Planetology

Thesis – Working Ideas

Nature and Nurture

“If have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Issac Newton

“What Hath God Wrought”

Samuel Morse and Annie Ellsworth

Numbers 23:23

For the purposes of this argument, let’s assume that man needs a certain amount of nature and nurture in order to survive and that we have reached our current state by mass communication and the ability to transfer information un-corrupted through vertical communication.  This communication allows us to build on the advancements that have come before us.  The ability to communicate through generations has allowed us to evolve rapidly on an extra-physical level. Another assumption for this argument is that because of our rapid advances in technology, we have no longer taken it upon ourselves evolve in a physical sense.  Meaning that that our DNA is no longer hardwiring features for our survival.  We have developed a symbiosis with technology, if somehow our knowledge of technology and the use of it was lost to us tomorrow, I do not believe it would be possible for a population of our size to continue. For that reason it can be assumed that our technological advances are synonymous with our social advances, and they cannot be separated.  For our thought processes we have made a few major transitions.  We can map human evolution throughout three transition phases. In a topological reading this map reads: biological, biological-social, social-biological, social. As a topological mapping of technology, one would assume this would read spoken language, visual language, written language, which would then need to be broken down further into speed of dissemination.  The speed of social evolution has increased exponentially since the birth of technology, which has been facilitated by the speed of information dispersal.  Technology such as the woodblock print, Block-books, The Printing Press, Telegraph, Telephone, Radio, Television, Fax Machine, Email, and finally the internet, have allowed for the dispersal of the same information to a large group of people quickly, and has facilitated the understanding of knowledge to a greater group of people who might be able to contribute to it.  Over time, we can spread more information to more people with less effort.

Information gathering

Allegory of the Cave

“The evolution of technology is the evolution of the Human Body.  Networks of communication, like any technology, are prosthetic organism, a new spatial system, a new architecture.”

Mark Wigley, Network Fever, P.86

“Binary logic is the spiritual reality of the root-tree. Even a discipline as “advanced” as linguistics retains the root tree as its fundamental image, and thus remains wedded to classical reflection (for example, Chomsky and his grammatical trees, which begin at a point S and proceed by dichotomy).  This is as much to say that this sytem of thought has never reached an understanding of multiplicity: in order to arrive at two following a spiritual method it must assume a strong principal unity.”

Deleuze and Guattari, Rhizome Versus Trees, p.27-8

Assumption 1: Since we have become aware of our evolution can now be classified as a top-down organization.

Assumption 2: Top down organization does lend itself to efficient growth patterns

Assumption 3: In order to have a more harmonious relationship with our environment we a better understanding of it.

Our relationship with our environment has changed greatly since early man.  We have lived long enough to see our impact on the whole earth.  We have chopped through mountains, created lakes, moved, rivers, with a speed faster than we could impart to our DNA.  Over time, organisms that we live with have placed into their DNA checks or social behaviors, that allow them to regulate themselves to act in accordance with their environment.  Pack behaviors, in wolves, salmon migration, are examples of regulatory behaviors of animals in their environment.  I think it is fair to say that we have not been able to regulate our affect that we have had on our environment.  We cannot speak for the intentionality of other creatures or nature, we would never describe the influence of one species on another as a negative or a positive; nature is.   Because we can describe our own sentience we must take responsibility for the impact we have had on our environment and constantly our asses our relationship with it.  As with many creatures we have the ability to observe, we made use of tools in order to allow ourselves to see better, when our own biology has failed us.  The invention of the lens, the blade, fire have allowed us to achieve things that would generations of evolution to accomplish without them.  With the establishment of the computer, we can now process this information on a scale and level which can help us approach a harmonious relationship with nature,  One that we cannot yet achieve with the modification of our own genes.

