posted by
LaminatorX
on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:14PM
from the project-for-a-new-Egyptian-century dept.
from the project-for-a-new-Egyptian-century dept.
Aeon has an essay on the lessons from Egyptology on preserving our culture.
Still, for all its carven glyphs, Egypt cannot claim to have passed down its dreams, memories and hopes for the future. Some of its civilisation has been recovered, but some was lost irretrievably. This is sobering enough on its own terms. When you examine our beloved present day from an Egyptological distance, you see that we are vulnerable to a similar fate.
This article covers the work of the Long Now Project, including the 10,000 year clock and the Rosetta Project.
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Lessons from Egyptology on Cultural Longevity
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:39PM
We are diaper-wetters, compared with Egypt! Core Egyptian civilization spanned from roughly 3000 BC to 300 BC - with a Greco-Egyptian antecedent for another 4 or 5 hundred years.
What a bunch of navel-gazing, narcissistic twaddle! Expecting there is some inherent value of extending the short 500 years of this present "culture" - who's enduring characteristics were industrial-scale chattel slavery, multiple world-wars from the time of Elizabeth I, the genocides of the Americas and the universal concentration of wealth and fruit of industry in .01%. But we MUST preserve the best! Nintendo and Nietzsche surely deserve to be deathless!
If this culture - born in mid 17th century - endures another 150 years, it will have outlived its promise by about 200. Everything after 1975 can surely be charted into advanced decadence of a dead society, with sociopaths bleeding what was left - with no regard for a tomorrow no one believes.
In short? "Long Now" bite my arse. You know nothing and you bestow nothing enduring of value to anyone. Why perpetrate the worship of your own neurons?
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:44PM
BTW: Sublimate and suppress the awareness all you want. You are going to die. Chase the future, and you will almost surely die without ever understanding what it is to be alive.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @07:50PM
I'm going to become immortal just to stick it to you. I will live my entire life with the understanding that Jeremiah Cornelius is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @06:42PM
Most of the people who want immortality wouldn't enjoy it, even assuming they are forever at their top physical and mental condition. What would you do when the stars have all died? Still console yourself by repeatedly saying that Jeremiah Cornelius is wrong? I bet long before the stars have died you would have proven his "you are going to die" claim and let/made yourself die (assuming you had not died for other reasons already).
By the way, lots of "singularity" cultists are delusional about immortality by "mind transfer". There's currently no human technology in the foreseeable future that would allow you to transfer all your memories to a computer. Go google for: "Halle Berry" Neuron e.g. http://www.caltech.edu/news/single-cell-recognition-halle-berry-brain-cell-1013 [caltech.edu]
Responses varied with the person and stimulus. For example, a single neuron in the left posterior hippocampus of one subject responded to 30 out of 87 images. It fired in response to all pictures of actress Jennifer Aniston, but not at all, or only very weakly, to other famous and non-famous faces, landmarks, animals, or objects. The neuron also (and wisely, it turns out) did not respond to pictures of Jennifer Aniston together with actor Brad Pitt.
As per the example, even the context/scenario might be important and differ for different people. How would you or anyone else transfer out your mental model and data of merely a single person (for example the information that leads you to believe what a close friend might likely or conceivably do given various hypothetical situations). Or how and what chocolate or coffee tastes and means to you?
And how long would it take to transfer? You might die before transferring even 10%. That said, if you're a very ignorant, stupid or stereotypical person it could be harder to tell the difference between the original you and a quick and dirty partial crappy copy. Or people might even consider the copy an improvement ;).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday December 14 2014, @01:23AM
And nothing of value will be lost.
Except disco music. That's a pity. Oh well.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:36AM
Dazz by Brick.
Brick House by the Commodores.
Skin Tight by The Ohio Players.
For the Love of Money by The OJays
Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry
I Believe in Miracles by Hot Chocolate
Don't Want to Lose Your Love by Flowers
Le Freak by Chic
And the incomparable Boogie Oogie Oogie by Taste of Honey
One Dionysian evening of this, in the right company and a good, hot floor - anybody still thinking about ANY kind of clock doesn't deserve to have life wasted on them.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:26PM
Sounds like you miss Motown :-)
what about "Sunshine of your Love" sung by Ella Fitzgerald?
"Super Freak" by Rick James? (yes, the tune is recognizable, yes, this is the original, AFAIK).
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:50PM
Hey! Both are great! You notice most of my selections are "Funky Soul" - which got pulled into the Disco Inferno.
I didn't know another "Super Freak" besides RJ's. Intrigued...
