Of all the films I have seen with a budget of less than $1 million, The Man From Earth might be the best. Many people cannot imagine a science-fiction movie being made for ~$200,000 in this day and age, but here it is. The movie is entirely set in the protagonist's small house and the surrounding area, and the story is driven solely by the dialogue. Yet, the film succeeds brilliantly.
The movie is about a 14,000 year old Cro-Magnon caveman who discovered that he was immortal. He conceals that fact, and bears witness to much of history, until finally he tells his story to a group of professors during a surprise party.
The movie's creators encourage its distribution through file-sharing networks, so anyone can watch it for free. I highly recommend this.
The most striking thing for me about this film is that it brought me back to a thought experiment that I have pondered and enjoyed since junior high. I first started thinking about this in my early days of playing the Conspiracy X RPG. In Con X there is a race called the Atlanteans, who came to Earth in prehistory. They possess incredible nanotechnology that allows them to, among other things, alter their appearance and prevent aging and disease.
In the game, the technologically advanced but psychically dead Atlanteans are defeated in battle by early-Bronze Age humans wielding powerful magic. The surviving Atlanteans decide to go underground, and become solitary demigods living hidden among humans. Each Atlantean assumes a kind of archetype that drives their motivation as they move, unseen, through history.
For example, Azek'al devotes himself to helping the human race improve itself. He has nudged scientists toward breakthroughs, and wishes to one day bring humanity to the point where they are equal to the Atlanteans. D'jeler, on the other hand, is obsessed with power, and works to reunite the solitary Atlanteans under his rule.
The game led me to start thinking about the following scenario: If I found myself alone at the edge of the Sahara circa 2500 BC, possessing a full complement of Atlantean nanotech systems, what would my archetype be? What do I think is most worth doing?
My first thought was to try and use my knowledge of history to influence its outcomes. I tend to think that temporal laws would prevent me from doing this (I would like to believe the "course-correcting" in Lost would happen), but I also soon realized that even if I could change things, it would be far too difficult to predict the actual outcomes of my actions. I couldn't take the risk of accidentally destroying the good things about today's world.
After seeing The Man From Earth, I started thinking about this scenario again, and I suddenly realized what my answer would be. I have always been fascinated by history itself, and always wished that I could have seen those events and places in their full glory, rather than just the fragments that exist in our time. If I had the chance to experience these events firsthand, the most important thing I could do would be to preserve them for all time, to make sure the true history of our Earth would never be lost.
To that end, the first thing I would need to do is to find a secure location where my archives could be established. I would want a place that was isolated enough that I would be able to work undisturbed, and a place where I would be out of the way of history. In 2500 BC, there were still vast stretches of the Earth that were uninhabited by people, and I would have to choose on of those. I would need a place where I would have a fair amount of space to operate, but not so much that I could not control it. A glance at Wikipedia suggested many potential candidates, almost all remote islands. My search initially led me to either the Tristan da Cunha islands in the South Atlantic or the Prince Edward Islands in the South Indian Ocean. However, once I started considering factors like weather and the logistics of managing several islands compared to one, I realized that the best solution was probably an island I have always been fascinated by, Easter.
Easter Island is isolated and was uninhabited until at least 200 AD, and probably much later. Nothing ever occured there that affected the course of world history, and its climate is pleasant enough to make living easy and provide areas for key parts of my archives.
The next thing I thought about is how easy it would be to construct a modern base in the distant past, without any equipment. I concluded that even for a modern human, it would be extremely difficult to build something like an oceangoing ship. However, that is quite a different thought experiment. I therefore decided to assume that I had a fully functional assembler, an Atlantean device that uses nanites and molecular blueprints to produce useful items.
Once on Easter, the basics would come first. I would construct a base, mostly underground, which would provide floor after floor of storage for artifacts. I would also need a hydroponics facility and living quarters, in order to feed myself and the others I would bring to the island. On the surface I would construct a surveillance and defence system for the island, disguised as a low-tech village. I would also need a number of enclosures for the animals I would bring to the island.
