Brian Eno and Danny Hillis are long time friends and collaborators. Eno is an influential British musician, producer and artist known both for his work with some of the biggest names in rock as well as his identification and popularization of ambient music. Hillis is an American inventor, scientist, author, and engineer known for his work as one of the key inventors of parallel computing.

It was at MIT that Hillis developed The Connection Machine, the first massively parallel computer, with the help of physicist Richard Feynman. It made use of over 60,000 microprocessors and helped lay the foundation for modern supercomputer architecture. He’s since worked as an Imagineer at Disney, co-founded a research and development company called Applied Minds and spoken at multiple TED events on cancer research and the need for a backup internet.

As the creator of some of the world’s fastest computers, Danny Hillis has helped “enforce” Moore’s law but also to question its effects. Faster and faster computers may help us with certain problems, but they can’t tell us which problems to focus on; instantly available information gives us new insight into the present, but can’t necessarily help us see where we’re going. In mulling over these problems, Hillis sought a way to encourage long-term thinking beyond the newest technological developments and earnings reports.

Danny Hillis first publicly proposed his idea for a clock that could last 10,000 years in 01995, in Wired Magazine. Describing some of the conversations he’d already had about the idea, he mentioned what had come from discussing it with Eno:

“Artist Brian Eno felt it should have a name, so he gave it one: The Clock of the Long Now.”

It was only a year later, in 01996, that Danny Hillis and Brian Eno, along with Stewart Brand and others, turned these conversations into action by forming The Long Now Foundation. In a few more years, Stewart Brand’s book The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility outlined the guiding philosophy that had been developed in those conversations. It includes an anecdote from Eno about how he came to coin the Clock’s (and the Foundation’s) name: Eno was astonished by the contrast between an acquaintance’s opulent loft and run-down neighborhood.

During dinner I asked the hostess, “Do you like living here?” “Oh sure,” she replied, “this is the loveliest place I’ve ever lived.”

I realized that the “here” she lived in stopped at her front door. This was a very strange thought to me. My “here” includes the neighborhood at least. After that, I noticed that young arty New Yorkers were just as local in their sense of “now.” “Now” meant “this week.” Everyone had just got there, and was just going somewhere else. No one had any investment in any kind of future except their own, conceived in the narrowest terms.

I wrote in my notebook that December, “More and more I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now.”

Eno recounted this story and expanded on his thoughts around “The Long Now” in the first of the monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking. He later appeared with SIM City creator Will Wright to discuss the fun and aesthetic potential of generative systems.

That love for generative systems influenced Eno’s involvement in the design of the Clock of the Long Now. He has guided the clock’s sonic component – its chimes. Bells and chimes, in fact, were central to an early form of generative music called change ringing. In that spirit, Eno collaborated with Danny Hillis to ensure that visitors to the Clock will have the opportunity to hear it chime 10 bells in a unique sequence each day at noon.

The story of how this came to be is told by Mr. Eno himself in the liner notes of January 07003: Bell Studies for The Clock of the Long Now, a collection of musical experiments he synthesized and recorded in 02003:

I wrote to Danny Hillis asking whether he could come up with an algorithm for the job. Yes, he wrote back, and in fact he could come up with an algorithm for generating all the possible algorithms for that job. Not having the storage space for a lot of extra algorithms in my studio, I decided to settle for just the one.

W. Daniel ("Danny") Hillis is the co-founder of Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists and artists that develop technology solutions in partnership with leading companies and entrepreneurs. He is also the co-founder of Applied Minds, visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, the Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), professor of research medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, and research professor of engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering. Previously, he was Vice President, Research and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, and Disney Fellow, where he developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses. He is the winner of many awards, including the Dan David Prize.

An inventor, scientist, engineer, author, and visionary, Hillis pioneered the concept of parallel computers that is now the basis for most supercomputers, as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases. He holds hundreds of U.S. patents, covering parallel computers, touch interfaces, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, and various electronic and mechanical devices.

