Architect of Long-Term Intelligence
Some people invent technologies; others invent entire ways of thinking. Danny Hillis is one of the latter. A computer scientist, inventor, and visionary, he has spent his career exploring the intersection of computation, intelligence, and time. Whether designing the Connection Machine, co-founding the Long Now Foundation, or pioneering new ways of thinking about biological computing, Hillis has always been at the frontier of human knowledge.
His Greatest Tribble
In the 01980s, Hillis built the Connection Machine, a supercomputer that mirrored the structure of a human brain – processing information in parallel rather than sequentially. It was a radical idea, one that laid the groundwork for modern artificial intelligence and machine learning. But for Hillis, this was just a stepping stone. He wasn’t just interested in computing power; he wanted to understand how intelligence emerges from networks, systems and time itself.
His later projects, from biological computation to designing a 10,000-Year Clock, show his commitment to seeing beyond the immediate and into the deep future. To Hillis, intelligence isn’t just about processing information – it’s about thinking across centuries.
The Long Now & The Deep Future
Hillis didn’t just theorize about long-term thinking – he built a monument to it. As a co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, he designed the 10,000-Year Clock, a clock that will tick once per year, chime once per century, and keep time for ten millennia. The goal? To encourage humanity to move beyond short-term decision-making and into a mindset of stewardship, responsibility, and patience.
The Long Now Foundation, alongside Stewart Brand and other visionaries, continues to explore long-term problem-solving, civilization-scale thinking, and the preservation of knowledge. Hillis’s work challenges us to stop thinking in days or decades – and start thinking in millennia.
His Vision of the Universe
Hillis doesn’t see intelligence as something limited to humans or even machines – it is an emergent property of complex systems. His work suggests that life, intelligence, and technology are deeply intertwined, and that by understanding one, we gain insight into the others. He challenges us to stop thinking in short-term cycles and instead ask : what kind of civilization do we want to be in a thousand years?
Did He Keep His Inner Child Alive ?
Absolutely. Few minds are as playful as Hillis’s. Whether he’s designing a computer that mimics biology, building a clock meant to last for ten millennia, or playing with radical ideas about the future of intelligence, he embodies the curiosity of someone who never stopped asking : “What if?”
Danny Hillis is not just shaping technology ; he’s shaping how we think about time, intelligence and the future of our species. A true Yunatic, he reminds us that the greatest questions are not just for today – but for the next thousand years.