Cleverness tramples wisdom in our contemporary flurry, while technology ushers us to the brink of the Singularity, marking the obliteration of human understanding and knowledge. Truly an impending horror, the counterbalance proposed by The Long Now Foundation in the US - and the hypothesis of this book - is the construction of a clock complete with a 10,000 year library. Entombed within a mountain in the Nevada Desert, the Clock/Library will inspire the conservation of knowledge and a lengthened perspective of the future - termed the Long Now. Discussion, in the book, of the viability of such a project is purposely restricted. However, with the substantial remainder dedicated to a tepid exploration of past and future responsibility, regrettably, much on these pages is driven by rhetoric and repetitive ideals. Nevertheless this is a powerful undertaking which will undoubtedly be realised as a second Shrine of Ise.