A recurring puzzle of evolution is the persistence of certain entities or behaviours that – at first glance – seem to harm the reproductive fitness of individuals. From the naive standpoint, an individual worker ant makes a mockery of evolution. They’re sterile; a reproductive dead-end.

One way of conceptualizing the answer is the unit of selection. It’s the idea that natural selection happens at a variety of levels: genes, cells, individuals, groups. When you look at ants, you don’t just look at individuals, you also look at colonies. At the colony level, there is an enormous benefit to specialization. Having thousands of sterile disposable workers lets you do all kinds of things that individually self-interested organisms mightn’t.

photo credit: sharkbait

A similar explanation has been offered for why homosexuality keeps occurring in nature. Naively, you might wonder why it hasn’t been bred out of existence; individuals who are born homosexual are unlikely to have kids. It’s possible that having a certain percentage of your family be childless has a benefit to the group. If the group persists, then the genes will be carried on.

How big do the units of selection get? Family? Tribe? Society? Nation? Civilization?

Consider Stephen Hawking. He’s one of the smartest people around. The beneficial consequences of his discoveries still haven’t been worked out. In any other period of history, he’d be long dead or incapable of communicating his ideas. In a significant portion of our world, he’d be dead. The unit of selection is something like: Stephen Hawking + technoculture capable of building a speech synthesizer and keeping him alive + technoculture capable of benefiting from his insights.

No one knows how to make a pencil, economists like to point out. We rely on a massive network of local expertise and an infrastructure of transportation to pull all the parts together. James Burke’s Connections makes the same point over and over again. The first episode especially so, beginning with a blackout in NYC and proceeding to a fantasy about the collapse of civilization and what you’d need, in order to survive.

The collapse fantasy comes up all over the place. A fear or hope that it’s all spinning plates, liable to come crashing down at any moment. So we bullshit about what we’d do if the zombies come, or we carefully put together our 72 hour survival kits, or we spend weekends in the woods learning “essential” skills.

Gun rights, gardening, anything to help in the great unknown.

From The Texas Survivalist

No one knows how to make a gun, either.

Survivalists fascinate me. They are in effect small groups of people attempting to redraw the borders of selection units. If the broader technoculture is the one by which most of us thrive or perish, serious survivalism is a bet on both the fragility of the larger system and one’s ability to continue past its end. In contrast, someone like me – perpetually connected, mildly asthmatic – won’t even make it to the wall when the revolution comes. The survivalists, meanwhile, expect to be happily ensconced in their compound, building a new authentic life while the rest of us go mad or starve.

The unit of selection is shorthand for a lot of ideas, and the edges of a unit are rarely precise. There is fluidity to definition. Civilization may collapse, but into rival tribes. A tribe might fall apart, while a family goes on. Two tribes might come together while a single loner escapes into the night.

For humans, disconnecting isn’t easy, indeed it may be impossible. In his manifesto, Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) considers the problem.

118 Conservatives and some others advocate more “local autonomy.” Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world.

Ted Kaczynski Industrial Society and Its Future

You might feel that society is going the wrong way, Kaczynski argues, but you get very little say in the direction. If a decision affects a million people, you get (on average) a millionth share. And if the decision affects 6.7 billion?

Jamais Cascio has spent a great deal of time looking at the problem of global warming and the possibility of using geo-engineering as a tool to combat the worst of its effects. He’s also considered the fallout from those kinds of actions. There’s the obvious stuff like unintended consequences or uneven effects (say saving the Midwest breadbasket means drought in Cuba). And then there’s conflict over who gets to decide where, what kind, and how much geo-engineering happens.

In this scenario, the leadership of a powerful state might come to believe that:

• The effects of decarbonization would be slow and diffuse, but
• Said powerful state was well-suited to engage in adaptation projects, while
• The rival(s) of said powerful state were more vulnerable to the impacts of anthropogenic global warming, so that
• The rival(s) would be weakened relative to said powerful state if the effects of global warming persisted and said powerful state adapted.

