PmWiki.AWorldWorthTalkingAbout History
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Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world -- and especially in the space-faring democracies. Developed-world cooperation is needed to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this "small world" together, and can do so relatively cheaply. However - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial mountain regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world -- and especially in the space-faring democracies. Developed-world cooperation is needed to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this "small world" together, and can do so relatively cheaply. However - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Felt so hopeless loiknog for answers to my questions...until now.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG/500px-COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. No network can succeed if it's not concerned with a world worth talking about in the first place.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world -- and especially in the space-faring democracies. Developed-world cooperation is needed to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this "small world" together, and can do so relatively cheaply. However - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean that a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds to which comparisons might be made, and from which lessons might be drawn. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg/120px-Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg/100px-Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg/120px-ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG/120px-Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG
What makes a world worth talking about? Four important qualities are:
- Change
- Engagement
- Purpose
- Connection.
Project Persephone must offer all of these.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Multy_droplets_impact.JPG/120px-Multy_droplets_impact.JPG
Change
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience.3 So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg/120px-WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg
Engagement
We can't help but have feelings -- good and bad -- about living things.4 We might love butterflies even though we could live without them, but only "love" aphids as potential butterfly food. Living things evoke warm feelings when they are amusing or attractive or in a pitiable state or appear to love us back; they can stir us to lethally disdainful action when they appear to pose risks to what we see as good in an ecosystem. Try feeling nothing about something that's alive (or that died.) It's not easy. Some have tried to explain or formulate these feelings under the Biophilia Hypothesis, but obviously there's more to the picture than just liking things that are alive. Disliking troublesome life has its place too.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG/120px-Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG
Purpose
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebotically over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever becoming an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
Connection
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance. When there are shared, tangible goals, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive, purely ego-driven conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could even outlive you, might fail to thrive, or even die.
1 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
2 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996 ⇑
3 Even the experience of error can stimulate. In evaluations of remotely operated experiments for education, "[t]he students also stated that they wanted to be able to see any mistakes that were made and contrasted this with not being able to make mistakes in simulations they had used." (Cooper, Martyn (2005). Remote laboratories in teaching and learning �issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 1(1), p.4.) ⇑
4 "Humans Hardwired to Tune into Animals", Jennifer Viegas, USA Today, Aug 29, 2011 ⇑
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG/500px-COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. No network can succeed if it's not concerned with a world worth talking about in the first place.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world -- and especially in the space-faring democracies. Developed-world cooperation is needed to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this "small world" together, and can do so relatively cheaply. However - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean that a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds to which comparisons might be made, and from which lessons might be drawn. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg/120px-Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg/100px-Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg/120px-ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG/120px-Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG
What makes a world worth talking about? Four important qualities are:
- Change
- Engagement
- Purpose
- Connection.
Project Persephone must offer all of these.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Multy_droplets_impact.JPG/120px-Multy_droplets_impact.JPG
Change
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience.3 So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg/120px-WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg
Engagement
We can't help but have feelings -- good and bad -- about living things.4 We might love butterflies even though we could live without them, but only "love" aphids as potential butterfly food. Living things evoke warm feelings when they are amusing or attractive or in a pitiable state or appear to love us back; they can stir us to lethally disdainful action when they appear to pose risks to what we see as good in an ecosystem. Try feeling nothing about something that's alive (or that died.) It's not easy. Some have tried to explain or formulate these feelings under the Biophilia Hypothesis, but obviously there's more to the picture than just liking things that are alive. Disliking troublesome life has its place too.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG/120px-Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG
Purpose
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebotically over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever becoming an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
Connection
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance. When there are shared, tangible goals, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive, purely ego-driven conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could even outlive you, might fail to thrive, or even die.
