Suppose an alien planetary research team showed up at my front door and asked me to write up a series of reports on human life on Earth. Why me? Hey, why not? They want useful information, right? What would I tell them?
Well, I would need to tell them that humans are clearly the top-predators on this planet, that they've developed what is called "culture" to an astonishing extent, that they fear the natural world, which had brutalized them in the past, and this fear, combined with their innate and thus insatiable urge to grow, is causing them to destroy their Earthly habitat, and thus themselves. I would tell these aliens that humans love technology, often for its own sake, and use it to dominate the perilous natural world.
In short, I would tell these aliens that my fellow humans are exceedingly clever but equally clueless. And then, by way of example, I would show them Stanford Robot a Search Engine For the Ocean. I would have to give them the context, explaining that shark populations have been declining for a long time now, but especially lately, and all of the top-of-the-line predators in the oceans (like sharks, but also including tuna, swordfish, et. al.) are under threat of extinction in the not-so-distant future due to human hunting. (Sharks are a subject I will take up soon on DOTE.)
A few days ago, Stanford marine biologists were excited to detect a white shark swimming along the California coast north of San Francisco. Although the biologists routinely monitor sharks, this particular moment marked the first step toward a "wired ocean" full of mobile robotic receivers and moored listening stations that can detect ocean wildlife as it swims by.
Environmental groups have petitioned the federal government to list the declining population of great white sharks off the coast of California as an endangered species.
Although similar technologies have been used to monitor the ocean itself, specifically to investigate climate change, this is the first such experiment dedicated to wildlife.
In addition to providing researchers with near real-time data of sharks and other animals, the project supports a new iPhone and iPad app designed to give the public a more visceral connection to the ocean and the creatures within.
The Wave Glider robot [image left] — named Carey in honor of noted large pelagic fish biologist Frank Carey — is probing the Pacific Ocean off the California coast in an initiative led by Stanford marine sciences Professor Barbara Block and her research team to keep tabs on the comings and goings of top marine predators, and to provide better census data of all species in the area.
The Blue Serengeti Initiative, as the effort is called, picks up where the decade-long Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project left off. TOPP, an international collaboration among 75 scientists, involved tagging thousands of marine animals –great white sharks, elephant seals and leatherback turtles – and tracking their movements via satellite.
For example, TOPP revealed that great white sharks make seasonal migrations almost exclusively between Northern California and offshore waters called the White Shark Café, occasionally going as far west as the Hawaiian archipelago...
There are now 120 white sharks carrying acoustic tags, along with 27 salmon sharks and five mako sharks. Other groups have tagged more animals — including salmon, sturgeon and lingcod — along the California coast with similar acoustic devices, which can also be picked up by the network of listening buoys...
The buoys can detect a shark's transmitter — or any animal with an acoustic tag — from as far away as 2,000 feet. The data is delivered in near real time to mobile devices; the whole process takes about four minutes.
What is the highlight of the new project?
The highlight of the new project is the acoustic detection data fed into an iPhone and iPad app. Shark Net, which is available free in the iTunes Store, allows users to follow the lives of about 20 white sharks [image below].
And then 19 ... then 18 ... then 17 ... and then eventually, zero.
According to Randall Kochevar, one of the Stanford developers of the app, people understand that the ocean and its wildlife are important, but unless one is experiencing the ecosystem every day, it is difficult to connect to issues on a personal level. Shark Net is an attempt to bring the ocean into living rooms.
These aliens would no doubt be very conscious, very smart beings. After all, they would have successfully overcome the kind of evolutionary obstacles which are destroying us, and had the wherewithal to find and investigate the Earth from their planet of origin many, many light-years away.
I think these aliens would get the point right away — we humans are clever enough to build robots to keep tabs on the very species we are exterminating, but we're not clueful enough to stop killing them off.
How would these aliens respond? I don't know, they're aliens after all, but I suspect they would be polite, thank me very much for my efforts on their behalf, and muttering to themselves "nothing to see here" as they leave my humble abode, they would board their spaceship, and take off to explore other, more promising locales.
I also suspect they would ignore my pleas to take me with them
Or, they would correctly surmise that humans are a hugely destructive, aggressive parasitic species that causes tremendous damage to the host and must be dealt with immediately. Most efficient solution would be quarantine (if the assessors are burdened by excess sentimentality or compassion) or removal/eradication (if not). Note that a sufficiently advanced species needn't be cruel in the latter or inflict suffering. Indeed, the elimination may consist of overloading all sensory pleasure sensors and shutting down function. Death by pleasure, if you will. Given that seems to be the goal of the species anyway....
The Matrix intrigued me conceptually, also. Not the stupid using humans as energy, but the transfer of consciousness to an external network powered by interlinked humans. In essence, it is the ultimate form of cooperation, and prevents humans from engaging in their inherently destructive behaviors (though they can still believe they are). The downside was that in that movie, humans could be removed from the system and go back to messing up what was left of the world. But as an alien run containment system, it might not be half bad. Practically, if the system ran inside everyone's head, it would be impossible to perceive it as "fake" since it would be real to our brain, which defines reality for us. The movie had the flawed premise that people want to be "free". Reality shows us that humans routinely submit to power structures that eliminate the need for much active thinking. Those that question "the system" are the exception, often reviled, and almost always marginalized and ignored. The will also tolerate pretty deplorable conditions so long as they can maintain some hope, no matter how hollow. Entertainment and distraction help.
But why go through all the effort to preserve such an easily deluded, destructive species?
Posted by: James | 08/29/2012 at 10:37 AM