The Jonahh Blog

Escaping Doomsday

2010-08-22T17:26:35Z

It has been the month of thinking dangerously at Big Think. One new radical idea a day, and it comes as no surprise that greats like Stephen Hawking contribute to a rather impressive in-and-out-of-the-box thinking.

Hawking’s message is simple. We have to leave Earth. Why? Global warming, excess of population, dwindling resources, asteroids, a nuclear disaster and other extinction level events. The emergency exit leads to other planets, Mars maybe, or further out. We will not be able to save everybody but in the end, so for the advocates of the ultimate exodus, it’s about the survival of the human species, not the individual being.

Of course, it’s not a pleasant idea to live on a dying planet, and there have been all kinds of responses to Hawking’s remarks, most of them based on the contemporary state of mind. Beyond all the obvious pros and cons you can find up and down the comments, it seems the sense of wonder, the need for exploration, and scientific curiosity, don’t matter that much anymore. The era of ‘giant leaps for mankind’ appears to be long gone, practicalities and economics have outplayed the need to reach beyond our own space-time continuum, literally and spiritually.

Do we have the technology to travel space at a speed that makes sense, to settle on other planets that don’t really look inhabitable? Would we just export all the human flaws and imperfections, and eventually annihilate the whole universe? Simply, do we know enough?

Space Colony Art from the 1970s (NASA)

None of these questions matter. It will happen anyway. We will leave Earth, sooner or later, and maybe even for a reason we cannot yet think of. We will populate other worlds in ways we cannot imagine, and ultimately the when and how is not important now, as this will be dictated by the circumstances of the time when it happens.

That’s how it always has happened. That’s how the human race has spread over this planet, that’s how cities grow, that’s how the universe itself is growing. Expansion is a basic universal rule.

Thinking of Earth as a flat disc makes us smile today but a few hundred years back most people had no problem with this idea. There was no need to think otherwise as it didn’t really make a difference to everyday life. Nowadays most people naturally assume we basically know everything there is to know. But as Hawking is talking about a time span far beyond our life times, there will be discoveries even the most imaginative science-fiction authors can’t imagine yet.

The question is when it will occur to us that efficiencies and alleged scientific limits are neither a real problem nor a reason to stop imagining. The actual problem is, says Hawking, that “…our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past.” Drastically speaking, the human race is like a bunch of resilient squatters – if they don’t get evicted, they’ll stay forever.

What Hawking is saying may not be relevant to us, today or in the near future, but we should begin to think about it seriously, leaving behind the problems and difficulties that ultimately just limit our imagination. We have only ever changed when we were forced to change, one way or the other, but in the case of our ‘home base’, we might not have the time for change when it’s high time to leave.

The final disaster could happen tomorrow, or we could just learn something that changes everything. Preparing the mind ground for a future beyond a single planet might just trigger the next leap in our evolution, away from our primal instincts.

If you care about humankind and our children in the first place, that is.

[ J ]

Stephen Hawking’s Warning: Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction (Big Think)
Space Settlements – spreading life throughout the solar system (NASA)
Space Colony Art from the 1970s (NASA)

Steampunk Opera

2010-08-22T14:35:34Z

“And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.”
The Golden Journey to Samarkand, James Elroy Flecker

Sooner or later we will see a movie that is based on or at least inspired by an Alastair Reynolds novel, and it is rather remarkable no filmmaker has picked up one of his stories yet. Though most of them are heavy Science Fiction with all the bells and whistles, they wouldn’t necessarily need a huge budget to be realised. What they would need however is a writer and director with an ingenious imagination and the willingness to let go of simple space gimmickery and gadget clichés.

Ultimately, Reynolds’ universe is filled with a sense of wonder and serene desperation. On a galactic scale, mankind is not much more than a nano-sized coincidence doomed to end and with no meaning per se whatsoever.

Yet for Reynolds this doesn’t seem to make life worthless or meaningless, for that matter, although on the outset, his Terminal World appears to be the last place in the Universe where anyone would want to live voluntarily.

The story begins in Spearpoint, a vast spire with city-states clinging to its skin. For a while, Spearpoint appears to be the only inhabitable place on this far-future Earth, and up to the end I couldn’t shake off the feeling this mega city is a parable on the Tower of Babel.

Spearpoint is divided into isolated zones, each with a different state of technology, if not reality. Horses and ploughs at the bottom, post-human high tech at the top. This is where the angels live, literally. One of them, Dr Quillon, is the main character of Terminal World. He is actually an ex-angel, genetically modified to look like, and to live, as a human in one of the lower-state zones.

