Connecting the Dots

Leap Day: Time measurement in an Internet age

In years past I'd ignore February 29th, leap day, since it didn't impact me in any way. Not this year, however, since we're living in an Internet-connected age causing time to become increasingly irrelevant.

Measurement of time is all about being in synch. Since the Earth is just slightly off from a 365 day orbit around the Sun, (to be precise 365.242190 days long), a leap year has to be added roughly once every four years to make sure the calendar remains a valid measurement of a year.

Without measurement of time, getting things done, shipping goods, transporting people, having a church service with everyone showing up together, coordinating and orchestrating process and methods, and just about everything we accept today in a functioning society would be impossible. Without time measurement, something as simple as meeting your friend for a drink after work would likely result in you sitting and waiting...and waiting...or missing your friend altogether.

The germane aspect to this exponential growth in the world getting Internet-connected is the need we're seeing for ever tighter synchronization between people (calling someone on Skype on the other side of the world means being aware of Greenwich Mean Time and what each other's time zone is so you're not calling them at 2am) as well as between machines performing transactions (e.g., financial markets open at various times in the world means any machine in the financial value chain has to be synchronized).

But we're also seeing less need for synchronization (i.e., asynchronous) with activities previously required to be in synch.

Long Now Foundation membership...

Since I first heard about the Long Now Foundation and its mission I've been delightfully intrigued by it. It's mission: "The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

* The Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years."

Yesterday's mail brought my charter membership card for the Long Now Foundation. It's made out of metal (hmmm....guess it will last awhile) and I haven't been paying attention as they began taking memberships and, as it turns out, there were 995 people already as members! I quickly signed up (I'm number 996) and they're at 1,084 members as of 5pm CDT (GMT -6) on July 4th.

One reason I'm intrigued is how they'll make a clock that will last 10,000 years and be positioned in a geologically constant place that will potentially be unaltered for that length of time. I like thinking we may be around that long and not be forced to flee the planet as we use it up, pave it over or excrete enough carbon so that all the world is like Phoenix in the summer.

Besides being challenged to look forward for 10,000 years, I can't imagine 10,000 years back when humans were hunter/gatherers and civilizations like Egypt were thousands of years in to the future. The difference now, of course, is that humans could lay waste to this entire planet in the blink of an eye and destroy ourselves and everything upon it. We also might breed ourselves into destruction (the world population is expected to hit over 9 billion by 2050!). It's imperative that we all think about how we're all connected, how what we do impacts our own lives and those of our childrens -- and instead focus on the next several hundred or thousand generations. To net-it-out, that's the goal of creating a foundation with projects like this one...get people to think really long-term.

This is a very serious project and the minds, money and effort going into its creation and deployment is impressive. Poke around the site awhile and consider becoming a member.

The World is Awakening...

What happens when everyone becomes awake? I don't mean from sleep, but rather have fully developed a level of consciousness that ensures they're aware of human connection, ideas and possibilities in new and radical ways?

If you're a C-level executive, strategist, marketer, in product development, sales, are a teacher or small businessperson (or frankly anyone), the accelerating shifts in consciousness will impact what you do or deliver...and probably already is whether you're aware of it or not.

My work in Web/Enterprise 2.0, community and communications through the Internet-as-a-platform means that I am seeing and experiencing this awakening on a daily basis. Simple things like watching people come together in a collaborative space and discovering how important it is to have everyone see the same vision of a product so they're in sync; understanding the importance of ritual in a virtual meeting (e.g., how to lead a session and ensure everyone has a voice); deepening their understanding of markets and the people within them; and the inner drive people are exhibiting to move toward a vision for humanity that they live by. Businesses ignore this at their own peril.

This article in Fast Company (a publication I'm respecting more than ever as they push against the membrane of the future with articles like this one) is kinda, sorta a mashup about new concepts in 'green', activist capitalism, and open source and is one of the most fascinating examples I've seen for some time about strategies and concepts tapping into this awakening world and an ever-expanding human consciousness.

