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 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.

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.[^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). [[http://oro.open.ac.uk/9748/1/iJOE-2005-11.pdf | 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.)^]  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.

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]] 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.

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this [[Spaceship Earth]] for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some free "network infrastructure": if we're close enough, we can hear each other through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technologies -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about ever more things on Earth worth talking about, as we float through space. Those technologies are made of stuff that we dug out of this planet. We talk about Earthly things over meals made from plants and animals that were raised on free dirt and free sunlight or fished out of free water. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the Solar System. 

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.

->Not all Solar System planets are equally "worlds worth talking about." For example, we also got Mars for free. We've got some stunning pictures of it. But nobody's there. We can't see anything living there (and probably never will, except perhaps through a microscope). Not much else seems to be happening there except weather and seasons. And only a handful people who boss around Mars rovers can make anything happen there. All of this limits how much people will talk about Mars. Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about, at least for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  [[Ecopoiesis]] -- making Mars more of a living world -- would have to wait until scientists are pretty sure it's a dead one. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming | Terraforming]] Mars is not a reasonable prospect for anyone now living.

->By our "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely, avidly discussing them with each other, in person and over electronic networks. Even space advocates who hate ISS get some conversation value, at least, out of deriding the "white elephant in orbit". ISS enjoys news coverage when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident. The Japanese [[Kibo]] experimental module will grow animals and plants, and thus resembles the concept of exovivaria. However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure compared to your average aquarium.

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.

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this [[Spaceship Earth]] for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some free "network infrastructure": if we're close enough, we can hear each other through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about ever more things on Earth worth talking about, as we float through space. That communications technology is made of stuff that we dug out of Earth. We talk about Earthly things over meals made from plants and animals raised on free dirt and free sunlight, or fished out of free water. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the Solar System. 

->Not all Solar System planets are equally "worlds worth talking about." For example, we also got Mars for free. We've got some stunning pictures of it. But nobody's there. We can't see anything living there. Not much else seems to be happening there except weather and seasons. And only a handful people who tell Mars rovers what to do can make anything happen there. That limits how much people will talk about Mars. Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about, for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  [[Ecopoiesis]] -- making Mars more of a living world -- would have to wait until scientists are pretty sure it's a dead one. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming | Terraforming]] Mars is not a reasonable prospect for anyone now living.

->From [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Lewis | C.S. Lewis]]'s ''Ransom Trilogy'' to Kim Stanley Robinson's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy | Mars Trilogy]]'', stories in which a planet (or several of them) figure centrally have probably stimulated more talk about planets than all interplanetary probes and telescope observations combined. Talking about Mars-related SF doesn't really count much, however, toward making Mars itself "a world worth talking about." The author only creates a "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm | paracosm]]" packaged as a mass-market entertainment. That paracosm is the world people are really talking about: an imaginary one. These paracosms might be cleverly designed to support beliefs about our real world, our own time -- for Lewis, a Christian statement;[^See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, ''C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith'' (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476^] for Robinson, a Marxist one.[^"The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996,  http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm^]  Simplifications creep in because of these biases, but perhaps worse, many readers can feel free to reject a fine piece of literature out of hand, unread, because it was written with some ideological or religious agenda they don't agree with.  The main strike against such worlds, however, is that they are, in the end, imaginary -- real worlds don't have fans and critics, they have creatures and citizens.

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.

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?

->From [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Lewis | C.S. Lewis]]'s ''Ransom Trilogy'' to Kim Stanley Robinson's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy | Mars Trilogy]]'', stories in which a planet (or several of them) figure centrally have probably stimulated more talk about planets than all interplanetary probes and telescope observations combined. Talking about Mars-related SF doesn't really count all that much, however, toward making Mars itself "a world worth talking about." The author only creates a "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm | paracosm]]" packaged as a mass-market entertainment. That paracosm is the world people are really talking about: an imaginary one. These paracosms might be cleverly designed to support beliefs about our real world, our own time -- for Lewis, a Christian statement;[^See, e.g., Richard L. Purtill, ''C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith'' (reprint), Ignatius Press, 2004 ISBN 0898709474, 9780898709476^] for Robinson, a Marxist one.[^"The Edge interview: Kim Stanley Robinson", 1996,  http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/robinsoniview.htm^]  Simplifications creep in because of these biases, but perhaps worse, many readers can feel free to reject a fine piece of literature out of hand, unread, because it was written with some ideological or religious agenda they don't agree with.  The main strike against such worlds, however, is that they are, in the end, imaginary -- real worlds don't have fans and critics, they have creatures and citizens.