In short, a powerful state believing itself better-able to adapt to or withstand the effects of global warming might see a persistent advantage to its rivals being hurt by global warming, and slow its decarbonization accordingly.

If all of that sounds ludicrous to you, you’ve probably forgotten about (or never lived through) the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

Jamais Cascio A Cold War Over Warming

7 angels with trumpets aside, the Cold War is probably the first time that a truly global unit of selection existed. 40 years is a long time to spend on the hair trigger edge of global annihilation, (we may still be). Though global integration is far from comprehensive, it’s hard to deny that there are more and more causal links all over the world and that they are getting stronger. The usual suspects can parade out at this point: global warming, the Internet, the stock market crash, food security, nuclear warfare, global pandemic, Coca Cola.

What to do? With only one unit of selection, the question of humanity’s survival becomes all or nothing. If you rely on overseas shipping for your food, then even jitters in the market can cause havoc. When the Mayan civilization collapsed, it had no effect at all on events in Europe or Asia. Now, we risk drowning entire islands because of bad decisions made decades ago.

Kaczynski thinks we should tear things down sooner rather than later.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

Ted Kaczynski Industrial Society and Its Future

Hawking thinks we should establish extra-terrestrial colonies as soon as possible.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”

Hawking: Space exploration a necessity by Sylvia Hui, Associated Press

Both solutions are aspects of the same approach. When the unit grows in size and power such that a self-perpetrated disaster could wipe out the entire territory, we must either shrink the size, or grow the territory. Either way, the scope of consequences must be limited. Otherwise? They had a name for that in the Cold War: “Mutually Assured Destruction.”

At this point, any number of post-humanists might pop up and point out that extinction might not be the end.

1.

There is a possibly apocryphal story about a conversation on the subject of the solar system between Wittgenstein and a student. Wittgenstein asks the student why early people thought that the sun went around the earth. The student says that it’s because it looks that way. Wittgenstein asks, “And how would it look if the earth went around the sun?”

2.

In 1997, a real-estate bubble driven by financial speculation in the Asian Tiger economies reached its peak and burst. The resulting crash sparked international panic, threatening to bring down the world economy. In Thailand, construction halted on dozens of massive projects. 13 years later, those buildings are still standing.

Ban Phe is a fishing village about 2 hours outside of Bangkok. Look it up in travel guides and they will confidently tell you that the only reason you’ll be there is to catch a ferry to Ko Samet, a popular vacation island. There are at least 7 massive resorts within a 15-minute scooter drive. Nearly all are unfinished and abandoned. They tower incongruously over the countryside. The total capacity would have been in the tens-of-thousands.

3.

The Skyscraper Index posits that record-breaking construction projects are indicators of an irrationally exuberant economy and harbingers of doom.

4.

Up close, the Thai resorts are being slowly reclaimed by the jungle.

These are not slap-dash projects. They were well funded and carefully designed. They would have been nice places. Rooftop patios overlook what would have been ornate pools.

5.

*We’ve long had a term of art for old buildings that are ruined: they’re called “ruins.”

*However, we lack a term of art for “ruins” that are actually buildings never completed. Sometimes they’re completed buildings that are never sold, and therefore they start falling over before they were ever inhabited. This would be the American real-estate bust version of the phenomenon.

*Another version is the abandoned, incomplete high-rise. Commonly a steel and cement framework is erected (because that’s pretty easy), and then there’s some legal or economic brouhaha and the builders just down tools and walk off. In Brazil a skeleton framework of this kind is called a “squelette.”

Bruce Sterling Ruins of the Present

6.

The post-apocalypse is a comforting fantasy. It implies that things will only ever get that bad due to catastrophe. We say Detroit looks like a post-apocalyptic city because we are really bad at conceptualizing decline. Detroit got that way gradually.