And Ella? Sunshine is cool, but you better 'Get Ready' [youtube.com] 'cos here I come!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @09:56PM
After each paragraph, you insert a "paragraph" which contains only a single white space?
Is that intentional?
It certainly is unnecessary.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Monday December 15 2014, @04:47AM
The guy/gal who signs all their AC posts as "-- gewg_" doesn't understand style? Who woulda thought?
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @06:27AM
You could have used your post to say why additional vertical whitespace is a useful thing.
I'm still willing to hear a explanation of that.
Can you more specific about what you find odd re: my posts?
(I'm a guy, BTW.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Monday December 15 2014, @10:18PM
For me, personally, I tend to write long dense paragraphs. I think that adding whitespace between them helps the "digestion" of walls-of-text. (I am working on being more succinct and to-the-point :) But my main thought is that presentation style is a big part of communication, even in primarily textual content.
I don't find your posts odd, I just think that your presentation has a distinct style, particularly in your signature. I'm sure your AC posting-method has non-stylistic purposes, though.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @07:58PM
OK. Paragraph breaks accomplish what you prefer.
(...and you do what you have said.)
What Jeremiah does, however, is overkill, adding between actual paragraphs: a blank line, a line containing only a single white space, and another blank line.
Rather than improving readability, it requires extra scrolling and is distracting.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 17 2014, @11:57AM
Others among my faves:
Street life- The Crusaders
Dance with you- Carrie Lucas
Keep on Jumping- Musique
Cocomotion- El Coco
and some "not quite pure disco but"
Last night a DJ saved my life- Indeep
Funkytown- Lipps Inc
Paris Latino- Bandolero
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 17 2014, @12:04PM
I forgot, "I believe in miracles", but the one by jacksons sisters which is an entirely different song.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday December 17 2014, @06:19PM
Got it on my phone. "I believe in YOU!"
Great cut.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday December 17 2014, @06:17PM
OK! We need a name for the set list!
"The Long Then" might do. ;-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Non Sequor on Sunday December 14 2014, @01:27AM
You know I agreed with you before I read your post.
But I have to say, I really think I want to double down on Nietzsche and Nintendo. I was a little half-hearted on the Nietzsche half of that duo before, but thinking about putting the two together has enthused me. I will commit my life to making the accomplishments of Nietzsche and Nintendo echo across all eternity.
In every life, a person has to find something utterly inconsequential to take too seriously. That's literally the purpose of life.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @03:27AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @01:35AM
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:08AM
So far...
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:00AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Sunday December 14 2014, @02:16AM
The big questions of existence that the people of that era dealt with and pretty much figured out were, first, where the Sun went at night, and, second, what the Earth actually is. And it wasn't until Eratosthenes, a Greek philosopher at the tail end of that period, that the questions were basically answered, at least in broad outline.
Just in the past century, we've cracked the genetic code of life and conclusively solved all the questions of physics at all but the most extreme of scales. We know not only where the Sun goes at night, but where it came from and where everything else came from, up until a tiny fraction of a second after a baker's dozen billion years ago. And the wonders we've built, including thinking machines and ships to the stars, are magic beyond the wildest dreams of any pharaoh.
The Egyptians did some really awesome things -- don't get me worng. Beer alone deserves a shout-out.
But humanity has done far more just in the past century than the Egyptians ever imagined doing in all their tens of millennia.
At least some of that is going to be worth remembering for our children...if we survive to have any....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:09AM
Yeah, Eratosthenes, fairly competent philosopher, but more of a librarian and mathematician. Somewhat after my time, and it is not the role of the past to accuse the future, so I will say no more. But this is a point: the past cannot criticize the future, so the future should return the favor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @09:59PM
It always bugs me when folks insist that Columbus was trying to prove that the Earth is round when anyone with any education has known that is is since ~200 BCE.
Not only that, but there was a really good estimate of just how big the thing is.
That ancient guy's use of shadows to figure it out was a very cool trick.
http://www.google.com/images?q=Eratosthenes+circumference [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:39AM
Yes. But they cannot be said to constitute our "culture" - which is represented better by re-runs of "Friends" than the content of Scientific American, or even The New Yorker...
A culture that exists also through mass impoverishment, and media-induced docility.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Monday December 15 2014, @02:02PM
Respectfully, I disagree. Dross like what we call "pop culture" has minimal real impact on the thinking and spirit of the times. Consumerism is a threat to the integrity of our society, I'll concede. The Big Ideas of our era: tolerance, democratic values, a belief that universal social equality is both desirable and achievable -- not to mention totally unprecedented prosperity and longevity, are what I believe really define us. They set up apart from the cultures of the medieval era as clearly as the medievals were separated from the ancients. Yes, we have our problems and lots of dirty laundry (one need look no further than Ferguson, MO) but compared to 1914 or 1714 or 1514, I can say wholeheartedly it is good to be us.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday December 15 2014, @04:30PM
Bull. There is no functional democratic principle organizing any aspect of our society - except as rhetoric for self-preening as it tramples over the rights and resource of the larger world.