1 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
2 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996 ⇑
3 Even the experience of error can stimulate. In evaluations of remotely operated experiments for education, "[t]he students also stated that they wanted to be able to see any mistakes that were made and contrasted this with not being able to make mistakes in simulations they had used." (Cooper, Martyn (2005). Remote laboratories in teaching and learning –issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 1(1), p.4.) ⇑
4 "Humans Hardwired to Tune into Animals", Jennifer Viegas, USA Today, Aug 29, 2011 ⇑
Felt so hopeless loiknog for answers to my questions...until now.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world -- and especially in the space-faring democracies. Developed-world cooperation is needed to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this "small world" together, and can do so relatively cheaply. However - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience.1 So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience.2 So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience. So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience.3 So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - cooperatively managed orbital ecosystems. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems that would be managed cooperatively for their recreational value. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed, it needs to be situated in a world worth talking about in the first place.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems as a recreation supported by cooperative effort. The Project also aims at economic development of poor communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without engagement of members in the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. No network can succeed if it's not concerned with a world worth talking about in the first place.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - cooperatively managed orbital ecosystems. The Project also pursues aid projects for impoverished communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part laying the groundwork for projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without the engagement of the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems as a recreation supported by cooperative effort. The Project also aims at economic development of poor communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without engagement of members in the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems as a recreation supported by cooperative effort. The Project also aims at economic development of poor communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without engagement of members in the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - orbital ecosystems as a recreation supported by cooperative effort. The Project also aims at economic development of poor communities in equatorial alpine regions, as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these aims can be sustainably pursued, however, without engagement of members in the developed world (and especially in the space-faring democracies) to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these worlds of work and play into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
We can't help but have feelings -- good and bad -- about living things. We might love butterflies even though we could live without them, but only "love" aphids as potential butterfly food. Living things evoke warm feelings when they are amusing or attractive or in a pitiable state or appear to love us back; they can stir us to lethally disdainful action when they appear to pose risks to what we see as good in an ecosystem. Try feeling nothing about something that's alive (or that died.) It's not easy. Some have tried to explain or formulate these feelings under the Biophilia Hypothesis, but obviously there's more to the picture than just liking things that are alive. Disliking troublesome life has its place too.
We can't help but have feelings -- good and bad -- about living things.8 We might love butterflies even though we could live without them, but only "love" aphids as potential butterfly food. Living things evoke warm feelings when they are amusing or attractive or in a pitiable state or appear to love us back; they can stir us to lethally disdainful action when they appear to pose risks to what we see as good in an ecosystem. Try feeling nothing about something that's alive (or that died.) It's not easy. Some have tried to explain or formulate these feelings under the Biophilia Hypothesis, but obviously there's more to the picture than just liking things that are alive. Disliking troublesome life has its place too.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean that a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds from which lessons might be drawn, and comparisons made. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean that a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds to which comparisons might be made, and from which lessons might be drawn. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Motivated_student.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will be ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience. So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will hold ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience. So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebotically over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever become an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebotically over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever becoming an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebots? over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever become an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebotically over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever become an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive, purely ego-driven conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could even outlive you, might fail to thrive, or even die.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance. When there are shared, tangible goals, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive, purely ego-driven conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could even outlive you, might fail to thrive, or even die.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, however, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could outlive you, might die. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive, purely ego-driven conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could even outlive you, might fail to thrive, or even die.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, "tele-operated" only over terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program.
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, operated telebots? over only terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program. For children curious about what happens in space, exovivaria offer a possibility (more realistic than ever become an astronaut) of being able to do things in space.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. A concrete focus of group effort can help keep the human links healthy. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, however, fights can often dissolve or be avoided when enough people see that the cost of obstructive conflict is unacceptable: for one thing, something bigger than yourself might die. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious interpersonal bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back into themselves, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, however, fights can often dissolve or be averted when enough people see that the cost of obstructive conflict is unacceptable: something bigger than yourself, something with a little of your own life in it, something that could outlive you, might die. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Motivated_student.JPG
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other facscinating distractions online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people in the various parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other fascinating distractions cheaply available online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep these people together.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people the human-populated parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other distractions online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds from which lessons might be drawn, or comparisons made. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other facscinating distractions online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean that a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds from which lessons might be drawn, and comparisons made. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg
- Earth
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg/120px-Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg
- Mars
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg/120px-Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg/100px-Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg
- Novels about Mars
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg/100px-Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg/120px-ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg
- ISS
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg/120px-ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg
- A comsat
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG/120px-Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG
- An MMORPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG/120px-Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Multy_droplets_impact.JPG/120px-Multy_droplets_impact.JPG
- Change
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg/120px-WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg
- Engagement
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG/120px-Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG
- Purpose
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
- Connection
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Multy_droplets_impact.JPG/120px-Multy_droplets_impact.JPG
Change
If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about. Even the most limited and controlled exovivaria will change unpredictably. They will be ecosystems, after all, and ecosystems are never perfectly predictable. This instability can be bad sometimes, but also good: exovivaria can be a source of interesting surprises. As the experience of trying to balance Biosphere 2? should show, the surprises will keep coming. The very fact of change can help add to the experience. So long as change doesn't become overwhelming, it can help drive Engagement.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg/120px-WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg
Engagement
We can't help but have feelings -- good and bad -- about living things. We might love butterflies even though we could live without them, but only "love" aphids as potential butterfly food. Living things evoke warm feelings when they are amusing or attractive or in a pitiable state or appear to love us back; they can stir us to lethally disdainful action when they appear to pose risks to what we see as good in an ecosystem. Try feeling nothing about something that's alive (or that died.) It's not easy. Some have tried to explain or formulate these feelings under the Biophilia Hypothesis, but obviously there's more to the picture than just liking things that are alive. Disliking troublesome life has its place too.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG/120px-Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG
Purpose
Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, who are attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay involved with them out of a growing sense of duty to keep them healthy. They might stay involved even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, "tele-operated" only over terrestrial Internet links. For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program, exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program in which they could help directly, rather than simply observe as mavenish amateurs. For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than any now offered by a national space program.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
Connection
Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of working together, and can feed back, in a "virtuous cycle" to create more change, engagement and purpose. But much of the feedback has to move through human links, links that grow well and stay strong. Exovivaria will ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and lowly microbes being kept alive in orbit. A concrete focus of group effort can help keep the human links healthy. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously wrote: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." Talk for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and contempt. When people are aligned toward shared, tangible goals, however, fights can often dissolve or be avoided when enough people see that the cost of obstructive conflict is unacceptable: for one thing, something bigger than yourself might die. Working together to make something alive, and keep it alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious interpersonal bonds where mere talk would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg/120px-WPZ_Butterflies_%26_Blooms_17.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG/120px-Spider_weaves_net_by_kadavoor.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg/120px-Child_and_Computer_08473.jpg
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run (and more speculative) goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without small, engaged groups, working throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies) and in some of the more advanced developing nations, helping to transfer the financial resources and the technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds in work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking can bring the people the human-populated parts of this world together. But only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without both serious and delighted engagement throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies), to help to transfer First World financial resources and technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds of work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking might bring the people the human-populated parts of this world together relatively cheaply. But - given all the other distractions online - only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Making such a world poses unprecedented problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds from which lessons might be drawn, or comparisons made. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, as a starting point for discussion? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Multy_droplets_impact.JPG/120px-Multy_droplets_impact.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg/120px-ISS_after_STS-117_in_June_2007.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG/120px-Cosplay_wow_nightelf_druid.JPG
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed you need a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space: exovivaria - ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG/500px-COLLECTIONafricacentre_PRJTth_YR2011_Talking_heads_mcn_14.JPG
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed, it needs to be situated in a world worth talking about in the first place.
Project Persephone aims to create engaging worlds in space: exovivaria - isolated (and eventually orbiting) ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. The Project also aims to benefit a small fraction of the Earth - poor communities in equatorial alpine regions - as part of its longer-run (and more speculative) goal of making it easier to do projectile space launch. Neither of these can happen, however, without small, engaged groups, working throughout the First World (and especially in the space-faring democracies) and in some of the more advanced developing nations, helping to transfer the financial resources and the technical skills to those best equipped to make it all work most economically. The Project aims to join these various worlds in work and play, into a small world of its own making. Electronic networking can bring the people the human-populated parts of this world together. But only the joint creation of a world worth talking about can keep them together.
Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either -- the goal of meeting the SPEC, with all its potential conflicts, might mean a lot of the ensuing talk will consist of argument. But even if exovivaria and projectile space launch problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents - worlds and non-worlds. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg/120px-Victoria_crater_from_HiRise%2C_rotated.jpg
- A Mars Trilogy
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg/100px-Thuvia_Maid_of_Mars-1920.jpg
- Novels about Mars
What makes a world worth more talking about? Four important qualities are: Change, Engagement, Purpose, Connection. Project Persephone exovivaria must offer all of these, in a way that makes more people more interested.
