[Red Badger]

Because he can......................

[freedumb2003]

It used to be cocaine was God’s way of telling you that you have too much money.

Now it is insane projects.

Better the latter than the former!

Go for it, Jeff!

[Menehune56]

In another nod to the 'how long will civilization last?' debate, the 10,000 Year Clock can be maintained by simple bronze-age technology. That’s predicated on the theory that human societies of the future could easily be more primitive than our own.

[deadrock]

Is anyone on the ‘richest list’ not a lunatic?

[bruin66]

See tag line. I think Einstein was on to something...

[ctdonath2]

Because it’s a really cool idea on many levels, and because some interesting people are willing to throw enough money at it to make it happen.

Like art & architecture, I think it’s worthwhile to do some engineering projects ONLY for the purpose of achieving an engineering marvel that will survive across generations/millennia - a kind of art.

(So long as it’s privately & voluntarily funded, of course.)

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

It’s to go with these speakers also made inside a mountain;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXwzSPc0FoA

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Why 10,000 years exactly? Most civilizations last about 10,000 years.

There is no civilization on Earth that has lasted 10,000 years yet. Is this a projection or an educated guess?

[George Rand]

If we’ve learned anything about this planet, it’s that it does a hard-reset every now and then - which is important. That’s how it works.
My guess is he wants to leave his “pyramid” behind so that if in the future something like that happens, it will be found.
Just my guess, but if you want to look at the bright side, think of all the mouths it fed to get it done.
Capitalism

[Kartographer]

Can he make one I can wear? or at least one I could install in one of those old English style phone booths? ;-)

[blam]

A clock never fed a hungry child.

[CrazyIvan]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[Moonman62]

I would be more impressed if he fixed his corrupt newspaper.

[SunkenCiv]

If I were going for self-aggrandizement, and had a rocket company, I'd set up an artificial meteor shower to arrive on my birthday, exactly, for the next 10,000 years.

[ADemocratNoMore]

Meh, I’ll see your clock and raise you Paulstretch.

Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

In hyperstretch mode it will stretch an audio file 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times (10^18) so a one minute file will take 1.90129 trillion years to play.

Source code available at the link above. Try it, it’s fun.

[piasa]

Designed to stay accurate for that huge time period, the giant clock will tick once a year, moving its century hand every 100 years, and send out a cuckoo once a millennia

I'd hate to be the artist who had to body cast Al Gore or the more economical Nancy Pelosi to be cast as that big bronze cuckoo.