A book is much more than a collection of information. It is also a physical object, and this materiality plays an important role in shaping the way we relate to literature. Think of how the pages of your favorite story feel between your fingers, and the way its spine creases as you immerse yourself further and further in the plot. The weight of a thick novel reflects the depth of its story, an illustrated cover helps to seed your imagination, while the font in which the text is printed might convey a certain emotional tone. Perhaps you like to record your own thoughts in the white margins of a book’s pages; perhaps you prefer to leave those edges clean and allow the story to stand on its own. Either way, the materiality of a book shapes our relationship to its content; it becomes a physical souvenir of our engagement with a story.

So what happens, then, as our media and the culture they convey move increasingly into the digital world? How does the emergence of e-books change the way we experience a story?

These questions were the subject of a brief talk by publisher and technologist James Bridle, broadcast recently on BBC Radio’s Four Thought. Bridle suggests that the digitization and globalization of our cultural world not only transforms the nature of our cultural artifacts; it changes us, as well.

People are changed by these encounters with the network as much as our cultural objects are. That’s fundamentally important. Even though we’ve always been connected [to the world] in all these ways, the visibility of that connection that the network brings, is deeply strange. You can reach out across space, and you can reach out across time, as well; the network has this extraordinary flattening effect on time, so things that look distant are just as accessible to us as things that are near. And you can see this process happening in the ways that we write, in the ways that we read, and the things that it’s doing to the texts themselves.

Whereas it was the physicality of a book that brought its narrative to life in our experience, it is now the instantaneousness and interactivity of information that facilitate our connection to a story. But while this necessarily changes the way we engage with cultural artifacts, Bridle suggests that this need not entail a loss of value. Our collective cultural memory is not in the process of disappearing; it is simply being transformed – embodied no longer by physical objects, but rather by the process of sharing.

On July 20, 01969, humans landed on the surface of the moon for the first time. But since only two of us got to go, NASA sent a message “FROM PLANET EARTH” in the rest of humanity’s stead. The message wasn’t a letter written in ink and paper, though. It was a thin silicon disc, with messages from various world leaders etched into its surface at a microscopic scale.  On the recent anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Steve Jurvetson posted photographs of some Apollo 11 artifacts, including the Goodwill Disc. Jurvetson writes on his Flickr page:

The story of the rushed creation of the disc is fascinating, as are the messages embedded in this interplanetary time capsule.

The concept started in June, 1969, and it was a politically charged project, in the midst of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. On June 27, NASA telephoned the state department, and got the unprecedented permission to contact the foreign chiefs of state to deposit a message on the moon. This was 19 days before launch. They were asked to compose and send typed and scribed letters to the U.S. (they came by telegram and mail).

But NASA did not know how they would store the messages so that they could last thousands of years in the harsh temperatures, solar radiation, and cosmic rays on the lunar surface. So they approached the supplier of some of the most advanced technology on Apollo – the nascent semiconductor industry.

Sprague manufactured 53,000 components on the Apollo 11 spacecraft and many more for the ground support equipment. The engineers chose silicon for the storage medium because of the density of storage and the stability of silicon over temperature in a vacuum.

You can read the text of the goodwill messages on Wikipedia, as well as on the original 01969 NASA description, which also explains a bit about the fabrication method.

Forty years later, The Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Disk uses remarkably similar technology to provide a durable record of the world’s human languages:

For the extreme longevity version of the Rosetta database, we have selected a new high density analog storage device as an alternative to the quick obsolescence and fast material decay rate of typical digital storage systems. This technology, developed by Los Alamos Laboratories and Norsam Technologies, can be thought of as a kind of next generation microfiche. However, as an analog storage system, it is far superior. A 2.8 inch diameter nickel disk can be etched at densities of 200,000 page images per disk, and the result is immune to water damage, able to withstand high temperatures, and unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. This makes it an ideal backup for a long-term text image archive. Also, since the encoding is a physical image (no 1′s or 0′s), there is no platform or format dependency, guaranteeing readability despite changes in digital operating systems, applications, and compression algorithms.

 

(via BoingBoing)

In April 02010, Dr. David Eagleman addressed the Seminars About Long-term Thinking with a lecture called “Six Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization.”

Central to Dr. Eagleman’s proposal for a resilient global society was the internet. As a high-volume, distributed communication system, the net offers new ways to contain disease, back-up information, share knowledge, work around oppressive regimes, collaborate, and save energy. Together, he argued, these features make the internet one of humanity’s best inventions and one of our best bets against the things that toppled previous civilizations.

It’s not, however, a perfect system. Dr. Eagleman recently outlined some of the vulnerabilities we’ll want to patch if the internet is really going to be our civilization’s failsafe. Solar flares make an appearance; here’s a great feature on them from a recent issue of National Geographic. Read the rest at CNN.

In the early 01980s, French farmers were already checking stock prices online. High school students found out exam scores, families reserved train tickets, and young women purchased clothing – all through a nationwide communications network called Minitel.

