The Long Now Clock

Fort Mason Center is now home to another museum: The Long Now Clock Museum. But, it's not really a museum,it's a store/education center featuring a model of a clock being built on the West Coast. What 's so special about a clock? Come on! A clock is nothing new, to be sure. But this clock is different.
The 9-foot prototype of the 10,000-year all mechanical Clock was designed by Danny Hillis and completed in 01999. Driven by helical weight towers, the Clock's rotating pendulum ticks once a minute. A mechanical binary computer calculates what appears on the display face, which includes local sun and moon positions, moon phase, position of visible stars, and the 26,000-precession of equinoxes. A year readout shows the next 10,000 years.
The actual Clock will be installed under a mountain in west Texas, east of El Paso. The position is being excavated at this time. Parts are being made in Seattle, WA, and San Rafael, CA. Materials used include tungsten steel, titanium, and ceramic bearings. It is being funded with $42 millions of dollars, largely from Jeff Bezos, wealthy technocrat from Silicon Valley.
Stewart Brand, philosopher/thinker is involved and sits on the board of directors.
The model occupies a portion of space in the museum, which also houses offices of IT members of the organization.
Another project of the group includes the digitizing of all known languages on earth, which would then be placed on chips and collected in one place.
So, maybe the Mayor will get a close up look at the Long NOw Clock when completed and installed in Texas sometime soon. It is not in a fly-in--fly-out location; more of a walk -in, walk-out mountain.
Is it engineering? Philosophy? Art? or big kids with their toys? Time will tell.