Once the necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) are provided, more advanced technologies can be addressed. Perhaps the next stage should be limited to what can be achieved without metal.
Any technology has a lot of explicit knowledge – information that can be readily articulated, codified, accessed and verbalized. It is “obvious to the person skilled in the art”.
However, there is also a lot of implicit or tacit knowledge – the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. Implicit knowledge includes all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other users.
Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact, regular interaction and trust. However, in recent times we have seen the development of “subject matter experts”. A subject matter expert’s major contributions are the implicit knowledge about a subject. This includes both little-known techniques or practices, and the decision-making processes used in the subject area.
Consider an example. There is a substantial industry that manufactures integrated circuits. These circuits have grown in complexity and refinement. Some of the technology is reasonably well known: papers have been published about the chemical compositions and their mechanical, thermal, and electronic properties. However, some of the refinements in the manufacturing processes are known only to a few of the employees working in the actual fabrication plants. These include such arcana as the specific concentrations, delivery timing, and interactions of the various materials.
Much of this arcana is highly proprietary. It constitutes a competitive advantage to the manufacturer. But there is a lot of previous generation knowledge that would be very useful to someone trying to recapitulate the technology.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that tacit knowledge could be collected, organized as the content of subject matter automatons, and incorporated in the Technology Recapitulation Machine?
A lot of technologies, such as devices constructed of metal and devices that use electricity, require tools for their manufacture.
A lot of the technology that satisfies basic needs, such as shelter, food, transportation, etc. requires tools and materials that are produced using simpler tools, materials, and techniques.
Let’s call these “precursor technologies”. A collection of these precursors is a necessary part of the recapitulation knowledge.
Precursor technologies include:
Kilns
Charcoal making
We need a couple of projects: one to design and implement the hardware and software of the Technology Recapitulation Machine; and one to gather the data to put into it.
I suggest that both projects be organized using volunteers, and coordinated using a Web site. The Web site should be the repository for design information, collected from sources willing to provide unrestricted use of the designs (for example, all of the software should be open source, based on one or more of the existing open source licenses). The Web site should also be the repository for all of the data, using a Wiki or something similar.
Of course, one such repository already exists at Wikipedia.org; Wikipedia already contains a great deal of information that would be useful to a project of this nature. However, there are many gaps that need to be addressed, and I think there is a need for additional work on user interfaces, search mechanisms, and other facilities to make the resulting collection of information usable for the specific purpose of technology recapitulation.
It would be very helpful to have a sponsor who can provide hosting for the Web site on hardware that can support a large community of users, with a sufficient bandwidth to permit effective access.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine is a “machine” in the Information Technology sense. That is, it is a device that can perform calculations and make decisions. We typically divide the design of such a device into three parts:
This is the most important area of the Technology Recapitulation Machine. The choice of the data collections provided in the device will determine whether it can successfully fulfill its purpose.
Broadly speaking, the data should include:
The Technology Recapitulation Machine is a “machine” in the Information Technology sense. That is, it is a device that can perform calculations and make decisions. We typically divide the design of such a device into three parts:
The software should include an operating system, a file system, search technology, document formatting and display, and a variety of applications that can be used to work with the data. Text editing applications will probably be useful, but applications that can perform calculations (for example, a spreadsheet program) will be more important. Two-dimension and three-dimension design programs will be even more useful. Programs that can be used to construct simulations of physical systems will also help users evaluate the information they retrieve. Project planning and management applications will also be useful.
Some interesting examples of applications have begun to appear. The National Geographic Handheld Birds & Software is a multimedia program designed to run on a handheld device (in this case the Palm Pilot, alas). The program has over 1,600 images, more than 600 range maps, and over four hours of song and call recordings. This is an example of a “field guide” that has become vastly more powerful than a printed collection of similar information, because it adds audio to the visual representations and it adds a search mechanism that enables the user to find information much more quickly.
An even better example may be Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a massively hyperlinked collection of articles produced by thousands of contributors. Any topic may be presented in a collection of articles. Search mechanisms make it easy to find information on any topic included in the data collection.
It may be useful to also include software applications to manipulate documents and designs (such as Computer Aided Design applications) to assist users in translating the information provided to concrete plans.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine is a “machine” in the Information Technology sense. That is, it is a device that can perform calculations and make decisions. We typically divide the design of such a device into three parts:
Based on the electronic technologies available in late 2006, it should be possible to build a completely solid-state device using large amounts of non-volatile random access memory (tens of gigabytes), a lesser amount of volatile memory (perhaps one gigabyte), standard processors and ancillary circuitry, and a solid-state display that uses low power illumination (such as LEDs).
Based on the electronic technologies available in 2014, it should be possible to build a completely solid-state device using large amounts of non-volatile random access memory (hundreds of gigabytes), a lesser amount of volatile memory (perhaps sixteen gigabytes), standard processors and ancillary circuitry, and a solid-state display that uses low power illumination (such as OLEDs).
Power generation might use the physical motion of magnets relative to wire coils. With slow speeds of motion, and no physical contact between critical parts, this should not reduce reliability significantly. An alternative would be “solar” power (conversion of light to electricity).
The operating components need a housing that provides excellent protection, such as a metal case. Appearance is not an issue. The case might include a cover that protects the display. It would be best if the display is protected (for example, by a transparent but very strong window such as an acrylic plastic, or something like “Gorilla Glass”) when the cover is opened. However, if the display is mounted inside the cover, the communication between the display and the rest of the device must be very well protected. Perhaps all the links can be made using optical transmission (both data and power).