First pioneered in Brittany during the late 01970s, the PTT (France’s national telecommunications provider) launched the network nationwide in 01982. Minitel was a videotex service: an interactive network run through the telephone lines, that offered a variety of services when prompted by user input. A few keystrokes on a Minitel terminal provided access to your bank account; a few others opened a telephone directory; an “online” mailbox; or a hotel reservation system.

Small, grey, boxy terminals were distributed free of charge to millions of subscribers and before long, households all over France were connected to the network.

It was an innovative, avant garde technology in its time. The BBC writes:

As President Jacques Chirac boasted: “Today a baker in Aubervilliers knows perfectly how to check his bank account on the Minitel. Can the same be said of the baker in New York?” Chirac was speaking in 1997, exactly half way through the life-cycle of France’s greatest telecoms innovation. At the time, he could be forgiven for thinking it would last forever. This was the high point, with nine million Minitel sets installed in households around the country, an estimated 25 million users, and 26,000 services on offer.

But last forever it would not: after 30 years of service, Minitel signed off for good on June 30^th. Now that most people turn to the Internet for their connection to social networks, information services, and consumerism, the network has become obsolete and too costly to maintain.

Several media outlets suggest that Minitel was doomed for failure. At the height of the network’s growth, the World Wide Web was already growing into a formidable competitor. And as an open platform, the Internet allowed for more creativity and free development than the highly regulated Minitel. Though innovative and useful in its time, the network simply had not been built to evolve or adapt. Ars Technica quotes Jérémie Zimmerman, head of the French digital rights group La Quadrature du Net:

The Minitel was innovative for about 20 minutes, and died due to where it failed: by its centralization that never allowed it to evolve technologically: because it was under the control of France Telecom, for whom that control translated into huge profits. It is true that the Minitel taught French people how to use a keyboard and how to connect to online services. But it taught them the opposite of what is the most important lesson about the internet: its universality, and the decentralized character of its architecture.

Others, though, feel that the Minitel should not be dismissed or forgotten as an obsolete form of technology. The BBC quotes Valerie Schafer, co-author of a recently published book about Minitel:

People forget that many of the ideas that helped form the internet were first of all tried out on Minitel. Think of the payment system, not so different from the Apple app-store. Think of the forums, the user-generated content. Many of today’s web entrepreneurs and thinkers cut their teeth on Minitel.

Obsolete and doomed, or innovative and generative, Minitel reminds us not only that technology is forever evolving, but also that every life-altering technological advancement is born of something. Minitel helped shape the Internet as we know it today – just as the Internet will help shape our communications networks of the future.

When thinking of problems that demand long-term solutions, nuclear waste management comes to mind rather quickly. With half-lives ranging from 30 to 24,000, or even 16 million years (Strontium-90, Plutonium-239, and Iodine-129 respectively), the radioactive elements in nuclear waste defy our typical operating time frames. The question of how best to deal with that waste has been a matter of intense debate since the 01950s when the first electricity-generating nuclear reactors were built.

The history of that debate, which centers around Yucca Mountain, New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and Washington, DC, involves a lot more than just long-term science and engineering and it is the subject of an in-depth, well-researched piece of investigative journalism entitled “Wasteland,” by Matt Stroud for The Verge. (They also produced a short accompanying video about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.)

Stroud chronicles how the storage solutions recommended by a 01957 NAS study went largely unheeded until the Three Mile Island meltdown twenty-two years later. The accident pushed the issue onto the public stage, setting in motion a process of political battling, scientific (and unscientific) study, and technological research that continues today.

Though every presidential administration since Eisenhower’s has touted nuclear power as integral to energy policy (and decreased reliance on foreign oil), none has resolved the nuclear waste problem. The impasse has not only allowed tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste to languish in blocks of concrete behind chain link fences near major cities. It has contributed to a declining nuclear industry, as California, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Oregon, and other states have imposed moratoriums against new power plants until a waste repository exists. Disasters at Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island have made it very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to build a nuclear reactor because of insurance premiums and strict regulations, and the nuclear waste stalemate has added significantly to the difficulties and expenses. Only two new nuclear power plants have received licenses to operate in the last 30 years.

Despite the short-term considerations that have hampered efforts to develop a nuclear waste management system, few of the groups involved in the debate fail to recognize the long-term nature of the problem. Stroud directly addresses this aspect of the issue, discussing some of the ways in which different actors have grappled with it. (Finland’s Onkalo nuclear storage facility, for example, is designed for 100,000 years.)

When we think about the development of computers, we often think into the future: we imagine (or work on developing) new software, ever larger capacities for data storage, and ever smaller, sleeker hardware design.

But Ptak Science Books, a blog on the history of science with an emphasis on images, gives us an interesting look back at the products and designs that got us to where we are today. This page offers a chronological list of computers made between 1938 and 1988 (notice that more computers were made in the 1960s than in any of the decades before, as well as after!). And for those of you who are interested to know exactly how the ENIAC begat the UNIVAC, and how these two behemoths are related to IBM, take a look at the expandable family tree – a naturalistic visualization of how these dinosaurs of the computer age evolved from one another.

Wired’s Epicenter blog, which covers the technology business, recently asked eight visionaries about their strategies for looking at and into the future. How do they see what’s on the horizon? What distinguishes important technologies before they become important?

