In this ever-advancing modern era, where the mantra of the zeitgeist is “better, faster, cheaper,” Danny Hillis — inventor of the supercomputer that instigated our current fast-paced society — beseeches us to slow down, twiddle our thumbs and smell the roses. Hillis has been working since 1996 on a monument-sized clock to be sited on a limestone cliff in eastern Nevada, dubbed the Clock of the Long Now. This clock is nothing like your average wristwatch. The Clock of the Long Now will be large enough for visitors to walk around in and is designed to last 10,000 years — roughly the period in which humans enjoy a relatively constant climate and advancements in culture and technology. It will tick only once a year, bong once a century and cuckoo at the millennium, a pace Hillis hopes will inspire society to think in terms of decades, centuries and millennia, as opposed to the prevailing harried New York minute.
A young Danny Hillis hard at work at his connections machine console.
Cricket Trailer
The Cricket Trailer at work looking space-age and efficient while inventor Garrett Finney plays the Ukulele. Photo by David Bates.
I’d been chattering for a week about spending the summer in a trailer dropped on the smallest patch of grass and wildflower somewhere Upstate when I came across the Cricket Trailer over at Men and Women of Industry. (If you’re not fantasizing about camping now, you will be once you’ve seen their childhood snaps.) The lightweight, angular trailers were designed by Garrett Finney, an architect who came to camper design by way of NASA, where he worked on the International Space Station’s “Habitation Module” (astronaut-speak for “home”).
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