How do you make something last a thousand years?
Because that is a long period of time - there are very few human endeavors that have lasted a millennium.
The buildings behind me aren't designed to last that long -
a century perhaps before they're razed and redeveloped with something else.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, that's lasted an incredibly long time.
There are universities who can trace back nearly a thousand years.
There's a construction company in Japan that started in 578 A.D. - and went into liquidation a few years ago.
But if you have a project that wants to last that long, well, you're not going to be alive to see it through.
I mean, we can hope that life extension technologies will come along - but right now,
humans don't live much past a hundred years.
So what do you do if your project requires a thousand?
Well, behind me is Longplayer, inside Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse, here in London.
Longplayer is a music composition for singing bowls,
designed to last one thousand years - from the start of 2000 to the end of 2999.
And that is an incredibly long time. In order for that to work,
it doesn't have to be a person that sees it through, it has to be a corporation.
In this case - a non-profit, a charity - something called the Longplayer Trust,
whose job it is to keep the composition going.
Right now it's being synthesized by a computer.
There's a large instrument in there that is in the process of being completed.
And the trust's job is this:
• Update the computer when it needs updating,
• Port the software to another language when it needs porting,
• Find replacements for the people on the Longplayer Trust board when they need replacing,
so that, in nine-hundred and eighty-something years,
whether it's here, or somewhere else, or if the sea levels rise: another city or country entirely,
you will still be able to hear Longplayer somewhere in the world.
That is how you make something last a thousand years.
You use many people, and an entity designed to last that long - which is: a corporation.
Which is something, you might not have known.
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