“How would it look if it had just slowly fallen apart?”

7.

What would it have been like to live through the fall of Rome? You’d have been very old. The decline of the Roman Empire took 320 years. That’s 12 generations of people. Did each generation say that things used to be better in the old days? They were right, I suppose.

8.

When then end came to Thailand’s boom, somewhere an architecture firm – perhaps specializing in premium exotic locations – quietly removed all reference to certain projects from their portfolio.

9.

In Towards Hackable Architecture, Ethan Zuckerman considers the problem that architects face when they are asked by people with more money than sense to envision insane projects, in this case, building a hotel that is “Dubai meets Disney in Dakar”.

Many of the teams fought the question, arguing that the goal was to persuade the developer that the only way to compete in a global market was combining luxury with responsibility. But my favorite response came from an architect who referenced the ideas of creative reuse in my talk and said, “Build the hotel. Assume it’s going to fail and be left to fall apart. How do you build a building so that it can be hacked after the fact?”

Ethan Zuckerman Towards Hackable Architecture

10.

In my mind, there are two images of the Coliseum. The first is of the contemporary ruin. The second is of gladiators, lions, and Christians. But the last gladiatorial fights happened in 435 and the modern ruin wasn’t fully excavated until the 1930s.

That’s 1,500 years of neglect and adaptive re-use that aren’t part of the cultural picture of the building. Here are some things that happened: A church was built into the side; it was fortified and possibly used as a castle; a religious order lived in the northern third from the 1350s to the 1800s (what was happening in the other two thirds?); they considered turning it into a wool factory; they used it briefly for bullfights.

11.

*Occasionally squatters move into “squelettes” and bring in some breeze-block, corrugated tin and plastic hoses, transforming squelettes into high-rise favelas. This doesn’t work very well because it’s tough to manage the utilities, especially the water.

Bruce Sterling Ruins of the Present

12.

There are many more ruins than there have been cataclysms.

This is a story about planning, foresight, myths, reality, and the oak beams of College Hall at New College, Oxford.

photo credit: santo rizzuto

A Fable of Foresight

The first time I heard about the oak beams of College Hall, was in Danny Hillis’ Wired article about the 10,000 year clock, now the flagship project of the Long Now Foundation. He’s retelling it from Stewart Brand, who tells the story as a kind of morality fable in the excellent book and TV series How Buildings Learn.

Summary: New College at Oxford was founded in the late 1300s. The great dining hall was built with enormous oak beams. In the late 1800s, they discovered that there were beetles in the beams. Dismay ensued – no one knew where they’d find oak trees big enough to replace the lost beams. Someone had the bright idea to summon the college forester and ask him if there was any oak available.

“You don’t cut them oaks, them’s for the College Hall.”

Stewart Brand’s Version of the Tale (1:20)

Brand ends the story thus: “That’s the way to run a culture.” The implication being (given that all the college people had lost track of the oak) that we aren’t running ours that way anymore.

Hillis’ version is even more accusatory.

The 14th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now?

A timely message of prudence and foresight which, fortunately, differs from reality in two important ways.

What Actually Happens in the Forests of New College

When the story first started to circulate, the New College archivist looked into things. Here’s the actual history (emphasis mine):

In 1859, the JCR told the SCR that the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true.

In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on ‘progress’, i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire (forests which the College had owned since 1441), he had the largest oaks cut down and used to make new beams for the ceiling.

It is not the case that these oaks were kept for the express purpose of replacing the Hall ceiling. It is standard woodland management to grow stands of mixed broadleaf trees e.g., oaks, interplanted with hazel and ash. The hazel and ash are coppiced approximately every 20-25 years to yield poles. The oaks, however, are left to grow on and eventally, after 150 years or more, they yield large pieces for major construction work such as beams, knees etc.

Now THAT’s the way to run a culture.

