Hello Jens,

Very interesting ideas here, though with your last comment, I am of a mind that you cant just separate the "How" and "Where" of steering our future if we want both knowledge and species survival. My essay addresses the survival, but in other papers I have worked, I have addressed the backing up of both knowledge and biodiversity samples (e.g., 4 or 5 seed banks around the world) on Mars. Both of which would be readily available to be interfaced with an active Earth or reintroduced to a seriously damaged Earth.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Donald Barker

  • [deleted]

  • Post #64

Dear Jens,

thank you for your neat essay. I support your idea of a `repository' as I, as many others do, believe that we are on the verge of an unprecedented ecological crisis, which could well destroy our current civilization. Such an event has the power of annihilating most of our knowledge, in particular because our knowledge has never been so fragile. To speak about a field of which I have some understanding, namely scientific knowledge, it would not be the first time in history that it is brought back into oblivion by a major global event. Hellenistic science developed already around the 2nd century BC what we call `the scientific method', which is a complex system of knowledge that has been really discovered only once in human history, in that particular environment that was the scientific community of the Hellenistic reigns. It disappeared, mainly due to political events (the conquest of the Hellenistic reigns on behalf of the Romans, and then the takeover of Rome on behalf of Christianity). This precious mass of knowledge was rediscovered during humanism in Europe and the reinassance, and what we usually mark as the `birth' of the scientific method, namely Galileo formulating it in the way we understand it today, was really more of a re-discovery. It was triggered by the very few Greek texts that made it to Reinassance Europe through the Middle Ages, chiefly thanks to the Arab scholars and scientists who kept translating these texts. The main blessing that allowed a tiny bit of this ancient knowledge to survive up to modern age was the fact that book were written on very robust media, like papyrus or even better, parchment. Some ancient texts have been rediscovered during the last centuries in `palimpsests', which are parchments that have been cancelled and re-used for prayer books by monks, which fortunately still carried traces of the original text.

But today's knowledge, as you point out in your essay, relies of way more fragile media (electronic media can't survive much longer than a decade, and more robust media require constant energy to be kept on). Moreover, we risk to lose even the knowledge necessary to access those electronic media. If we face collapse, our knowledge is in even greater danger than the ancient one.

If I was to suggest one limited amount of knowledge I would give absolute priority to be preserved in your `ark', it would be the scientific method (maybe as a scientist I'm biased!). This because it was independently discovered only once in human history, and it is necessary to rediscover all of the scientific knowledge we have today. It would be the fundamental core of wisdom I would like to pass to a `postapocalyptic' generation. Everything starts from there.

Anyway, nice and inspiring essay, and good luck with it.

Flavio

    Society is very dependent on the services provided by the infrastructure of civilization. There is little that people can do without the energy enabling communication and many other facets (fuels for transport, potable water supply, etc)of industrialization. Humanity will have to steer the future of this infrastructure if future generations are to enjoy some of these services.

    Hello Jens, May I post a short, but sincere critique of your essay? I'd ask you to return the favour. Here's my policy on that. - Mike

    Dear Mr. Jens Niemeyer

    I have some ideas for repository systems. It should be based on biological principles, as DNA replication, or on the principle of internet that it is stored in multiple locations. The practical realisation of such principle would be to store random parts of knowledge on a part of disk on every sold computer, or still better on a new, non active disk on a computer. When a disaster will happen, some of those computers will survive and they can behave like servers for new internet. Of course, this needs a calculation how much computers we need for such storage. Probably it is not enough space, but after catastrophe some knowledge will remain. Even, every computer drive or flash drive can be filled with such data and after being filled with data the data can be partially deleted. It is not necessary that the sold drives are empty.

    Such approach will also enable some browsing on computer, although web will not be accessible.

    Other possibility is to built one center on a moon, which will survive even in a case on nuclear war on earth. But this is not so easy feasible than the above model.

    The next big question is organization of such knowledge. One help is to make knowledge to the final form from working form. For instance, when the theory of everything (TOE) will be found, it can be (maybe) written on a t-shirt. Thus much knowledge, how to obtain TOE, and many speculations will not be so necessary. The hierarchy and organization of all such knowledge will also be beneficial as new knowledge. On the other side, how to present knowledge is also a not finished story. For instance, I claim that special relativity is not yet presented clearly enough.

    These ideas are obtained in one hour and if thorough reflection will not completely delete them, it will be a success.

    My essay

    Best regards

    Janko Kokosar

    Jens

    As you point out, the acquisition, retention and usage of knowledge is a very important aspect of steering the future. But steering the future involves making the best possible use of the remaining natural resources for the operation and maintenance of the aging infrastructure. For example, what use will the knowledge about how to build, operate and pilot airliners be when they are no longer a viable operation due to lack of fuel and materials.

    The useful knowledge will be that which steers the future operation of the aging infrastructure. I propose in my essay that the ELAM movement should sponsor the acquisition of such useful knowledge.

    Regards

    Denis

    Dear Jens,

    I agree that a repository is necessary for humanity, and you explain this so eloquently in your well-written essay. (I lost in several occasions data that was very important to me, and now I use regularly source control (even for articles) and make backups. I have a friend who works with financial data, and backs it up on multiple drives, in multiple places, including at a bank.) I liked "A Canticle for Leibowitz", but I also remember reading long time ago a short story in which our civilization ends, and some other civilization (I don't recall if from another planet, or a future civilization on earth) founds only a Mickey Mouse cartoon, which makes them very confuse. Great essay, and good luck with the contest!

    Best regards,

    Cristi

      Flavio,

      Thank you for your interesting thoughts on this subject! I share your bias (and profession), so it isn't hard for me to agree on all accounts. Was the scientific method discovered independently in China? In any case, methods for (re)discovering information should take high priority in the repository (and perhaps preference over the information itself), as they represent, to a certain extent, a compressed version of the information. Very good point!

      Jens

      Cristi,

      Thank you! I guess most of us have had our "I wish I had backed this up" moments. We also have to store our scientific data (used for publications) for a certain amount of time, which creates the non-trivial question which data is actually relevant for the obtained results...anyway, if you remember the name of the story with the cartoon from the past, please let me know!

      Jens

      Your repository is an excellent idea. The ultimate repository would include a backup for the readers, i.e. the human species.

      5 days later

      Dear Jens,

      I couldn't remember, something I read as a child. If I will remember, I will tell you. Until then, check this out.

      Best regards,

      Cristi

      22 days later

      Hello Jens,

      I posted an article giving some publicity to your piece:

      http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20140705

      Congrats on being a finalist!

      Rick Searle

        Rick,

        Thank you, this is very kind of you. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on these articles.

        Jens

        a month later

        Congratulation for the result in the contest.

        I am thinking that your idea is a beautiful idea for a long term prevervation of human knowledge.

        I am thinking that a similar idea was the Library of Alexandria, that we have lost forever, so that it is not possible to evaluate each future possible disaster.

        The current nearest project is Wikipedia (the different languages could be the Rosetta Stone in the future) but the original documents are not ever linked (the documents are not ever open), but a link between Wikipedia and the Google Book project could collect the whole human knowledge (until the end of the copyright); I see only two problems, the intellectual property of the scientific document (I don't know now if there is an end of the copyright for these documents) and the aging of the electronic support (what is the life of a dvd, a hard drive, a operating system, a reading software?); a solution can be to use different supports, and software, and operating system, so that the different technologies can have different lifetimes, so that can be possible to change the support that it is less reliable after an automatic control with comparison between different supports and technologies.

        Write a Reply...