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Designing for time scales that dwarf the designers' lifetimes is fascinating. Another one is The 10,000 Year Clock by The Long Now Foundation.[1]

A huge clock is being built into a mountain owned by Jeff Bezos that will keep time for 10,000 years with minimal maintenance.

[1] http://longnow.org/clock/

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As I get older I am getting increasingly annoyed by anything that requires me to keep up with some sort of schedule or it falls apart. I particularly loathe monthly events (especially bills and subscriptions), and even yearly tasks seem like they are coming faster and faster.

I'm starting to wish everything would be designed with unattended 10,000 year time scales in mind.

Totally agreed.

Sci-fi books and shows often feature a trope of the protagonists unearthing some ancient alien/precursor tech that's many thousands of years old, and still in working condition[0]. Ever since encountering this theme, I too find myself wishing tech was built for longevity. Wouldn't it be cool if in far future, my great-grandkids find some piece of tech I was using, and it would still be working?

Related is my hatred for planned obsolescence and related business moves - often justified by saying that good engineering means minimizing costs, and thus designing for "just right" longevity; somehow this "just right" lifespan always ends up being perfect for generating recurring revenue for the manufacturer. Totally by coincidence.

[0] - See e.g. StarGate series, which deals with this a lot - from the stargate network itself to various other ancient doodads they find and repurpose or reverse-engineer.

> Wouldn't it be cool if in far future, my great-grandkids find some piece of tech I was using, and it would still be working?

We have this, it's just relegated to the extremely expensive or extremely simple. Basically, metal items without too many fine parts. Old swords and knives might last for a few hundred years in a good environment (and alloys might help? That's a technology of itself), and gold lasts quite a long time, but is limited in which items it's appropriate to use for.

It's not impossible to believe that my great grandkids might use my favorite paring knife. It's also not all that special sounding, since we've had that for centuries, so it doesn't seem all that amazing. I imagine there was some point in history it did though.