Those animals would be those that we have lost in the days since 2500BC. The human race has been extrodinarily destructive to other species, and although I would be too late to save the Holocene megafauna that were wiped out in the Americas around 10,000BC, I could save many species. First priority would be the dwarf woolly mammoths of Wrangel Island, the last of the mammoths that vanished around 1700BC. After that I would attempt to capture Moas, Thylacines, Dodos, Aurochs, Great Auks and Quaggas, among other species. If feasable, I would bring enough individuals to Easter to establish a viable population. If that turned out to be impossible (as it might with the mammoths and many of the species of Moa) I would collect and cryofreeze as much genetic material as possible, and attempt to maintain a small population of the animals on Easter using artificial insemination techniques.
Obviously I would be unable to manage such a large collection of animals myself. Species like the auks and the aurochs would be largely self sufficient, and could freely roam the island with a minimum of managment. Species that would be unused to the climate of the island, or species that might overrun the native island life (or the other introduced animals) would have to be put in more of a zoo environment. Setting Thylacines loose on the island, for example, would not be good for the Dodos to say the least.
I would therefore have to recruit some assistance. I would obviously want to pick people that shared my love of nature and history, and smart people with a talent for languages would also help. In 2500BC, anyone I recruited would require significant education, but I doubt I would have trouble recruiting adventurers. I would have to find people who would be willing to forgo having families though, as I would want to keep the human population on Easter to a minimum.
As time went on and people became more knowledgeable about the state of the world, I would have to be more careful. Once technology became available that would allow people to get off Easter and back to seafaring societies (probably in the 15th century), I would have to begin conducting recruiting in a different way. I would obviously want to prevent knowledge of my mission and technology from becoming public, for fear that Conquistadors might come knocking with an invasion force. One possibility might be to recruit mostly women, given that they were oppressed in many places until recently, and might welcome the chance for a different life.
Once I was done establishing the Easter Island wildlife reserve, I would begin the more meticulous process of cataloging human history. I would have to have recruits stationed around the globe, with a way to alert me if something historically significant was happening. As time went by this would become easier, as I would have a general idea of where to be and when.
Once I had this network set up, I would likely travel the world with a high-definition video camera, making record of places and key events. I would bring back pictures and video, along with artifacts like books and art. Easter Island would become a place of refuge for the true history of the world, and I would have many, many lifetimes of critical work to do.
Fascinating thought experiment. If only it could be done.
Showing posts with label Easter Island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter Island. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Crimes of the Islanders (5 of 6)
There could not be two islands more different than Greenland and Easter. Greenland is the world's largest island, relatively accessible from both North America and Europe. It is a cold, icy place, inhospitable to most life and mostly untouched by civilization. The first European colonists, Icelandic Vikings, had to battle to survive, especially as the climate cooled and contact was eventually lost with Iceland.
Easter, on the other hand, is one of the most isolated pieces of land in the world. It was empty until well after year 0, and might have even been uninhabited until the middle ages. However, the island was blessed with a verdant ecosystem, and the first settlers probably thought they had stumbled into a paradise. Unlike in Greenland, the island's resources allowed a dynamic civilization to quickly spring into being. The islanders erected massive statues across the island, and developed a complex society.
Despite their clear differences, both Greenland and Easter suffered the same fate. Both civilizations were decimated by poor resource management. By the time new waves of explorers arrived on the two islands, the non-Inuit Greenlanders were completely extinct and the society of Easter had degenerated into poorly nourished and warring factions, with many of the massive statues toppled to the ground.
The reason for these collapses was that the islanders did not have the ability to maintain sustainable resource usage. In Greenland, the lack of natural forests and the marginal agricultural yields could not support a European agricultural civilization once the climate began to cool. Even as their situation became more dire, with falling crop yields and the cessation of wood imports, the Greenlanders held on to their way of life.
Only once it was too late did the Greenlanders attempt to adapt to their situation. They began to rely more on the sea for their food, but with no way to repair or replace their aging wooden ships, they could not feed everyone. They never learned to build boats out of animal material, as the Inuit did, and they never abandoned their farms. Because they were unable to adapt, they vanished.
On Easter, something slightly different happened. The island was so plentiful when the colonists arrived that there was no thought of resource conservation. Trees were felled en masse to provide wood for various uses, including the rollers probably used to build the moai. The birds and sea life on the island were hunted to provide food for an exploding population.
By the mid-second millennium AD, the resources of Easter were beginning to run dry. The forests that had once covered the island were gone, and the birds and marine life were harder and harder to find. At this stage, however, Easter was still an absolute monarchy. It is possible that a prescient ruler could have implemented resource management policies, as happened in Hawaii and other places.
