Enter Brian Eno's clock of the future. In all the arguments about whether this matters, one of the greatest losses rarely gets a look in. At the same time as being invited to contemplate God as eternal, churchgoers remember their own place in a continuum of belief which spans generations before them with the implication of generations to come. But we're losing touch with this timescale, let alone that of eastern faiths such as Hinduism, which refer to trillions of years. Given the pace of change, we find it harder and harder to focus on the future.
Politicians see little further than the next election.
Stock markets and the media can't see much beyond the next day and corporations beyond the next quarter. We seem to find it harder and harder to imagine the future much beyond the next decade, yet the consequences of our behaviour will last longer than any previous generation could have imagined. Nuclear waste, for example, will be radioactive for thousands of years. All the biggest environmental problems, such as the destruction of biodiversity and global warming, sit in this gap between our failure to imagine the future and our unprecedented destructive capacity. To challenge that failure of imagination is the purpose of the California-based Long Now foundation.