%lfloat% http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Motivated_student.JPG

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this [[Spaceship Earth]] for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some free "network infrastructure": if we're close enough, we can hear each other through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about ever more things on Earth worth talking about, as we float through space. That communications technology is made of stuff that we dug out of Earth. We talk about Earthly things over meals made from plants and animals raised on free dirt and free sunlight, or fished out of free water. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the solar system. 

->Not all solar system planets are equally "worlds worth talking about." For example, we also got Mars for free. We've got some stunning pictures of it. But nobody's there. We can't see anything living there. Not much else seems to be happening there except weather and seasons. And only a handful people who tell Mars rovers what to do can make anything happen there. That limits how much people will talk about Mars. Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about, for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  [[Ecopoiesis]] -- making Mars more of a living world -- would have to wait until scientists are pretty sure it's a dead one. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming | Terraforming]] Mars is not a reasonable prospect for anyone now living.

->Not all solar system planets are equally "worlds worth talking about." For example, we also got Mars for free. We've got some stunning pictures of it. But nobody's there. We can't see anything living there. Not much else seems to be happening there except weather and seasons. And only a handful people who tell Mars rovers what to do can make anything happen there. That limits how much people will talk about Mars. Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about, for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  [[Ecopoeisis]] -- making Mars more of a living world -- would have to wait until scientists are pretty sure it's a dead one. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming | Terraforming]] Mars is not a reasonable prospect for anyone now living.

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.

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 | 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 | 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 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. 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.

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.

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.

->By our "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely, avidly discussing them with each other, in person and over electronic networks. Even space advocates who hate ISS get some conversation value out, at least, of deriding the "white elephant". ISS enjoys news coverage when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident. The Japanese [[Kibo]] experimental module will grow animals and plants, and thus resembles the concept of exovivaria. However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure compared to your average aquarium.

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this [[Spaceship Earth]] for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some free "network infrastructure": if we're close enough, we can hear each other through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about eveb more things on Earth worth talking about, as we float through space. That communications technology is made of stuff that we dug out of Earth. We talk about Earthly things over meals made from plants and animals raised on free dirt and free sunlight, or fished out of free water. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the solar system. 

%lfloat% 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 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.

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this world for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some "network infrastructure" for free: if we're close enough to each other, we can hear each other as we speak through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that supposed 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about more things on Earth worth talking about, as we float through space on this world. Almost all of that communications technology is made of stuff that we dug out of Earth. And we talk about Earthly things over meals made of plants and animals that were raised on free dirt and free sunlight, or fished out of free water. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the solar system. 

->Now consider something in space that's definitely ''not'' a world: a communications satellite. Its circuits might host thousands of long-distance conversations at a time, its antennae might relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, and on the TV programs you receive, people are gabbing away. No shortage of talk here! But only a minuscule fraction of all the talk the comsat carries will be about the satellite itself.  The comsat is ''in'' space; through it, people talk about another world in space: Earth.  But for most, it's hardly "a world in space" itself, much less one "worth talking about".  As for the satellite network hardware, well, people talk more about their satellite dishes than they talk about satellites themselves; and they talk ''much'' more about what they see on the programs received by those dishes than about the dishes themselves.  Network hardware does not a world make.

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/e4/Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg/120px-Crescent_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_11.jpg

* Earth

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/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/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/5/5f/Molniya_closeup.jpg/120px-Molniya_closeup.jpg

*A comsat

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/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.

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?

->By our "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful. Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely, avidly discussing them with each other, in person and over electronic networks.  Even space advocates who hate ISS get some conversation value out, at least, of deriding the "white elephant".  ISS enjoys news coverage when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident.  However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure compared to your average aquarium.

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Earth.  We got this world for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it. At any given place on Earth, we even get some "network infrastructure" for free: if we're close enough to each other, we can hear each other as we speak through this planet's air, and we can see each other's faces and movements for that supposed 90% of communication that's nonverbal. Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to learning about more things worth talking about, as we float through space on this world. Almost all of that communications technology is made of stuff that we dug out of Earth. We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  In cost-benefit terms, Earth is clearly the best single conversation piece in the solar system. 

[[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?

->We already have a great world made for us in space: Planet Earth.  We got this world for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it.  At any given place on Earth, we even get some "network infrastructure" for free: if we're close enough to each other, through this planet's air, we can hear each other as we speak, and we can see each other's faces and movements.  Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to more things worth talking about, as we float through space on this world.  Almost all of that technology is made of things that grew on Earth, or that we dug out of Earth.  We don't need to send ruinously expensive mining expeditions out to the asteroids, or set up farms on the moon -- not yet, anyway.  Earth is clearly the best cost-benefit conversation piece in the solar system, because it's so self-sufficient and evolved. 

