The Knowledge | Lewis Dartnell | Talks at Google
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch?
To explore this topic further, have a look at the book’s website www.the-knowledge.org - for lots of extra material including videos, How To guides (including instructions for making your own gasifier stove) and recommended lists of the best films, books and sci-fi novels on the post-apocalyptic world and rebuilding from scratch.
If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible-a guide for rebooting the
world?
Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest-or even the most basic-technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of
rock, accurately tell time, weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself?
Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built.
Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all-the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors to learn technological advances not explicitly
explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover.
The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of
science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.
This Authors at Google talk was hosted by Boris Debic.
It is the giant question comes to my mind time to time. So cool!!
Doctor Lewis thank you and loved the knowledge you shared with the world. we attended the great talks in Kolkata british council on 27th July 9 2019 . Now you are the talk of the town. congratulations!
So incredibly interesting thank you.
Very interesting, and I'll buy the book; however, my feeling of sadness about your scenario is how far back we are if we can not preserve the theoretical fundamentals of Physics, Computing, and Electrical Engineering as well as math. As you said, you can't write a text book on these things. But even the room full of very smart Googlers could probably not reconstruct the theoretical fundamentals of technology. Loosing that sets us back so far that it is sad.
I think you're right there! If we did ever have to begin rebuilding civilisation (and I dearly hope we never do!) it would clearly take more than just one book to accelerate the development
sadly we would be better off without the deceit included in much of the "science and technology" these days. A world based on contribution rather than competition would be utopia in comparison to what we have . . perhaps a 'reset' is required
Very interesting. Thanks, Lewis.
I have read this book, and I loved it.
I want to buy a copy...I found it because I watched a copy of "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, and the time traveler took two books from his library and used them to rebuild society in the future...it ended with two people asking, "If you had to rebuild society with only two books, which ones would you choose?"
16:00 The definition of irony called...
23:00 Substances
31:00 The printing press
36:00 How a pendulum and a wrist watch can prove that the Earth is a big spinning ball of rock.
38:50 He takes questions
...and by the way, does he sound a little bit like the 10th or 11th Doctor to anyone else?
44:00 Building a machine shop with almost nothing.
With electrification, and redundant systems for energy storage, renewable energy combined with on-demand battery storage for backup during power loss, these fears of collapse would not happen on a massive scale. You see this today even with catastrophic natural disasters in some areas of the planet, there are systems built in around that disaster area to contain a spiral decline of every system failing all at once to affect the human population on a large scale. Yes local disasters will be inconvenient, and knowledge of being prepared can be useful, but re building tools for shelter, food, clothing or just fulfilling the basic needs is truly not needed if the world still stays in a state of abundance and robots with humans keep increasing the supply of things.
GameDev Oleg Just thinking... If I wake up one morning, and walk outside to see that apocalyptic picture in the intro, the first thing I would do is go to the Google office and figure out how to power up their servers. Then I can google all day long for anything else i will need. Possible google up Amazon or use Google's drones and have them deliver us food with the flying robots. Lastly I email everyone I know, send them directions using google maps for where the party is, and have an "end of the world pool party" . lol
the more I learn about human history, the more I understand about our animal behavior, the less I see a need for anything like the civilization we have today. The fact that most the materials we need for our current society, will not be available in the near 30+ years, creates a different belief in what we need as humans, to be happy. Mazlov's hierarchy of needs pretty much covers our needs. Everything else is somewhat superfluous and seems more like a hierarchy of wants.
Where will I get the book the knowledge in Kolkata
The knowledge of how to know the date 10,000 years in the future, build a toaster, heal a body, grow food, control electricity, etc is what education is supposed to be. Instead we teach our children how to build a twitter account and navigate google. Truly shameful. Thank you so much for your time and posting this video. Perhaps the thought experiment will make people realize how little they know and cause a burning desire for true knowledge!
- evol -
+It's now or never! That was certainly my hope!
+Lewis Dartnell WELL DONE!
- evol -
re: Mars question, this pop ups everywhere. For space, I would send a robot to build my shelter, and every other system for convenient living such as food, water and power. I can not see humans working in those hostile environments of space at an efficient scale. When robots that build your habitat, this idea is scalable, and it can be sent to other planets with even more hostile conditions then Mars. The challenge for Google and any other robot companies is to build robots that can build habitats out of sand, rock or whatever material is available on the surface. Its amazing nobody is doing this now and in order for us to be a multi-planetary species, this will have to be developed eventually. Wish SpaceX will hire me, I can model out some different habitat designs. Everything else can be 3d printed. That bootstrap would be easy.
have you ever thought that this is precisely what humans are?
As my 39 year old son in law, well educated, compassionate, loving father and husband would say; why are we going into space? My sentiments exactly. What is with this "Religion of Progress" that so many live by?
The best storage medium is DNA
9:30
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Can we get a Minecraft 2.0 based on this! :)