard-time.com] involves about 70 workers who built a large (4x12m), wooden “digital” time display. Which they then updated in “real time”. All of this resulted in a unique urban screen that involved about 1,611 tedious changes within 24 hour period.
“The spectator looking at Standard Time does not only see the time, but also the people constructing it. People who, with a stoic sense of duty, are wasting time on an apparently useless activity that fulfills only one function: to display time.”](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kuuvy6d6Lr1qzw5oyo1_500.jpg)
This from The Long Now Foundation, which also includes some interesting failed predictions from the past, such as:
“It will be years –not in my time– before a woman will become Prime Minister.”
–Margaret Thatcher, October 26th, 1969.
This is from an exhibition of the exquisite clock, “made up of numbers taken from everyday life, seen, captured and uploaded by people all over the world.”
You can contribute your images to the clock here.
From how business is conducted to the fight to slow the aging process, our unhealthy attitudes toward time are becoming the common thread that ties our flattening world together.
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When things move at such speeds, it’s difficult to tell the difference between advancement and progress.
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