Unfortunately, perhaps in response to the island's problems, the monarch was deposed and a new system was put in place whereby the first islander to capture the egg of a particular bird each year became the custodian of the island's resources. Thus, frequent leadership changes and inexperienced administration prevented the establishment of any coherent policy, and the complex society of Easter slowly faded away.
The modern world can learn much from these two stories, seeing as how we are essentially an island within a vast universe. The Earth is not as harsh (on average) as Greenland nor is it changing at as rapid a pace. Likewise, the resources of the Earth are not depleted to the extent that Easter's were. Despite this, the fact remains that many of our resources are being depleted rapidly, and those resources are at least as integral to our society as timber and food resources were to Greenland and Easter.
There are two key lessons that come from these histories that can be a helpful framework for policy development. The first is perhaps self evident, but our islanders certainly did not grasp it. It is the simple truth that prudent (and global) resource management is necessary to avoid catastrophe. Despite the fact that we are a fragmented world, with no strong leadership on resource management, we must not let that be our downfall, as it was for Easter's people.
The second lesson is that we must not be afraid to change, as the Greenlanders were. Our current model is not sufficient, and we should be aware of this. It is painfully obvious that we are using up the Earth's resources at an alarming rate. I liken this to a corporate balance sheet. The resources regenerated/discovered each year can be though of as revenues and the consumption as expenses. Any expenses in excess of revenues must be covered through debt, essentially a reduction of net assets.
If one accepts that we are currently using up the net assets of the Earth, and one also accepts that active management is necessary (i.e. the problem will not fix itself), there are essentially three ways to deal with the problem. Continuing with my balance sheet analogy, you can either increase revenues, decrease expenses, or decrease the average expense per unit of revenue. Let's look at these three options in detail:
1. Increasing Revenues - Whether or not this approach is even possible depends on the resource you are looking at. For resources like metals and land, this approach has no relevance, because those resources are generally non-substitutable and finite.
For a second set of resources, including energy resources, limited increases to revenue might be possible through technology, but the biggest gains can come from a change in "revenue mix". Think of this as being akin to Apple realizing in the late 1990's that its revenue stream from computers was essentially maximized. They shifted their strategy to obtain revenue from other, related, products (like music players and phones). This same shift can be accomplished by transferring energy usage to underutilized resources like solar and wind.
Finally, there are a third set of resources where revenues can be increased with prudent management and technology development. Some underutilized energy resources (like uranium and deuterium) and many renewable resources (like timber and food) fall into this category.
2. Improving Efficiency (expense per unit of revenue) - This is the most self explanatory of the three areas. Efforts to improve the efficiency of resources are concentrated in two areas. The first area is technological improvements, such as more efficient power plants or vehicles. The second area is improved recycling, which is especially important for resources like metals.
3. Decreasing Expenses - This is the category where the biggest potential for change exists, but it is also the one that is the most politically difficult. Reductions in "expenses" can only be achieved in one of two ways, by decreasing per-capita consumption or by decreases in population. Neither of these will be easy sells, and any policy of population control could turn out horribly wrong. Still, it is likely that part of any solution to our consumption problem will have to be found in this category.
I know that this post is less specific than others in terms of the actual externalities that need to be addressed, but I feel that the problems have been sufficiently illustrated. I will therefore jump right to some potential policy solutions.
1. Implementation of my previous proposals will help to correct our resource imbalance, especially for land and energy resources. It will also advance the development of new resource technologies.
2. Technology must be seen as an important part of environmental solutions. I will discuss this more in my next post.
3. A long-term tax policy shift away from income tax and toward consumption taxes, as I have previously advocated, would be an excellent place to start on the "expenses" side of things.
4. Supporting the sustainable development and urbanization of poor countries is one of the best ways to decrease our population growth rate. All the evidence suggests that the richer and more urbanized a country is, the lower its growth rate. This is because children are no longer an economic benefit, like they are in subsistience-agriculture based societies.
5. Making sure appropriate contraceptive methods, and information on their use, are available in developing countries for free will not only slow the spread of AIDS, but will also help contain population growth and the consequent consumption increases.
6. It is important that current recycling programs be maintained, and new ways of recycling (like making biofuel from garbage) are explored.