What makes a world worth talking about? Four important qualities are:
- Change
- Engagement
- Purpose
- Connection.
Project Persephone must offer all of these.
1 Even the experience of error can stimulate. In evaluations of remotely operated experiments for education, "[t]he students also stated that they wanted to be able to see any mistakes that were made and contrasted this with not being able to make mistakes in simulations they had used." (Cooper, Martyn (2005). Remote laboratories in teaching and learning –issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 1(1), 1-7.) ⇑
2 Even the experience of error can stimulate. In evaluations of remotely operated experiments for education, "[t]he students also stated that they wanted to be able to see any mistakes that were made and contrasted this with not being able to make mistakes in simulations they had used." (Cooper, Martyn (2005). Remote laboratories in teaching and learning –issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 1(1), p.4.) ⇑
3 Even the experience of error can stimulate. In evaluations of remotely operated experiments for education, "[t]he students also stated that they wanted to be able to see any mistakes that were made and contrasted this with not being able to make mistakes in simulations they had used." (Cooper, Martyn (2005). Remote laboratories in teaching and learning –issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education. International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), 1(1), 1-7.) ⇑
4 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
5 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996, http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm ⇑
6 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
7 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996 ⇑
8 "Humans Hardwired to Tune into Animals", Jennifer Viegas, USA Today, Aug 29, 2011 ⇑
9 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
10 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996, http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm ⇑
11 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
12 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996, http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm ⇑
13 See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476 ⇑
14 "The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996, http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm ⇑
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed you need a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space - exovivaria - that will be supported by human effort but without people living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, how do we talk about them, and how much is that talk worth to most people?
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed you need a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space: exovivaria - ecosystems supported by human effort but with nobody actually living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. Making that world worth talking about even before it exists won't be easy either. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth? How much do we talk about them? And how much is that talk worth, to most people?
- A Mars Trilogy
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. One key to success for any network is a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space - exovivaria - supported by human effort but without people living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, how do we talk about them, and how much is that talk worth to most people?
Project Persephone must connect people in conversation through a network. For any network to succeed you need a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space - exovivaria - that will be supported by human effort but without people living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, how do we talk about them, and how much is that talk worth to most people?
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. Having "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. Success might be measured by how much people are talking, through the network, without asking for pay, and especially if people are willing to pay to have a chance to have more to talk about.
By this "voluntary word-frequency" measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely. ISS gets mentioned in the news when there's a related event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some notably harrowing accident. However, if measured by the cost per conversation word generated, ISS should be considered an abject failure.
By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, Earth is clearly the world most worth talking about. Does this mean all planets we got for free are equally "worlds worth talking about"? Not necessarily. We also got Mars for free. But we can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does. Nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and that limits how much people will talk about it. Robotic exploration of Mars has increased the conversational word-frequency for Mars, but only at some cost.
Now consider a communications satellite: it might host thousands of long-distance conversations and relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction of the conversations it hosts will be about the satellite itself. It's hardly a world. The game system behind a MMORPG? might be much less complex than the comsat, yet provide much more of "a world worth talking about." The MMORPG creates a persuasive illusion of a populated world, moreover a world joyfully co-created by paying customers. Somewhat in defiance of the predictions of most 20th century science fiction, in the early 21st century, cyberspace is far more colonized than any celestial object, natural or artificial.
What makes a world worth more talking about? Four important qualities are: Change, Engagement, Purpose, Connection.
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. One key to success for any network is a world worth talking about in the first place. Project Persephone aims to create such worlds in space - exovivaria - supported by human effort but without people living in them. Making such a world poses special -- maybe even unprecedented -- problems. But even if exovivaria problems are unprecedented, it helps to look at precedents. What kinds of worlds do we already have, in space and on Earth, how do we talk about them, and how much is that talk worth to most people?
- Earth
- Mars
- ISS
- A comsat
- An MMORPG
What makes a world worth more talking about? Four important qualities are: Change, Engagement, Purpose, Connection. Project Persephone exovivaria must offer all of these, in a way that makes more people more interested.
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. Having "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by how much conversation people engage in, through the network, without asking for pay, and especially if people are willing to pay to have a chance to have more to talk about.