Among those questioned were Long Now board members Esther Dyson, Paul Saffo and Peter Schwartz. The respondents represented fields ranging from futurism to publishing, computer science to venture capitalism. There was, however, a common thread in the commentary: the importance of observation. Look for the unexpected, and look for it everywhere.

“There are four indicators I look for: contradictions, inversions, oddities, and coincidences.” -Paul Saffo

“The first thing I do is go where other people aren’t. [...] I love traveling because I love seeing how many different ways there are to do things.” -Esther Dyson

“You look for technologies that are likely to create major inflection points – breaks in a trend, things that are going to accelerate.” -Peter Schwartz

And what might make a particular technology or project likely to succeed? Vint Cerf, co-inventor of TCP/IP, points out that the future needn’t be something to sit back and wait for: “Sometimes spotting the future is really a question of realizing what’s now possible and actually trying it out.”

You can read the complete responses here.

It seems that our ancestors left behind a bit more than the pyramids and temples we still enjoy today.

Using satellite photos and digital mapping technology, a group of archaeologists has discovered traces of ancient life on a much smaller scale. A recent article in Nature reported on the finding, quoting one of the study’s researchers:

“Traditional archaeology goes straight to the biggest features – the palaces or cities – but we tend to ignore the settlements at the other end of the social spectrum,” says Jason Ur, an archaeologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is co-author of the study. “The people who migrated to cities came from somewhere; we have to put these people back on the map.”

Rather than palaces, these rural communities have left their mark in the form of “anthrosols.” Think of these as a type of footprints: anthrosol is soil that has been altered by the presence of human life. Communities built mud-brick houses, left behind organic waste, and fertilized agricultural fields – all of which brought about a permanent change in the makeup and texture of the soil.

To see these footprints, you may need an archaeologist’s eye – or alternatively, a spy satellite. Developing new imaging technology and methods for digital analysis, this group of archaeologists has been able to use satellite photos not only to map patterns of small-scale settlement, but also to measure the size of these ancient communities. This virtual form of archaeology promises to revolutionize the field, and has already drawn into question a few stalwart theories about the dynamics of urbanization.

It’s a new way of chronicling the history of civilization, reminding us that our legacy is not just told through books and architecture; it’s written in the earth.

Environmental change and a growing world population bring up a pressing question: how do we ensure that future generations won’t go hungry? Some scientists believe that one solution may lie in lending nature a helping hand.

A recent article on EurekAlert announces that a group of researchers at the University of Adelaide have succeeded in breeding a type of durum wheat that can thrive in very salty soils. A by-product of climate change, elevated salinity already affects large portions of agricultural land in Australia, and has a significant impact on the health of cultivated plants. Durum wheat is an important ingredient in food staples such a pasta; a breed that can tolerate increased concentrations of salt could thus be key in the continuation of wheat cultivation:

“Dr. Gilliham says: “Salinity is a particular issue in the prime wheat-growing areas of Australia, the world’s second-largest wheat exporter after the United States. With global population estimated to reach nine billion by 2050, and the demand for food expected to rise by 100% in this time, salt-tolerant crops will be an important tool to ensure future food security.””

At Long Now we’ve been following the conversation about long-term solutions for sustainable agriculture. Our SALT seminar series has hosted several speakers who have weighed in on this topic. Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak spoke about the potential uses of genetic engineering, and the benefits of combining those techniques with organic farming methods, in their 02009 lecture, “Organically Grown and Genetically Engineered: The Food of the Future.” Earlier that year, we also had Michael Pollan discuss the benefits of knowing where food comes from and how its grown with “Deep Agriculture.”

A major concern of the digital dark age is link rot – the eventual failure of URLs to point to the intended files. As website maintenance falters for any number of reasons the pages can cease to be accessible, even though their addresses may be listed on many other sites.

The notion that Long Bets will be around to assess wagers many years (in some cases, over a hundred) into the future struck web developer Jeremy Keith as a bit far-fetched. In the spirit of the site, therefore, he made a Prediction that the URL pointing to the Prediction he was making wouldn’t last 11 years.

He gave a talk at Webstock earlier this year called Of Time and the Network exploring our changing perception of time as a result of our changing level of interconnectedness. At 31:30 he discusses his thoughts on long-term challenges to the accessibility of URLs and dares someone to take him up on the Bet. You can read a transcription of the talk and a blog post he wrote about the Bet itself.

Another presenter at Webstock, Matt Haughey, was game. He gave a talk later in the conference about long-term thinking in the context of the web and, while consistent URLs weren’t the main focus, he touched on the problem and actually officially challenged Keith in his presentation – check it out in the video at 18:50. He was also kind enough to transcribe his talk for those who’d like to read it.

We’re very excited to have this Bet on record and it’s being closely watched by our systems administrator, designer and web developer Benjamin Keating.

Keith and Haughey have each offered stakes of $500, with the winnings going to either the Bletchly Park Trust or the Internet Archive. You can read and comment on their arguments and the detailed terms we’ll use to adjudicate the Bet at Long Bets.