7. These proposals will not be enough. It is likely, that even with new technologies, that the Earth will only be able to sustainably support a few billion people at current North American levels of consumption. Since our population will likely be higher than that well into the future, and since we hope to bring many more people up to an acceptable standard of living, it is probable that those of us in the rich world will have to make some sacrifices.
I am just as unwilling as the next person to give up many of the material pleasures I have gained at the expense of the earth. For example, I will never be a vegetarian, even if it is better for the planet. Nor will I stop travelling. However, I do believe that everyone does use things they don't really need, or even want. I believe that if appropriate public policy is implemented and people start to change their mindset on consumption, that a long-term, sustainable Earth can be built, with around 7-8 billion people living on our planet with similar quality of life to what Canadians enjoy today.
Food for thought:
How much energy would be saved if all buildings were only heated to 15 degrees in the winter and cooled to 25 degrees in the summer (subject to the relaxation of corporate dress codes)? Wouldn't the inconvienience of wearing a sweater or shorts be worth it?
If the average office worker could do 1/4 to 1/3 of their work remotely, using today's technology (which I think is entirely feasable), how much fuel use could be avoided? (not to mention sanity gained)
if US households used the same amount of electricity as European ones, total household energy consumption in the US would fall by 60%. Wow.
Most energy-efficient appliances easily pay for themselves.
Easter, on the other hand, is one of the most isolated pieces of land in the world. It was empty until well after year 0, and might have even been uninhabited until the middle ages. However, the island was blessed with a verdant ecosystem, and the first settlers probably thought they had stumbled into a paradise. Unlike in Greenland, the island's resources allowed a dynamic civilization to quickly spring into being. The islanders erected massive statues across the island, and developed a complex society.
Despite their clear differences, both Greenland and Easter suffered the same fate. Both civilizations were decimated by poor resource management. By the time new waves of explorers arrived on the two islands, the non-Inuit Greenlanders were completely extinct and the society of Easter had degenerated into poorly nourished and warring factions, with many of the massive statues toppled to the ground.
The reason for these collapses was that the islanders did not have the ability to maintain sustainable resource usage. In Greenland, the lack of natural forests and the marginal agricultural yields could not support a European agricultural civilization once the climate began to cool. Even as their situation became more dire, with falling crop yields and the cessation of wood imports, the Greenlanders held on to their way of life.
Only once it was too late did the Greenlanders attempt to adapt to their situation. They began to rely more on the sea for their food, but with no way to repair or replace their aging wooden ships, they could not feed everyone. They never learned to build boats out of animal material, as the Inuit did, and they never abandoned their farms. Because they were unable to adapt, they vanished.
On Easter, something slightly different happened. The island was so plentiful when the colonists arrived that there was no thought of resource conservation. Trees were felled en masse to provide wood for various uses, including the rollers probably used to build the moai. The birds and sea life on the island were hunted to provide food for an exploding population.
By the mid-second millennium AD, the resources of Easter were beginning to run dry. The forests that had once covered the island were gone, and the birds and marine life were harder and harder to find. At this stage, however, Easter was still an absolute monarchy. It is possible that a prescient ruler could have implemented resource management policies, as happened in Hawaii and other places.
Unfortunately, perhaps in response to the island's problems, the monarch was deposed and a new system was put in place whereby the first islander to capture the egg of a particular bird each year became the custodian of the island's resources. Thus, frequent leadership changes and inexperienced administration prevented the establishment of any coherent policy, and the complex society of Easter slowly faded away.
The modern world can learn much from these two stories, seeing as how we are essentially an island within a vast universe. The Earth is not as harsh (on average) as Greenland nor is it changing at as rapid a pace. Likewise, the resources of the Earth are not depleted to the extent that Easter's were. Despite this, the fact remains that many of our resources are being depleted rapidly, and those resources are at least as integral to our society as timber and food resources were to Greenland and Easter.
There are two key lessons that come from these histories that can be a helpful framework for policy development. The first is perhaps self evident, but our islanders certainly did not grasp it. It is the simple truth that prudent (and global) resource management is necessary to avoid catastrophe. Despite the fact that we are a fragmented world, with no strong leadership on resource management, we must not let that be our downfall, as it was for Easter's people.
