April 19, 2005
Reply to Brian Eno.
Brian-
It seems it has taken me just as long to reply to your reply as it took for you to reply to me in the first place. Things would move at breakneck speed here in the Philippines, if snails ruled the world, that is.
To refresh your memory, this regards my "Break a Record for the Future" idea.
I've decided I don't like my idea as much as you do. I liked my idea "Break a Record for the Future," initially. Just as you observed, it is immediately understandable. And if you truly beat on your head and wondered "why didn’t I think of that," I’m flattered.
So here’s why you shouldn’t have thought of my idea. The whole idea of record-breaking is based on quantity, not quality. Record breaking is not sustainable in the long now.
By the way, they were back at it, sucking face in the Philippines last February, striving for another most massive display of public display of affection world record. They failed miserably, but with corporate sponsorship by Unilever on behalf of their toothpaste brand, Closeup, they are plenty happy to be "building a tradition."
Unilever purports that "millions fell in love for the second time," while watching the televised Loveapalooza. I’d say reality is that at least a handful of record attempters left with an extra cold-sore or two (and a t-shirt.)
Similar maladies may occur whilst breaking a record for the future. Quantity could very well outdo quality. The examples I gave you were largest coastal mangrove reforestation and the most-bountiful compost harvest. A million mangrove reforestation could flop hard. Instead of supplying a few thousand high-quality propagules of an array of species, in order to nurture a robust forest, organizers who aim for a new record might blow the wad on a million crappy mono-culture propagules. And I've heard far too much about pesticide-laden fruit peels doing a number on a compost pit. (Think Paul Hawken) So what long-term benefits would these efforts offer?
There doesn't seem to be a way to ensure quantity and quality will work in symbiosis.
Then there is the related potential of backfire. A mangrove flop might discourage much-needed well-planned future reforestation. Bad compost could tarnish the reputation of organic farming. Think about solar paneling. According to people like Bill McKibben, great gains in efficiency and reliability have been made in solar energy over the past few years. Still, the common perception is that solar isn't even worth considering. Now take your time machine back to the 80s (everyone knows you have one). Imagine there’d been a record broken for world’s largest solar panel. And then the darn thing stopped working after six months, or even exploded. The negative publicity might have persisted to this day.
An example of a real life backfire: I know a guy here in the Philippines whose father broke the record for youngest solo flight at age 10. Guinness removed the category from the book when a six-year-old girl crashed and died in her attempt.
Another sort of backfire is the real risk of driving up consumption. I am trying to promote less wasteful, more responsible trash behavior where I live. However, the place is already turning into a huge trash pit, and most people already feel helpless to make the beautiful place clean again.
I know I must start small, so I collect bottle caps. Just as you can't walk five meters in Tokyo without encountering a Louis Vutton handbag, you can't walk the same distance here without stepping on a bottle cap.
I go around to all the sari-sari stores and ask them to save their bottle caps, instead of sweeping them outside. In doing so, they keep the area cleaner, and I hope they are starting to get the hang of separating different kinds of trash.
When I bend down to pick up a bottle cap on the road, a child invariably bends down with me. The kids then too are getting into cleaning up. They also learn to remove potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and think about art projects they might be able to do once school is back in session.
I've thought about having a contest for most bottle caps recovered. I've thought about attempting to establish the Guinness record for most bottle caps ever recovered. I’m sure we could have the place bottle-cap-free within weeks. But would it be worth it?
One way to be responsible about waste is to generate less of it. Surely, a record attempt of this sort would drive up consumption, in order to collect more trash. Living in the country that already drinks more half the soft-drinks on the entire continent, I’m pretty sure that's already too much. A liter of coke costs the equivalent to an hour or more of typical wage, and the diabetes rate is spiraling.
As you mentioned in your essay and speech, the idea for the Long Now emerged from realizing the Big Here. Having pondered my idea some more, I’ve decided record-breaking solidly belongs to the Big Here. After all, if people weren’t so concerned about more big more fast more money more more more more more more, folks would still be planting olive trees for the long now.
David Ramsey stopped collecting maps when he realized they'd be good as useless unless he spent more time cataloging and making public the ones he already had. Daniel Jansen came to a similar conclusion about identifying new species in Costa Rica.
We as a people must slow down and stop trying to break records if we are ever to settle into the long now.
Meanwhile, I hope in some way I can contribute to your book. We are now living in the first generation where a typical person in the developed world has access to a video camera. I've interviewed both of my grandmothers (one was still talking after ten hours of footage, the other had enough after 45 minutes.) They both had memories of fruits coming into season. Nowadays in America, there is no need for fruits to come into season, since food can be frozen, canned, genetically modified to grow at strange temperatures or Fedexed from half the world away! We should preserve and pass on the memories and values of these older folks in a format that young people give credence to. That might help us and the future generations revert to the nostalgic long now. If you'd like, I will expound on my ideas of documenting our elders.
Finally, I can't remember the exact premise of your book, but it seems you have some honest competition. I just read a review for Karen M. Jones' "The Difference A Day Makes: 365 Ways to Change Your World in Just 24 Hours," available in paperback from www.newworldlibrary.com.
Adios,
Daniel
----Original Message Follows----
From: Brian Eno
Subject: TALK ABOUT LONG NOW....
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:01:59 +0000
...it took him a year to reply
I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long to respond to your very interesting and provocative letter. It's a long story, but part of it is that it was passed on to me through someone else and therefore filed under their name, so I wasn't able to find it when I was ready to reply. And then time passed and, to be honest, I forgot all about it until this evening when I chanced upon you hidden deep in someone else's email file....
I like your idea very much, and, if it's OK with you, I'll pass this on to The Institute of Social Inventions as a submission for one of their awards this year. My book is stalled, I'm afraid, but I hope to pick it up again next year and I would certainly like to include this idea in it. It has all the hallmarks of a great idea: immediately understandable, and one of those things that makes you beat your head and say "Why didn't I think of that?".
In fact, in the interim, I've sent this idea to the Global Ideas Bank, where it should appear shortly.I hope that's OK.
Check http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/
I'll be in touch as and when something develops.
XX Brian
Posted by dbs at April 19, 2005 07:18 PM