Hands up! Don't Shoot!
We are more amused and docile, not improved in any meaningful human value.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @03:08AM
Indeed. Civilizations rise and fall. All of them. Without exception. Is this really a revelation?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @03:08AM
The folks at Long Now have the mission of asking us to think about the longer term consequences of our actions, thus acting to avoid war, pollution, and slavery. If you think they are a bunch of jerks, you misunderstand their mission.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fleg on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:09AM
“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.” -- Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:41AM
Yes. Lovely expression.
I probably shouldn't have read that book at 13...
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @12:22AM
will still be in use 10,000 years from now?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Sunday December 14 2014, @03:27AM
If you can tell me what kind of computers(if any) are going to be used in 10,000 years, then I can try to answer your software question.
You sound like the typical MBA Point-Haired Boss...give a vague idea of what you want, and expect the coders to read your mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:00AM
That's OK, at least he had a valid point while you sound like an idiot.
His point was that little we do today will be around in 10,000 years. Your point is that you like to try and belittle others and, apparently, argue.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Sunday December 14 2014, @06:58AM
What software that you write today will still be in use 10,000 years from now?
Probably none of what I write, but I'm certain a few megalines of COBOL from the 60's will still be around.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday December 14 2014, @07:31AM
Don't tempt me, sonny, I might decide to write some additions to that finance package in COBOL.
Yeah, strategically, I might introduce that "year10k problem", my descendants deserve to earn some bread too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday December 14 2014, @12:52PM
Most of the problem is sophistry revolving around "in use" and "you".
"You" as in programmers in general makes this a lot simpler than "you" as in me. I work at a giant corporation doing data analysis and integration, I guess. Sometimes it surprises me to be "reintroduced" to my code of a decade ago. TPS reports never die. On the other hand I've both implemented systems that have been shutdown, and some that need to be killed with fire before the contagion spreads yet they're still working today.
Also theres "in use" as in 5 million hipsters simultaneously running the same social media network app on their latest model iphone all drinking PBR in Portland, and there's "in use" as in there exists a file on the equivalent of archive.org and or the equivalent of file sharing systems that contains video game roms that hasn't been deleted and is apparently fired up at least once in awhile.
So on one hand I donno if they'll ever be a last time someone fires up Atari 2600 space invaders or Atari 2600 pacman, or on the other hand probably 99% of current existing software could be deleted without impacting the world or its economy very much.
This is aside from parallel implementation. The 8051 refuses to die so I'm quite sure some model year 2050 car will ship with an 8051 based fuel injector controller that via parallel evolution is identical to something shipping in the 80s. Maybe a better example is the stereotypical microwave oven controller.
Did you know a "full set" of 2600 roms is only like 4 megs? That always amazes me. Intellectually I've done all kinds of retrocomputing and I "know" that everything ever written for CPM is only a couple megs, but the video game rom total size always hits me pretty hard. 50 years from now someone's going to post that shockingly a full set of every GTA game ever made and the FPGA code to emulate the hardware is only a couple TB which will be a rounding error by that time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Sunday December 14 2014, @12:51AM
I just had this picture of a candle-lit hall full of Irish monks, painstakingly copying VHS tapes by hand.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:19AM
Love it!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by fleg on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:29AM
"The monks waited. It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now, was as inscrutable to the monks in some instances as it would be to an illiterate wild-boy from the hills; this knowledge was empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. Still, such knowledge had a symbolic structure that was peculiar to itself, and at least the symbol-interplay could be observed. To observe the way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday — someday, or some century — an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all. The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years..." -- Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
(Score: 3, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Sunday December 14 2014, @04:51AM
And a thousand years after that, due to the errors introduced in the copying process, people will have religious wars over which is the true version of "Police Academy 4".
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday December 14 2014, @08:02AM
"Blessed are the cheesemakers!"
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday December 14 2014, @12:24PM
-Percy Byron Shelley
(what makes it interesting, of course, is that Ozymandias is saying the exact opposite with his inscription as what he intended to say.)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @07:10AM
Since we're all actually living in a computer simulation 1000's or millions of years from now, there must have been some significance to the present period or else we all would have chosen a different period in which to play this out.