It starts out, "Somewhere between the Oscar for Al Gore's planetary-disaster epic, An Inconvenient Truth, and the canonization of Angelina Jolie by the United Nations (in association with People (NYSE:TWX) magazine), the message started sinking in: The cultural conversation around the environment, social change, and human rights is approaching maximum velocity. What is arguably urgent has become inarguably hip." To me, the operative words are "cultural conversation", "maximum velocity" and "inarguably hip" in that paragraph and it is blatantly obvious to me that the company discussed in this feature couldn't have happened until now.

As I read I realized that all that I've been seeing and experiencing recently -- both on and offline -- is but a tip-of-the-iceberg of this global awakening.

EFF Pioneer Awards

Last night I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards. Just simply being at this event and absorbing the vibe was meaningful for me and I'll bring forth a perspective that may be atypical and worth putting into the conversation about EFF.

Nearly four years ago was the first time that I donated to EFF and began my support of this organization. Though I look like "a suit", a Republican and a mainstream sort of guy, I'm an independent, a closet liberal, enjoy some Libertarian leanings and am quite open to growing in my perspective as I learn -- especially legally and politically -- as we all push against the membrane of the future.

Five or so years ago I became more enlightened. I was stunned by the multiple, parallel, onrush of efforts by copyright holders, Congress, world intellectual capital bodies, governments globally as well as intelligence communities, to command, control and infiltrate all aspects of the Internet.  As I started to try getting my head wrapped around even a few of the issues, I realized that there was NO way that I could be competently informed about even ONE of these issues shaping our future....let alone dozens of them at a time!

Enter the EFF. I learned that here was an organization whose mission was to be that competent, informed entity who'd act to intervene, stop or shape the debate about the most important issues facing us in our digital future. With more and more of our relationships, commerce, free speech, entertainment -- you name it -- being created or delivered digitally, I (and you) could either pull the covers over our collective heads or get involved...and support those who've rolled up their sleeves, dug their hands in the muck and are in the fray.

So that's what I did.  Last night was great for a lot of reasons and validated (in spades) the vital importance of this organization and the people who've dedicated money, support and all or part of their lives to the mission.

World Population to Hit 9.2 Billion by 2050

If there were ever a reason to work toward reducing our carbon footprint, building Web applications, online virtual spaces and other activities that allow humans to minimize our impact on the Earth, it's the report from the United Nations that, "The world population continues its path towards population ageing and is on track to surpass 9 billion persons by 2050, as revealed by the newly released 2006 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections." (More detailed data is here as both a PDF and Excel spreadsheet).

Holy crap. Over 9 BILLION?

To give you some perspective on how population change is ACCELERATING, this quaint little map from the British Empire Atlas from 1918 that you see above says in part, "The population of the World is 1600 millions, the bulk of which is settled in two regions: the Indo-China-Japanese region about 800 millions (half the population of the world), and the Central European region about 360 millions. The only other densely populated region is the Eastern side of the United States and Canada with about 90 millions." (More here).

Though population estimates are significantly more accurate today, 1.6 billion to 9.2 billion in 89 years is a pretty frightening increase.

• As I think about these numbers, the sustainability questions flood my brain: How can the Earth sustain this number of humans? What will we eat and drink? As industrialized nations move from growing food to growing renewable energy resources, is there enough to go around? Since most of the population growth is in developing nations, will the pressure on richer nations mean more wars, negative economic impacts or, God forbid, ways to accelerate genocides like what's happening in Darfur?

• A continual migration from real-world to virtual questions abound: What happens as we disconnect from the natural world and move online?  Will all of us move into our heads and be less in touch with the natural world?  Even though I've shared many experiences with them in wilderness, I've found that my kids already are pretty unaware of the subtelties and nuances of the shift in seasons, how to align with nature and even their expectations as we travel down an Interstate highway in a remote area that a few miles off the highway there is....no one.

• Lastly, the enormity of the problem, the strategic political and governmental necessities, and the moral ambiguities between cultures and religions exacerbate attempts at controlling the problem. I wonder how those who consider themselves religious ignore these realities and object to birth control (no....I'm not going to discuss abortion) as a means of population control?

