Come the end of November, I intend to post audio of the Long Now Foundation debate between Drew Endy and Jim Thomas about synthetic biology. Until then, I've been following some other interesting stuff involving data visualisation. The Paul Otlet piece makes for a fascinating comparison with the perspective on information science demonstrated in IBM and the Holocaust, for here was a method of information storage and retrieval that the Nazis wanted to close down.
In 1883 Charles Cutter devised a classification scheme that led in part to the Library of Congress system and devised an apparatus of keyboard and wires that would fetch the desired book. H.G. Wells proposed a “world brain” of data and imagined that it would one day wake up. Teilhard de Chardin anticipated an “etherization of human consciousness” into a global noosphere.
The greatest unknown revolutionary was the Belgian Paul Otlet. In 1895 he set about freeing the information in books from their bindings. He built a universal decimal classification and then figured out how that organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web.” In 1910 Otlet created a “rad iated library” called the Mundameum in Brussels that managed search queries in a massive way until the Nazis destroyed the service.
In 1883 Charles Cutter devised a classification scheme that led in part to the Library of Congress system and devised an apparatus of keyboard and wires that would fetch the desired book. H.G. Wells proposed a “world brain” of data and imagined that it would one day wake up. Teilhard de Chardin anticipated an “etherization of human consciousness” into a global noosphere.
The greatest unknown revolutionary was the Belgian Paul Otlet. In 1895 he set about freeing the information in books from their bindings. He built a universal decimal classification and then figured out how that organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web.” In 1910 Otlet created a “rad iated library” called the Mundameum in Brussels that managed search queries in a massive way until the Nazis destroyed the service.
Next, it is clear that the Global Extinction Awareness System must be indebted to the data visualisation pioneered through Snow's "ghostmap". Afterall, this scenario involves attempts to control a global pandemic, and the clip utilises a comparable form of GIS.
It is 02019.
A multi petabyte-scale simulation of global processes, called the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS), has just determined that, without immediate action, humanity will survive only another 23 years before the deadly synergy of five catastrophic Superthreats does us in.
The Superthreats are:
1. Quarantine — declining health and pandemic disease, including the current Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ReDS) crisis
2. Ravenous — the imminent collapse of the global food system
3. Power Struggle — the increasingly desperate search for alternative energy solutions
4. Outlaw Planet — challenges to human security and civil rights in the midst of hypercomplex information systems
5. Generation Exile — skyrocketing numbers of refugees and migrants in the face of climate change, economic disruption, and war
Your role is to flex your foresight, creativity and collaborative skills to contribute to our collective survival.
The GEAS report is available in full here, and video briefings on each of the Superthreats can be found here.
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