I think work like yours can begin to lay the groundwork for this kind of project. I hope you will continue to pursue the idea. And if you are at all interested in the GCRI, please stay in touch. We are always glad to connect with people whose expertise can help us think through these issues.
How to avoid steering blindly: The case for a robust repository of human knowledge by Jens C. Niemeyer
Jens C. Niemeyer,
Of all the essays that I have read thus far, yours is unique. You have increased the variety of subject matter. The contest is better for it. I enjoyed the essay. During reading it, I found myself wondering if there was information that should not be preserved? I am not suggesting a need for censorship, it is just that your essay prompted my mind to wonder in that direction. Excellent addition to the contest. Good luck to you.
James Putnam
Hi Jens,
I'm glad to have stumbled on this excellent essay. A couple of comments:
First, are you familiar with the Long Now Foundation? This seems like the type of project they'd be interested in.
Second, from your essay: "The repository must therefore not only be robust against man-made or natural disasters, it must also provide the means for accessing and copying digital data without computers, data connections, or even electricity."
This is an interesting requirement. Have you thought about what types of storage systems would be suitable? For example, certain kinds of paper are quite robust over long periods of time; maybe it would be possible to design a system of paper records and error-correcting codes that humans could use to reliably preserve, access, and update the data. Sounds like a cool project to me :)
Best,
Daniel
Hi Jens,
Wonderful essay! You offer convincing arguments about the importance of the repository, and I agree with you.
Best regards,
Mohammed
Jens,
An indexed atlas of human knowledge? -- absolutely!
Universal individual access to the common well of knowledge is really our only guarantee of individual freedom and prosperity; free thinking minds are requisite to a free people. And I particularly like your proposal for mapping the knowledge multi-dimensionally at multiple resolutions. In terms of network robustness, it corresponds with my application of multi-scale variety to economic and social systems, if one trades hierarchical system nodes for a laterally linked redundant network.
Great job, high score from me.
Best,
Tom
Jens,
I finally get to your essay and cannot believe how close it is to mine (here).
I am in total agreement with the repository concept:
- "Steering the future hinges on the availability of scientific and cultural data from the past". You seem to imply that this data be limited to those involved in "decision making" in the past. I emphasize that a part of this data (the part that describes the 'what' and not the 'why' of effect-cause natural relationships) be explicitly made available to the global public.
- Your motivation is "digital amnesia"; my motivation is enabling more people to remedy their individual life-limiting natural circumstances; We are both seeking humanity's future with benefit for the masses: you start with the masses as a unit while I am starting from the individuals that comprise the masses.
Please let me know if I understand you correctly. I am looking forward to your comments on my essay (here).
- Ajay
Dear Jens Niemeyer,
We agree on that discoveries, inventions, and other immaterial goods are treasures that deserve to be used and to be preserved to some extent. The loss of the ancient library of Alexandria was not too bad for two reasons:
- There were books at other places too.
- New approaches led out of deadlocks.
Let's learn from human brain: Permanent selection of what is worth to be stored and forgetting of the rest is indispensable.
This contest should be understood as asking for basic questions, not just as an opportunity to justify demanding funding.
I enjoyed using Goettingen's digitalization of immature scientific work as a chance to reveal basic flaws e.g. by Georg Cantor. Therefore I appreciate the belonging funding. The chance to save treasures might be larger with redundancies and distributed locations of deposits.
Some physicists who met in Goettingen after WWII are known for their utterance concerning the topic that I dealt with in my essay. I would like to know your view too.
Eckard
James,
Thank you! Trying to answer your question, I believe it will be unavoidable that some (in fact, most) information won't be conserved, for purely practical reasons. Deciding which information to keep will perhaps be a never-ending challenge and dispute for humanity, but I argue that it can also be a healthy process, as it will help humanity find its common values. Of course, this process needs to be peaceful and transparent, and it must offer every human being a chance to participate.
Jens
Daniel,
What I had in mind was a hierarchy of systems from high-technology, high-capacity data centers to long-lived low-tech, low-capacity devices along the lines of robust e-ink readers. But obviously this is a moving target with many opportunities for research. Glad you like it!
I didn't know of the Long Now Foundation when I submitted the article, but I have been made aware of it by other authors. Certainly something I will follow up.
Jens
Mohammed,
Thank you for your encouragement!
Jens
Tom,
Glad you liked the idea, thank you. And I agree that the theme of network robustness overlaps with some ideas in your article - very interesting analogy!
Jens
[deleted]
Ajay,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
I emphatically agree that access to the repository must not be limited to those involved in decision making. In fact, I believe that access to this condensed source of human knowledge should be considered a human right (even though I doubt that this is a realistic near-term goal). We are completely on the same side on this issue.
While I put some emphasis on digital amnesia as an existential (and avoidable) risk, I also point out that the repository would serve an important purpose as a tool for education and research in "normal" times. Again, it seems that we basically agree on the goals, starting from different motivations. This makes both of our cases stronger, I think.