Remember last year when physicist Stephen Hawking proclaimed that humans *must* colonize other planets -- he believes global warming, nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus could wipe out the earth --in order to survive as a species and he was ridiculed in many circles? I read dozens of blog posts, news articles (like this one) and opinion pieces that missed the point of his central argument: humans all settled in one place (i.e., our planet Earth) are vulnerable to mass extinction.

He didn't even get in to a discussion that we might breed ourselves into extinction.

Cliff Dwellings and Technology

My son and I are in Arizona for what's turned out to be our 6th Dad & Son Adventure. Today we were traveling along the Apache Trail, an indigenous pathway used for hundreds of years -- and relevant to us today was the use by the Salado indians and then later the Apache.

The thing that struck me while we were on this adventure today was the marked contrast between life about 150-700 years ago with the Apache and the Salado before them, and life today as we drove along in our nice rental car with me thinking about Web 2.0 from time-to-time (don't ask how *that* connection was made!).

We stopped at cliff dwellings occupied by the Salado of Tonto Basin around 1250 AD (click on the four-picture to see my photos). No one knows why (and like the Anasazi and other native peoples of the desert Southwest) the Salado vanished and abandoned these cliff dwellings. When you're actually standing in this dwelling and it hits you how difficult it must've been to survive and eke out a living, it's no wonder that the Salado vanished.

Conjecture amongst scientists as to why they left run the gamut from using up sparse resources (like the Mesquite tree) to a shift in the climate to warfare. But it's all conjecture. What makes me think and draw parallels to today is global warming and the shifts it's causing; to our use (and overuse) of resources like the precious water that is being consumed at frighteningly fast rates in the southwest; and the fragility and precariousness of our existence.

Will technology continue to pull rabbits out of a hat and stay ahead of resource consumption by humans, increased demand for energy, drug resistant strains of microbes, and the scalability of Typepad? (Sorry...just had to throw that in since the outage affected me on this adventure). Or will some of us vanish?

Arizona is projected to grow from 5.1 million people in 2000 to 10.7 million by 2030, bringing it from the 20th most populous state to the 10th. With Lake Mead dropping and signs pointing to a drought in Arizona, can the state handle this growth or will the infrastructure collapse? Read more in one of my earlier posts "Could Water be the Oil of the 21st Century?" if you care to learn more about one depleting resource...water.

Forbes: Past Climate Change Supports Current Global Warming

Only someone completely unable to think critically would believe for a moment that humans haven't made an impact on the Earth (just look at these before and after pictures to illustrate). Certainly fairly liberal organizations have compiled information about global warming...but conservative pro business publications like Forbes magazine insert at least some meaningful data within their pages from time to time (or online in this case).

Forbes had this article today about Past Climate Change Supports Current Global Warming:

Some of the strongest evidence yet of a direct link between tropical warmth and higher levels of greenhouse gases is found in past climate records, U.S. researchers say.

The current steady increase in tropical temperatures caused by global warming could have a major impact on global climate and result in more destructive storms like Hurricane Katrina, according to a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The study appears this week in Science Express, the online publication of the journal Science. In addition, Google Scholar has this list of studies on global warming for your leisure reading pleasure.

Supervolcanoes and Earthquakes

As all eyes have been on New Orleans and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, my thoughts have also gone to our preparedness for other disasters which could make New Orleans look trivial in comparison. Earthquakes and other seismic events are the biggest possibilities and several things have hit my radar screen recently I'd like to share with you.

Just so you know, I'm a "glass is half full" guy and not paranoid, but my day job requires that I wear a risk assessment hat -- being always alert to upside and downside while performing scenario planning that includes worst-case  -- and the effects of the below are worst-case...or are they?

Supervolcanoes
Some months ago my son and I watched a Discovery program about Supervolcanoes and the fact that Yellowstone Nat'l Park officials were alerted to a "tipping" of Yellowstone Lake (water became shallower on one end and deeper on the other...like tipping a bowl of water). Seems that the magma chamber under a >50 square mile area of the Park was bulging. Though the risk of a supervolcano erupting in any foreseeable near term future is quite small (though truly unknown), I've been to Yellowstone as a kid and seen many of these seismic areas in person and know how close this activity is to the surface. It was a fascinating program while simultaneously disturbing.