The second lesson is that we must not be afraid to change, as the Greenlanders were. Our current model is not sufficient, and we should be aware of this. It is painfully obvious that we are using up the Earth's resources at an alarming rate. I liken this to a corporate balance sheet. The resources regenerated/discovered each year can be though of as revenues and the consumption as expenses. Any expenses in excess of revenues must be covered through debt, essentially a reduction of net assets.
If one accepts that we are currently using up the net assets of the Earth, and one also accepts that active management is necessary (i.e. the problem will not fix itself), there are essentially three ways to deal with the problem. Continuing with my balance sheet analogy, you can either increase revenues, decrease expenses, or decrease the average expense per unit of revenue. Let's look at these three options in detail:
1. Increasing Revenues - Whether or not this approach is even possible depends on the resource you are looking at. For resources like metals and land, this approach has no relevance, because those resources are generally non-substitutable and finite.
For a second set of resources, including energy resources, limited increases to revenue might be possible through technology, but the biggest gains can come from a change in "revenue mix". Think of this as being akin to Apple realizing in the late 1990's that its revenue stream from computers was essentially maximized. They shifted their strategy to obtain revenue from other, related, products (like music players and phones). This same shift can be accomplished by transferring energy usage to underutilized resources like solar and wind.
Finally, there are a third set of resources where revenues can be increased with prudent management and technology development. Some underutilized energy resources (like uranium and deuterium) and many renewable resources (like timber and food) fall into this category.
2. Improving Efficiency (expense per unit of revenue) - This is the most self explanatory of the three areas. Efforts to improve the efficiency of resources are concentrated in two areas. The first area is technological improvements, such as more efficient power plants or vehicles. The second area is improved recycling, which is especially important for resources like metals.
3. Decreasing Expenses - This is the category where the biggest potential for change exists, but it is also the one that is the most politically difficult. Reductions in "expenses" can only be achieved in one of two ways, by decreasing per-capita consumption or by decreases in population. Neither of these will be easy sells, and any policy of population control could turn out horribly wrong. Still, it is likely that part of any solution to our consumption problem will have to be found in this category.
I know that this post is less specific than others in terms of the actual externalities that need to be addressed, but I feel that the problems have been sufficiently illustrated. I will therefore jump right to some potential policy solutions.
1. Implementation of my previous proposals will help to correct our resource imbalance, especially for land and energy resources. It will also advance the development of new resource technologies.
2. Technology must be seen as an important part of environmental solutions. I will discuss this more in my next post.
3. A long-term tax policy shift away from income tax and toward consumption taxes, as I have previously advocated, would be an excellent place to start on the "expenses" side of things.
4. Supporting the sustainable development and urbanization of poor countries is one of the best ways to decrease our population growth rate. All the evidence suggests that the richer and more urbanized a country is, the lower its growth rate. This is because children are no longer an economic benefit, like they are in subsistience-agriculture based societies.
5. Making sure appropriate contraceptive methods, and information on their use, are available in developing countries for free will not only slow the spread of AIDS, but will also help contain population growth and the consequent consumption increases.
6. It is important that current recycling programs be maintained, and new ways of recycling (like making biofuel from garbage) are explored.
7. These proposals will not be enough. It is likely, that even with new technologies, that the Earth will only be able to sustainably support a few billion people at current North American levels of consumption. Since our population will likely be higher than that well into the future, and since we hope to bring many more people up to an acceptable standard of living, it is probable that those of us in the rich world will have to make some sacrifices.
I am just as unwilling as the next person to give up many of the material pleasures I have gained at the expense of the earth. For example, I will never be a vegetarian, even if it is better for the planet. Nor will I stop travelling. However, I do believe that everyone does use things they don't really need, or even want. I believe that if appropriate public policy is implemented and people start to change their mindset on consumption, that a long-term, sustainable Earth can be built, with around 7-8 billion people living on our planet with similar quality of life to what Canadians enjoy today.
Food for thought:
How much energy would be saved if all buildings were only heated to 15 degrees in the winter and cooled to 25 degrees in the summer (subject to the relaxation of corporate dress codes)? Wouldn't the inconvienience of wearing a sweater or shorts be worth it?
If the average office worker could do 1/4 to 1/3 of their work remotely, using today's technology (which I think is entirely feasable), how much fuel use could be avoided? (not to mention sanity gained)
if US households used the same amount of electricity as European ones, total household energy consumption in the US would fall by 60%. Wow.
Most energy-efficient appliances easily pay for themselves.
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