I am looking forward to reading your article this weekend. Good luck!
Jens
Dear Prof. Niemeyer,
This repository knowledge for humanity is a necessity for our humanity. Excellent essay and I especially like what you wrote here: "Ideally, a knowledge repository should allow flexible navigation in depth and breadth at an arbitrary level of detail ("multi-resolution") within the space of (appropriately linked) fields of knowledge ("multi-dimensional"). In other words, it should provide overlapping maps of the space of human knowledge with adjustable resolution, i.e. an atlas of knowledge space. Clearly, the atlas must continually evolve by ingesting new information and re-organizing existing correlations. This can only be achieved if the repository acquires a certain (and growing) degree of autonomy using artificial intelligence, combined with human supervision, for creating and updating maps."
Thanks for sharing your solution to us.
Best wishes,
Leo KoGuan
Jens,
Thank you for an inspiring essay. You brilliantly made the case that digital amnesia is a real danger in case of sudden civilization decline, and that it is important to think of ways to build a robust knowledge repository that could speed up civilization's "rebirth", if the need ever arises. You also rightly mentioned that building a knowledge repository is a worthwhile endeavor by itself, even if no catastrophe ever befalls us, because of its potential for research and education.
In our hyper-connected world, we are overwhelmed by a deluge of information, and I think that in our incessant drive towards the new, we do not spend enough efforts in synthesizing the information we already know. If we want to build a compact knowledge repository, we have to prioritize, make choices, even improve the pedagogical efficiency of our best learning materials in order to ensure that we could start again by using this information.
In my essay, I proposed that we should try to put forward a worldwide futurocentric education initiative, aimed at raising the knowledge and awareness of the citizens of the world about the issues that are the most important for the future of humanity. In order for the initiative to be successful, we will need to carefully construct an optimal futurocentric curriculum: I believe there could be a lot of overlap between the content of the futurocentric curriculum and what we would preserve in a knowledge repository... so there is certainly a lot of synergy between our proposals.
How about a Futurocentric Repository and Education Initiative? I think Leibowitz would be proud! :)
Marc
Marc,
Thank you for your remarks and suggestions. I absolutely agree that education and conservation of knowledge are deeply linked. In fact, to some extent they depend on each other, as I also tried to explain in my article. There is indeed a lot of synergy in our ideas. I very much enjoyed reading your article (see my comments in your forum). Good luck!
Jens
Sorry, Marc, I accidentally wrote my reply into a separate thread, see below.
Jens
Hi Jens,
nice original ideas, well expressed, with adequate structure, and sufficiently topical - I think your essay deserves high positions in the ranking.
One aspect that could have been a bit more developed (or, that I did not grasp well enough) is this idea of `bootstrapping` after a global disaster. Is this qualitatively different from a huge data recovery process? How is this influenced by the status (in the widest sense of the word) of the `survivors`?
You also write: `until all the necessary infrastructure has been recreated to access the entire data (which might be centuries later)`. How can this process take so long? Which stages would you envisage in between? When you write `it must also provide the means for accessing and copying digital data without computers, data connections, or even electricity` what do you have in mind? New forms of stored energy that can power these systems for decades?
It occurred to me that a mention to Wolfram Alpha could have been appropriate, given its ambition to collect the body of human knowledge in a more easily accessible repository than Google.
The aspect that I found most original and stimulating is that of comparing the advanced smartest version of the repository to the human brain, with its ability to continuously store new data, integrate and learn. This scenario is perfectly in line with the complex-system-oriented vision at humanity, with the sphere of knowledge (the `noosphere`) implemented by the Web and its future versions representing the brain of the super-organism emerging from the interactions among humans and human societies. The puzzling and fascinating problem that I see, in this respect, is about the extent to which individual humans can eventually take conscious part to the super-life of the emergent super-organism (the ant-anthill duality).
Best regards
Tommaso
Hi Jens,
The repository you propose is indeed essential for a more secure human future. I believe that appropriate persons and institutions should step forward to work out the first steps that you mention at the top of page 8. We can begin now to implement your ideas.
Laurence Hitterdale
Jens,
Glad to know we have the same goal with the individual in mind.
Glad you take my essay as encouragement! That's exactly why I wrote it.
Would appreciate any comments on that what restricts your sharing. Thank you.
The very best of luck to you too.
-- Ajay
Jens,
Time grows short, so I am going back to my comments for rating. Your past response below to my questions do ring true:
"It is not only cataclysmic events that threaten the access to information by individuals. Any substantial decline in technological infrastructure, including one triggered by climate change and/or social instabilities, will suffice. In fact, just having the "wrong" kind of leadership prevents parts of the human population from getting access to essential information even now. Making sure that this cannot happen on a global scale is what concerns me."
My essay's contention does run along these lines and sees "looking beyond" our solar system and our greed concerns, as well as "looking within," our minds, the microcosm of the universe, as the solution. This while garnering leadership with reason.
Jim