As a student at MIT, Hillis began to study the physical limitations of computation and the possibility of building highly parallel computers. This work led to the design of a massively parallel computer with 64,000 processors in 1985, called the Connection Machine. During this period at MIT, Hillis cofounded Thinking Machines Corp. to produce and market parallel computers. In addition to designing the company's major products, Hillis worked closely with his customers in applying parallel computers to problems in astrophysics, aircraft design, financial analysis, genetics, computer graphics, medical imaging, image understanding, neurobiology, materials science, cryptography and subatomic physics. At Thinking Machines, he built a legendary team of scientists, designers and engineers who later became leaders and innovators in multiple industries.

In 2005, Hillis and others from Applied Minds initiated Metaweb Technologies to develop a semantic data storage infrastructure for the Internet, and Freebase, an "open, shared database of the world's knowledge". That company was acquired by Google and became the basis of the Google Knowledge Graph.

W. Daniel ("Danny") Hillis is the co-founder of Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists and artists that develop technology solutions in partnership with leading companies and entrepreneurs. He is also the co-founder of Applied Minds, visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, the Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), professor of research medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, and research professor of engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering. Previously, he was Vice President, Research and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, and Disney Fellow, where he developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses. He is the winner of many awards, including the Dan David Prize.

An inventor, scientist, engineer, author, and visionary, Hillis pioneered the concept of parallel computers that is now the basis for most supercomputers, as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases. He holds hundreds of U.S. patents, covering parallel computers, touch interfaces, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, and various electronic and mechanical devices.

As a student at MIT, Hillis began to study the physical limitations of computation and the possibility of building highly parallel computers. This work led to the design of a massively parallel computer with 64,000 processors in 1985, called the Connection Machine. During this period at MIT, Hillis cofounded Thinking Machines Corp. to produce and market parallel computers. In addition to designing the company's major products, Hillis worked closely with his customers in applying parallel computers to problems in astrophysics, aircraft design, financial analysis, genetics, computer graphics, medical imaging, image understanding, neurobiology, materials science, cryptography and subatomic physics. At Thinking Machines, he built a legendary team of scientists, designers and engineers who later became leaders and innovators in multiple industries.

Hillis has published scientific papers in journals such as Science, Nature, Modern Biology, Communications of the ACM, and International Journal of Theoretical Physics and has been an editor of several scientific journals, including Artificial Life, Complexity, Complex Systems, and Applied Mathematics. He has also written extensively on technology for publications such as Newsweek, Wired, and Scientific American. He is the author of two books, Connection Machine and The Pattern on the Stone. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, a Fellow of the International Leadership Forum, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is co-founder & co-chair of The Long Now Foundation and the designer of the 10,000 year mechanical clock.

Brian Eno is a composer, producer and visual artist. A pioneer of musical electronics, his manipulation of audio textures was first featured during the early 01970's as a founding member of Roxy Music. His solo albums and collaborative musical compositions with John Cale, Robert Fripp, David Byrne, Jon Hassell and David Bowie have been in circulation world-wide over the last 30 years. Eno has produced records for numerous artists including U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Jane Siberry, Coldplay and performance artist Laurie Anderson. He identified and described Ambient Music and Generative Music both of which have since blossomed into major musical movements.

Concurrently with his recording career, Eno has been involved in the design and production of audio-visual gallery installations since 01978. Currently his installations utilise his 77 Million Paintings software - a generative system which produces and endless and non-repeating series of changing paintings. Recently he has produced (with Peter Chilvers) Bloom, a generative music piece - and one of the most successful musical apps for the iPhone.

His widely used set of oracle cards, Oblique Strategies was published in 01975 and remains in print. His diary and essays A Year (with Swollen Appendices) was published in May 01996. He is a board member of the disarmament group BASIC (British American Security Information Council) and the environmental NGO ClientEarth.

Brian Eno Recordings and Products can be purchased through EnoShop. Concurrently with his recording career, Eno has been involved in the design and production of audio-visual gallery installations since 01978. Currently his installations utilise his 77 Million Paintings software - a generative system which produces and endless and non-repeating series of changing paintings. Recently he has produced (with Peter Chilvers) Bloom, a generative music piece - and one of the most successful musical apps for the iPhone.

His widely used set of oracle cards, Oblique Strategies was published in 01975 and remains in print. His diary and essays A Year (with Swollen Appendices) was published in May 01996. He is a board member of the disarmament group BASIC (British American Security Information Council) and the environmental NGO ClientEarth.

Brian Eno Recordings and Products can be purchased through EnoShop.