Data input will probably require something like a keyboard. While a chord keyboard could reduce the component count and therefore provide much higher reliability, it is also much harder to learn to use. Therefore, it may be better to have a keyboard with a separate key for each “character.” Either way, the keyboard should be as reliable as possible. In other words, it may be better to sacrifice keyboard “touch” and use a mechanism like an on-screen keyboard or a projected keyboard image with laser scanning to sense key presses. The same mechanism could also provide a “touch pad” for navigation.
I have been thinking for some time about a “device” that could provide the knowledge necessary to “recover” our technological base. This essay is an attempt to identify the requirements for such a device.
I have called this device the “Technology Recapitulation Machine” to indicate that it is intended to allow the users to recreate a technological base. That does not mean that the intent is to recreate exactly the same technologies, with exactly the same costs, benefits, and relationships that exist in our current society. Instead, the Technology Recapitulation Machine should provide the resources necessary to allow a very small group of users to:
In effect, the Technology Recapitulation Machine should be a modern “Noah’s Ark” that carries the seeds to recreate our civilization — not the animals (nor the plants that Noah ignored), but the ideas. And the intention is not to preserve our culture (I’ll leave that to someone else), but to preserve our ability to construct a culture.
The technology we use today has evolved over centuries. Much of that evolution has been hit or miss. As a result, the technological process and products we have today incorporate a lot of legacy substance.
In addition, technology often runs into regulations – laws – that protect the legacy implementations.
(My favorite example is the sealed beam headlight. Sealed beam headlights were the only headlights allowed in the U. S. until the 1970s. Alternative lights, such as halogen lamps with a bulb separate from the reflector, were introduced in other countries as early as 1952. Although the alternative lights were brighter, used less electricity, and were easier to align, they were illegal in the U. S.! The laws had been written to specify the engineering solution, rather than the engineering goals.)
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the chance to consider our technological goals in a context that allows us to avoid the incorporation of legacy factors and produce cleaner, more efficient results?
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should be a physical device that is:
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should be small enough to be easily carried by a single person. A good size would be that of a large book. The weight should similarly be no more than that of a large book.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should have a cost that is within the means of the average individual. That is, it should be inexpensive enough that a private pilot can afford to buy one to store on his or her plane; or, the owner of a sea-going yacht can buy one to stow aboard. There should be at least one in every high school.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should be practically indestructible. It should survive heat, cold, moisture, shock, abrasion, and other environmental insults far beyond what a human being can sustain (think of the “black boxes” on commercial aircraft). It should be designed for a lifetime measured in hundreds of years.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine must be able to operate with absolutely no technological support. That means: no external power sources; no communication with other devices; no separate data storage; and so on.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should have input mechanisms that allow a user to easily enter commands, parameters, and navigation. The parameters to commands (such as searches) must be able to include full text strings.
The Technology Recapitulation Machine should have output mechanisms that can deliver large quantities of information in usable forms. This almost certainly means a relatively high resolution display that can show large quantities of text at one time, and that can show graphics such as drawings and images.
Our civilization is built upon a lot of technology. That’s not necessarily bad, but…
All that technology requires trained — no, educated — people to operate it.
What would we do if we no longer had all the people who are now employed to maintain and replace our technological base? What would we do if we lost our understanding of the technology that enables us to maintain our population density?
In the following paragraphs, I have described a number of ways that we might lose the ability to maintain our technology. For a more general treatment of the ways that civilizations can fail (add a bibliography that can provide lots of material for further study), I suggest reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse.
Imagine that global warming suddenly “runs away” to the point where seacoasts are flooded, farms are drought-stricken, and world food production collapses. Within a few years, populations might crash to a few percent of current figures. How much of our current technological base would we be able to keep running when most of the engineers and technicians are gone, and there is no one with the education to replace them?
Or, suppose that the ecological scientists have it backwards, and global warming turns out to have slightly delayed the onset of the next ice age, which covers most of the higher latitudes with mile-thick glaciers in less than a century. What technologies would survive the loss of virtually all crop-growing areas, virtually all current factory locations, and most of the technologically educated people?
Current scientific projections are that world population will actually start shrinking after 2050, and that there may be no stopping point. As the number of people declines, so will the reservoir of detailed knowledge in many fields of technology.
Of course, mankind could create an even quicker population crash by losing control of our nuclear arsenals. Despite the end of the cold war, there are still tens of thousands of nuclear weapons ready to launch. If things went wrong, virtually all of our technological base would be destroyed within hours, and the “nuclear winter” resulting from the debris in the atmosphere would cause further population loss over the ensuing years.
Suppose that we are struck by a pandemic disease — one that has: a long and asymptomatic incubation period; easy transmission to new victims during the incubation period; and an extremely high rate of fatalities. Although modern science might be able to create vaccines and treatments, expanding production to the quantities needed to treat billions of people would take a long time; and in the mean time, most of the world’s population would die.
On a smaller scale, suppose that a small number of people are marooned on an unpopulated island — one large enough to support a community, but small enough (and far enough from shipping lanes) to have no contact with the rest of the world — and must depend on their own abilities to survive and to recreate the technology necessary to communicate with the rest of the world. Robinson Crusoe was able to build a comfortable life because he “lived” in a time when it was possible for one person to grasp the entire technological knowledge base, but he was ultimately rescued only when people from the more technologically advanced areas came to him. What would be necessary today?
Looking further ahead, what of the passengers and crew of an interstellar ship, marooned on a new planet? How would they find the resources to survive? What would they need to be able to recreate the technology to escape their exile?
This may not be fiction: In 2012, NASA and DARPA jointly funded a 100-Year Starship program, the goal of which was to achieve human interstellar flight within the next 100 years.