The problem with the foresight described in Brand’s version of the story is that it’s incredibly fragile. What if the dining hall had burned down before the oaks had regrown? What if the one stand of oaks had burned? What if no one had thought to talk to the foresters? What if the foresters had all died at some point, breaking the transfer of knowledge?

New College’s actual method is much more robust. Cultural continuity is ensured by regular visits keeping the foresters and college administrators in touch. Materials continuity is ensured by having redundant oaks spread over the college lands. No one oak is destined to be the future beam at College Hall. Instead, they have A BUNCH OF OAK, available for whatever purpose might arise, including burning the great hall to the ground, three years in a row.

Take this lesson. Apply it to your work.

((Below emphasis is mine))

2007: Developer ensures islands will be safe from rising sea levels

Nakheel, which is the developer of The Palm islands and The World, says it followed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) estimation of a rise of 30cm to 50cm by 2100 when it prepared its plans for the islands. “It goes without saying that both short and long-term [sea level] rises are always considered in the design of Nakheel coastal projects,” said Dr Louay A Mohammad, a scientist with Nakheel.

“The upper end of the range is adopted by Nakheel, which is in line with International Marine and Coastal Structures Design Practices. We are therefore confident that the sustainability of our waterfront projects is ensured in the long term.” The developer, however, did not comment on the recent report from international ocean expert Stefan Rahmstorf, published in the journal Science, which said the increase was more likely to be 1.4 metres by 2100 – nearly triple the IPCC estimation.

2009: Oceans Rising Faster Than UN Forecast, Scientists Say

Ocean levels have been rising by 3.1 millimeters a year since 2000, a rate that’s predicted to grow, according to the study. The projections of sea levels rising by a meter this century compare with the 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) forecast by the IPCC.

((Oops))

photo credit: saharsh

Check out this article on Ars Technica about law prof. Patricia Akester’s study examining the effects of DRM on the legal use of copyrighted works. As you’re reading it, bear in mind that due to laws similar to the DMCA all over the world, it is often illegal to bypass DRM encryption, even if copyright law allows you to make a copy.

Why is this important?

In a storage locker in Halifax, there is a small box which theoretically contains copies of every essay I wrote in high school. These essays are stored on a stack of floppy disks. I’ll probably never read them again. For this to be otherwise, a lot of things would need to come true.

1. I figure out which Mac OS I was running (System 6?).
2. I find a copy of the OS and get it running either on old hardware (which I also find) or virtualized.
3. I find a compatible floppy drive.
4. I find a compatible copy of the word processor (WriteNow).
5. The disks have dramatically exceeded their estimated 2-year lifespan.

In contrast, consider my University essays, all of which I can still open and read. This is possible because I have been transferring the files from computer to computer over the past 12 years. There is an unbroken chain of digital pack-ratting from the MacBook I’m using now to the Pentium 166 I built in 1997.

The loss of my essays (grades 10-12) are not a big loss to society. But it serves to illustrate a problem that plagues archivists. Digital content is very easy to copy in the short term but degrades very quickly in the medium and long term. To keep digital content alive, you have to keep it moving. Kevin Kelly calls this Movage.

Anything you want moved to the future has to be given attention to keep it moving forward.

In order to preserve content against the decay of laughably short-lived media and compatibilty, archivists need to make copies – early and often. We’re not used to thinking of it that way. We’re used to thinking of preservation as a kind of stasis. We think of climate controlled rooms and white gloves and sealed vaults.

In digital, stasis is death. Stasis is the BBC’s endangered Domesday Project, trapped on laserdiscs, needing hardware that had nearly disappeared in 2002 (interestingly, they knew this was coming but the archivists failed to keep the data alive).

It is bad enough for librarians, what with the fires, earthquakes, moisture, theft, time, and other disasters eating away at the content they seek to preserve. Copyright holders have made it all the worse, by preventing the one thing going for digital – easy, short-term, perfect copies – from happening in a legal setting.

DRM schemes make it illegal for archivists to do their jobs.