The thrust of the program was that this 50+ square mile area could explode (as it had in the past) as a supervolcano, spewing ash and debris in to the air and plunging the world in to a something akin to a nuclear winter.

What about Cascadia and the mystery of the bulge?

Global Warming

I'm still surprised that there is debate over the effects humans are having on an overall rise in global temperature warming the Earth. Of course, with momentum behind teaching intelligent design vs. reasoned, scientific analysis and discovery in our public schools, perhaps we can just turn over this problem to a higher power to fix (sarcasm intended).

Today's article in The New Scientist is pretty sobering. Here's a snippet:

THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

It goes on:

His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. (my emphasis)

20 times more potent!?! Oh great. Just what we need: an accelerant for global warming. Though I'm not steeped in the finer points of the Kyoto Protocol which the United States has opted not to participate in, are we going to sit around and wait until there is catastrophe? Where is the sense of urgency and major investment in alternative energies? Maybe, just maybe, (and hopefully) President Bush's signing of a massive windfall for energy companies is to spur and accelerate investment.

Could Water be the Oil of the 21st Century?

Two and a half hours north of Minneapolis/St. Paul is Duluth, MN. Sometimes called "San Francisco of the North" (which is a HUGE stretch as far as I'm concerned), it nonetheless is the gateway to the scenic north shore of Lake Superior. I've spent several decades on the north shore hiking, scuba diving (some of the best wreck diving in the world is in this freshwater sea), going to the Boundary Waters Wilderness and hanging out at beautiful lodges like the one at Lutsen.

My son and I are up here for our delayed-from-last-summer Dad & Son Adventure (something we do every year) and I'm looking out at the lake which is one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. It's mostly open water with ice around the shoreline...but is still incredibly beautiful. As I sit here, I'm comparing-and-contrasting this experience with my family's love of Scottsdale, AZ, the beauty of the desert, our intent to have a second home there and eventually retire, all rolled together with the crisis occurring with water in the southwest (most notably the drop in water levels in the Lake Mead reservoir) and water issues throughout the world.

Consider this from the BBC site on the world water crisis:

• Ninety-five percent of the United States' fresh water is underground.
• North America's largest aquifer, the Ogallala, is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year. Total depletion to date amounts to some 325 bcm, a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. The Ogallala stretches from Texas to South Dakota, and waters one fifth of US irrigated land.
• Today, one person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water, and one in two lacks safe sanitation.
• We use about 70% of the water we have in agriculture. But the World Water Council believes that by 2020 we shall need 17% more water than is available if we are to feed the world.

So tying this back to me personally -- and the dichotomy of being here by Lake Superior vs. in the desert in Scottsdale -- is a discussion some time ago about potentially building a pipeline to divert water from Lake Superior to the Mississippi river (to replenish the Ogallala aquifer) or to the desert southwest to feed the thirsty inhabitants.

Thus far, it's been defeated for environmental reasons and the Province of Ontario, Canada was one its biggest detractors. Still...the Canadian government is considering selling Canadian water. If so, it'll be very interesting to see if water truly will be the oil of the 21st Century.

Star Trek coming true?

When the second Star Trek movie came out in 1982 (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan), I was enamored of the premise of terraforming in one of the movie's central themes called the "Genesis Project." In the movie, there was a Genesis device that -- when shot down to an otherwise barren planet's surface -- would cause a chain terraforming reaction creating a complete M-class (i.e., like Earth) planet with water, an atmosphere, and other ingredients required for life as we know it.

Now it looks like NASA researchers are thinking-through injecting synthetic "super" greenhouse gases into the planet's atmosphere to raise its temperature and melt its polar ice caps to provide conditions suitable for biological life. The main thought? Injecting synthetic greenhouse gases into the negligible atmosphere of Mars could make the planet hospitable for humans.

With a travel time of two and a half years to Mars each way, NASA better get moving so I can go there while I still have my teeth.