© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 139
CNN’s website, my favourite source for wacky news, reports that scientists believe that conditions below the surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, may be conducive to supporting life. It seems as if scientists are desperate to find life elsewhere, anywhere, and intelligence won’t be a major factor. Enceladus? I didn’t know it existed either.
CNN also reports that an Israeli committee is trying to find names for the 2006 war waged in Lebanon. What would you suggest? Frank? Herbert? Clyde sounds fairly inoffensive. How about Operation Dead People?
Nothing seems to make sense anymore, but perhaps, in light of the question of a suitable name for war, the scientists’ desperation to find life elsewhere is a little more understandable.
If you put
a bunch of people in a cabin, and lock them up for a couple of months,
preferably with wild blizzards raging around for dramatic effect, and
maybe some wolves howling in the distance for the ambient soundtrack.
Sooner or later something gives.
Let’s imagine it’s a family locked in this isolated cabin.
After a day or two the kids get completely out of hand. After a couple
of weeks, Dad starts seeing strange faces in the mirror. After a month
or two, Aunt Maude starts looking like roast beef on Sunday. It’s
called cabin fever.
In the idealised world of Hollywood, a couple of deputies and a determined movie producer who refuse to give up the search in spite of the fact that they have severe frostbite, and the St Bernard rescue dog has just turned into a four-legged Popsicle. They come upon the few survivors in the moodily lit cabin who ask them if they have any hot sauce. Everyone, including their therapists, lives happily ever after on the proceeds of the book, the cookbook, the movie rights and the merchandise.
In the real world, it isn’t that pretty. The cabin isn’t moodily lit, the wolves are nearly extinct and the movie producer sends a representative to wait it out in town. But I’m sure you get the picture.
This is pretty much the groove that humanity finds itself in: cabin fever, only the cabin is larger to accommodate everyone. But all that being said, everyone is still pretty cramped. There are six billion of us, each with our own forms of madness and mania, and the next billion is on the way.
Back in the Dark Ages, before 1980 or before 1957, 1969, 1978, 1985 and 1991, depending on how you look at it, the spaces between everyone were a lot bigger, and we didn’t all know what everyone was doing. Everyone was either a commie or a democrat, what you didn’t know couldn’t harm you and Aunt Maude was in no way a legitimate culinary choice.
Then all of a sudden, there were espresso dopios, Thai chicken pizzas, reality TV, Paris Hilton and all the other horrifying manifestations of complex systems. And, according to unconventional wisdom, it may get worse.
A plot of paradigm shifts, moments when everything changes, for instance when humanity discovered that the internet is really good for surfing porn, and everyone started finding reasons for needing it in the office and at home, shows that the shifts are converging and increasing in frequency. Yet as the plot of paradigm shifts converges to one point, complexity increases.
The plot on the scatter chart a hypothetical point called a ‘technological singularity’, a technological event which will change everything. Nobody is quite sure what this singularity will be. Many believe it may be decent artificial intelligence, the kind that learns, and hopefully doesn’t solve problems by wiping out humanity. Apparently it will happen by 2035.
If complexity increases as we approach the singularity, perhaps trying to figure out what an espresso dopio is and realising why you should never drink one after lunch is not such a bad thing after all, relatively speaking.
For my part, I hope it will be the beginning of out journey to the stars. This neighbourhood is a little bit crowded, and we all need time to sit down quietly and hear ourselves think again.