By the "voluntary word-count" measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely. ISS gets mentioned in the news when there's a related event of unusual human interest. However, if measured by the cost per conversation word generated, ISS should be considered an abject failure.
By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, Earth is clearly the world most worth talking about. Does that mean planets we got for free are "worlds worth talking about"? Not necessarily. We also got Mars for free. But we can't get there, and it will be a long time before anyone does. Nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and that limits how much people will talk about it. Robotic exploration of Mars has increased the word-count for Mars, but only at some cost.
Now consider a communications satellite: it might host thousands of long-distance conversations and relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction of the conversations it hosts will be about the satellite itself. The game system behind a MMORPG? might be much less complex than that comsat, yet provide much more of "a world worth talking about," because it creates a persuasive illusion of a populated world.
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. Having "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. Success might be measured by how much people are talking, through the network, without asking for pay, and especially if people are willing to pay to have a chance to have more to talk about.
By this "voluntary word-frequency" measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely. ISS gets mentioned in the news when there's a related event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some notably harrowing accident. However, if measured by the cost per conversation word generated, ISS should be considered an abject failure.
By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, Earth is clearly the world most worth talking about. Does this mean all planets we got for free are equally "worlds worth talking about"? Not necessarily. We also got Mars for free. But we can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does. Nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and that limits how much people will talk about it. Robotic exploration of Mars has increased the conversational word-frequency for Mars, but only at some cost.
Now consider a communications satellite: it might host thousands of long-distance conversations and relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction of the conversations it hosts will be about the satellite itself. It's hardly a world. The game system behind a MMORPG? might be much less complex than the comsat, yet provide much more of "a world worth talking about." The MMORPG creates a persuasive illusion of a populated world, moreover a world joyfully co-created by paying customers. Somewhat in defiance of the predictions of most 20th century science fiction, in the early 21st century, cyberspace is far more colonized than any celestial object, natural or artificial.
The idea of "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by the amount of conversation people engage in the network, without asking for pay. By this measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful: some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely, and it gets mentioned in the news when there's an event of some human interest. However, if measured by the cost per word, ISS might be considered not very successful at all. By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, it's clearly the world most worth talking about.
Project Persephone must connect people through a network. Having "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by how much conversation people engage in, through the network, without asking for pay, and especially if people are willing to pay to have a chance to have more to talk about.
By the "voluntary word-count" measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely. ISS gets mentioned in the news when there's a related event of unusual human interest. However, if measured by the cost per conversation word generated, ISS should be considered an abject failure.
By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, Earth is clearly the world most worth talking about. Does that mean planets we got for free are "worlds worth talking about"? Not necessarily. We also got Mars for free. But we can't get there, and it will be a long time before anyone does. Nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and that limits how much people will talk about it. Robotic exploration of Mars has increased the word-count for Mars, but only at some cost.
Now consider a communications satellite: it might host thousands of long-distance conversations and relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction of the conversations it hosts will be about the satellite itself. The game system behind a MMORPG? might be much less complex than that comsat, yet provide much more of "a world worth talking about," because it creates a persuasive illusion of a populated world.
The idea of "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by the amount of conversation people engage in the network, without asking for pay. By this measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful: some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely, and it gets mentioned in the news when there's an event of some human interest. However, if measured by the cost per word, ISS might be considered not very successful at all. By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, it's clearly the world most worth talking about.
The idea of "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by the amount of conversation people engage in the network, without asking for pay. By this measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful: some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely, and it gets mentioned in the news when there's an event of some human interest. However, if measured by the cost per word, ISS might be considered not very successful at all. By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, it's clearly the world most worth talking about.
The idea of "a world worth talking about" is key to the success of any network. The degree of success might be measured by the amount of conversation people engage in the network, without asking for pay. By this measure, a space station "world" like ISS might seem modestly successful: some space enthusiasts follow developments on ISS closely, and it gets mentioned in the news when there's an event of some human interest. However, if measured by the cost per word, ISS might be considered not very successful at all. By comparison, the human race got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about takes place on it. On a cost per word basis, it's clearly the world most worth talking about.
What makes a world worth more talking about? Four important qualities are: Change, Engagement, Purpose, Connection.
- Change
- Engagement
- Purpose
- Connection