The fact that you can’t survive in a zone other than you were born into is maybe the most confusing aspect of the story. It drives the characters and events but remains somewhat unexplained. Reynolds could have easily topped the brave complexity of The Matrix but leaves us stuck with simplified assumptions.

This way, Quillon’s story is half as compelling as it could have been. Still, Reynolds’ powerful storytelling makes us forget about this blind spot, and we follow his hero when we learn Quillon is a fugitive most wanted for his ability to survive in a zone he does not belong to, and has become an invaluable asset when a major zone shift is predicted, which would be a fatal debacle for almost all of Spearpoint’s inhabitants.

Therefore Quillon has to leave for the hostile territories beyond Spearpoint. His exile turns into a crazy journey with Skullboys, Vorgs and Tectomancers, a fantasy which is Western, Steampunk, grand romance and classic science fiction all in one. It lines up the usual suspects in an unusual way, and serves up truth, guilt, redemption and hope in a way that maybe only an Astrophysicist is capable of.

I enjoyed travelling along, pulled in by vivid descriptions, strong characters and fierce conflicts. At the end though something was missing, a sense of closure or at least enough substance to make up all the alternate endings an intelligent reader can imagine. It felt more like a real cliffhanger, waiting to be resolved by the next book.

[ J ]

Terminal World on Amazon
Alastair Reynolds on Wikipedia
alastairreynolds.com

Memories Of Giza

2010-08-01T11:51:26Z

The Giza pyramids are the biggest headstones in human history, Pharaoh tombs, old as the hills and shrouded in mysteries – an impressive sight with a back story seemingly so much larger than us, stunning, overwhelming, elusive.

Walking around the ‘corner’ though, the pyramids are but fragile giants. That other sight is not at all romantic, historical, or mysterious. It’s more a reminder that the Great Pyramid Of Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, with only its substance intact.

My strongest memories of Giza are those backstage views, I find them more true in a sense of touching the past and imagining a civilization which basically is beyond imagination – more a dreamland we were led into to be in awe…

History is a maze of interpretations… books, tales, legends, lies…

The glorious reign of the Pharaohs keeps fascinating millions. I wonder how much will be left of it when the pyramids no longer stand, and what it must have been like a few thousand years ago… not to be a Pharaoh.

There are not as many ‘images’ left that could tell us about everyday life back then. Egyptians mostly made images of things that were unique or occurred just once. The ordinary life outside the Pharaoh palaces wasn’t worth ‘capturing’… There is hardly any tangible connection to the actual truth of the Dynasties…

The contemporary face of Giza is that of a monumental expedition site in demise. The people of Giza are friendly guides and guards, or offer tourists a ride around the ruins – time travelling at a camel’s pace?…

I spent days wandering around the pyramids and thought how gilded they can look at close distance – but otherwise they are a giant pile of boulders marked for time, like a tree trunk in reverse, losing layers only every hundreds of years rather than decades.

The Giza pyramids are a guarded monument, and enduring the hot desert sun, I thought of the slaves who are said to have built these tombs for rulers close to heaven and eternal light. The patchwork of ideas surrounding this ‘wonder of the world? is like a mist that dissolves the closer I get.

In the end, we look for the shade when all awe doesn’t filter out the unbearable heat any more.

[J]

Spider, Mom

2010-08-01T11:48:53Z

Louise Bourgeois’ Maman* in front of the Tate Modern (London) was a celebrity in its own right.

The ‘message’ though seems too simple and too complex for superficial stardom: Sheltering a sac of eggs under her abdomen, the giant spider is meant to symbolise Bourgeois’ mother.

“My best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, neat and useful as a [spider].”

As a work of art, the sculpture begs to be mugged – to take a picture is virtually unavoidable, even if one has no clue what this is about. The outsized spider in a public place is, at first sight, too many things at once – a foreign body, a point of interest, a source of irritation?.

In any case, it dominates. The spider’s visual power and its subliminal aloofness wow and perplex the viewer. Here I wonder whether or not the subject matter is the same as photographs of it: “?…a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”**

[J]

* Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010):
MAMAN, 1999 (Bronze, Stainless Steel and Marble)
** Diane Arbus, US photographer (1923-1971)

The Wheel – Changing Perspectives

2010-08-01T11:49:52Z

The London Eye, an observation wheel in the middle of London, with a circumference of 1.392ft (424m), and a 25 miles (40km) view on a clear day…

Shot end of January 2010 from a Thames riverboat.

It was a chilly but sunny day, the cold sun light and the speedy boat changed the sight of the wheel rapidly. You can see it in ways rather different from the land views.

It kind of is ‘an eye without a face’ to many Londoners I think, and I am fascinated only when I catch it merged with the city’s structures or the skies…

[J]

This series was featured on the City Stroller website, alongside pictures from around the world.