I wish they would have gone with Holocene Era epoch for the year instead of using the same BC/AD // CE/BCE one we currently use padded to five digits. Makes a lot more sense to me if we think of this year as 12017 than as 02017.
Agreed, with one caveat: we should probably think of THIS year as 12018!
The 10,000 Year Clock extends our perception of time further into the future.
Adopting the Holocene Calendar, as proposed by the geologist Cesare Emiliani in 1993, would extend our understanding of the "long now" further into the past, which I would argue is equally as important.
Is there broad consensus on exactly when the Holocene Era began?
The best that I can tell is "approximately 11700 years before 1950", which means we're approximately in the year 11768. But approximate years are not enough for people who actually need to type them into calendar apps.
It doesn't even have to be measured from any real event as long as everyone is on the same page. Jesus wasn't born on December 25, 1 AD, either; but nobody cares.
That's why the epoch was arbitrarily set at 10,000 years before the BC/AD epoch. A rough approximation that lines up with the current calendar works a lot better for everyone than a more accurate approximation.