Thermometers, barometers, Ph meters, SONAR, RADAR, DOPPLER, are just a fraction of the ways that we measure our environment. How could we start to increase the resolution of the mapping of our environment and start to understand how these forces are linked to each other?  How could we start to understand trends in the way that we interact with the non-human environment? If we could start to understand the interactions of many different systems at once then we would be able to regulate our existence in a way that was not detrimental to our health.

My proposal on a micro level is to introduce measuring device that would act as a prosthetic to our senses and our environmental consciousness.  We would be able to map the world precisely and in a complex manner.  The goal would to understand our environments as a system as complex as our bodies.

Let’s say that at one point we could obtain so much information that we would be able to predictively model the splash of a drop of water given the local conditions surrounding it.  Imagine how this level of information processing as complex as this would allow us to place ourselves responsibly in our environment. Instead of having one measuring device doing many complex readings and calculations, could we divide the work among many?

Some Ideas

Increased speed of information dissemination

Increased amount distance of information dissemination

Increased speed of information transaction

Increased speed of information gathering

Increased speed of information processing

Man’s technology has allowed us to operate more efficiently, but we have always needed protection from the elements that make us fragile.  We are able to live in climates that we are not particularly biologically adapted to live in.  In the Things, it states that we were could not again change our biology to live, a cold weather climate.  Man has developed architecture to inhabit, we still generally have everything we need in environments that are inclined to growing the things we want from them.  How could we start to build environments that would fulfill a more complete system of man’s natural processes, either for space travel, or for colonization when we arrive at our desired location?

God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.

Jurrasic Park

The Things, The Island, Code 46 all touched on the idea of free will in different forms.  In every sense we are confronted with the idea of the individual and his or her tension with an outside force.  In each example there is at least an initial lack of understanding between the oppressive force and the free force.   In The Things, the thing only wants to help the humans into a communal nature that will allow it to have a better understanding of life.  The Chimp in The Island is only trying to see the proper fulfillment of the mission which is opposed by the seemingly irrational nature of the Mother, to carry on life.  It seems that the human grasp has extended past its sight.  How do we create a system where we will not be at odds with the system that is trying to allow us to survive.  How can we bring this system where there is a healthy connection between man and machine.  

Arresting Evolution

“Scientific Modern man has become aware of his own evolution.” Julian Huxley.

After doing some research on this man, I quickly realized that it is possible to agree with a statement and not the philosophy of the person who was making it.  Julian Huxley was an evolutionary biologist and also a eugenicist who was a large proponent of natural selection.  He was unfortunately part of a contingent that believed in the controlling gene existence.  While the question of naturalness is still very much up to debate, I know I do believe in the freedom of man and that belief is indubitably in conflict with any discussion of controlled gene pools.  At first glance at this quote I thought it reflected the fact that we have developed a connection with our ancestors through anthropological and biological research.  We have started to understand our history in terms of a science.  We affored this because of the technology that we use.  We are the only species in the world that can be defined by the technology that it creates without specialized biology.    For the purpose of this argument I would like to describe man’s evolution in terms of the technology that is created.  Of course this evolution does not appear to be as persistent -Meaning, if a person is born independent of culture, that person will not be able to use the knowledge of the ancestors past  – but is more rapid.  It was the evolution of a complex language center, and thumbs that are probably the most two significant evolutions to the human species.  Since those evolutions, one would be hard pressed to pinpoint a biological evolutionary feature that would classify a human more evolutionary evolved than the man of that evolution.  It would be much more productive for this argument to define our evolution as technological.  The question then becomes, what happens after the singularity of mans evolution?  There will be a moment when we can start to use our technology to better organize data about our relationship with our environment and the relationship our population.  The technology we develop will become essential not to the luxury of our species but to the extended harmonic survival of our species with our environment.   We start to see the idea of a dispersed nervous system in the emergence reading.  How would we start to build a truly democratic system that would allow us to harmonize

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The images above visualize game of life algorithms which visualize organizations based on rules and starting parameters.  After a few life cycles distinct organizations start to develop.