No one is objecting to 20-100 year thinking and even then planning is hard if you look back 100 years and see what has changed. I would be very happy if these people were putting their time and money into solving problems on this scale like the Gates foundation etc. This is just a sci-fi hobby.
My point stands. Uber has been a public company for all of 5 hours now, and their stock is a few dollars less per share than it opened, and everybody is freaking out and wondering what it all means.
It's not about planning out 10,000 years, or even 100; it's something more abstract than that. What will your legacy be? Your family's legacy? Your country's? Humanity's? I don't have any personal connection to somebody who will be alive 1000 years from now, or even 200, but I still don't want to leave them a dead, depleted planet.
Is the clock a bit frivolous? Sure. But it's not about the clock. The clock is merely a symbol, that we have considered our place in history, that we recognize we are part of something larger, and we want to be good stewards of our future.
Fair enough, if you think mere symbolism is more important than putting the money ($42M) towards tangable things like childhood education which has an actual 70 year impact. Having so much time and money to spend on symbolism is pretty obnoxious when there are actual long term issues we can actually solve for real people.
