Keeping Time Into The Great Beyond

Berggruen fellow Vincent Ialenti, an anthropologist of nuclear-waste deep-time at USC, embeds himself in the Long Now Foundation's annual "trip of self-reliance" in eastern Nevada's Snake Range and reflects on the 10,000-year clock under construction nearby. Against critics who call it a frightening distraction and fans who call it admirable, he argues it is something else — a monument to long-term thinking that can unlock an interpretive patience our intergenerational crises (climate, nuclear waste, biodiversity) desperately need.