->Not all solar system planets are equally "worlds worth talking about."  For example, we also got Mars for free.  But nobody's there.  We can't see anything living there.  And not much else seems to be happening there except weather.  That limits how much people will talk about Mars.  Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about, for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  [[Ecopoeisis]] -- making Mars more of a living world -- would have to wait until scientists are pretty sure it's a dead one.

* A Mars Trilogy
->From C.S. Lewis's ''Ransom Trilogy'' to Kim Stanley Robinson's ''Mars Trilogy'', stories in which a planet (or several of them) figure centrally have probably stimulated more talk about planets than all interplanetary probes and telescope observations combined.  Talking about Mars-related SF doesn't really count all that much, however, toward making Mars "a world worth talking about." The author only creates a "paracosm" packaged as a mass-market entertainment,  That paracosm is the world people are really talking about: an imaginary one.  These paracosms might be cleverly designed to support beliefs about our real world, our own time -- for Lewis, a Christian statement; for Robinson, a Marxist one.  Simplifications creep in because of these author biases, but perhaps worse, many readers can feel free to reject a fine piece of literature out of hand, unread, because it was written with some ideological or religious agenda they don't agree with.  The main strike against such worlds, however, is that they are, in the end, imaginary -- real worlds don't have fans and critics, they have creatures and citizens.

->By our "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful.   Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely, avidly discussing them with each other, in person and over electronic networks.  Even space advocates who hate ISS get some conversation value out of their "white elephant", at least. ISS enjoys news coverage when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident.  However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure.

->Now consider a communications satellite.  Its circuits might host thousands of long-distance conversations at a time, its antennae might relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, and on the TV programs you receive, people are gabbing away.  No shortage of talk here!  But only a minuscule fraction of all the talk the comsat carries will be about the satellite itself.  The comsat is ''in'' space; through it, people talk about another world in space: Earth.  But for most, it's hardly "a world in space" itself, much less one "worth talking about".  As for the satellite network hardware, well, people talk more about their satellite dishes than they talk about satellites themselves; and they talk ''much'' more about what they see on the programs received by those dishes than about the dishes themselves.  Network hardware does not a world make.

->Finally, look at the software system behind a [[MMORPG]]. Probably much less complex than the electronics in a comsat, yet definitely hosting 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 its 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 anything in space, natural or artificial.  Simply hosting MMORPG's on satellites doesn't solve the "world worth talking about" problem - it would just make any such gaming "paracosms" far more expensive than their lower-maintenance terrestrial competitors.  Nothing would actually be happening on that satellite except things most people don't care to talk about anyway: surges of electrical charge through wires and semiconductors.

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.

-> 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.

[[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?

->We already have a great world created for us in space: Planet Earth.  We got Planet Earth for free, and almost everything people are talking about happens on it.  At any given place on Earth, we even get some "network infrastructure" for free: if we're close enough to each other, through this planet's air, we can hear each other, and we can see each other's faces and movements.  Communications technology -- from papyrus to the iPad -- has only led to an increase in things worth talking about, on this world floating in space.  Almost all of that technology is made of things that grew on Earth, or that we dug out of Earth.

->Earth is clearly the best cost-benefit celestial-body conversation piece around.  Is that because we got it for free?  Hardly.  Not all solar system planets are equally "worlds worth talking about."  For example, we also got Mars for free.  But nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and not much else seems to be happening there except weather.  That limits how much people will talk about Mars.  Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  Talking about Mars-related science fiction doesn't really count -- the author only creates a "paracosm" packaged as a mass-market entertainment, and that's the world people are really talking about: an imaginary one.

->By this "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful.  Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely and discuss them with each other in person and over electronic networks.  ISS gets news coverage when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident.  However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure.

->Now consider a communications satellite: its circuits might host thousands of long-distance conversations at a time, its antennae might relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction all the talk it carries will be about the satellite itself.  The comsat is ''in'' space; through it, people talk about a world in space: Earth.  But for most it's hardly "a world in space" itself, much less one "worth talking about".  As for the satellite network hardware, well, people talk more about their satellite dishes than they talk about satellites themselves; and they talk ''much'' more about what they see on the programs received by those dishes than about the dishes themselves.

->Finally, look at the software system behind a [[MMORPG]]. Probably much less complex than the electronics in a comsat, yet definitely hosting 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 its 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 anything in space, natural or artificial.  Simply hosting MMORPG's on satellites doesn't solve the Project Persephone problem - it would just make any such "paracosms" far more expensive than their terrestrial competitors.  Nothing would be happening on that satellite except things most people don't talk about anyway: surges of electrical charge through wires and semiconductors.

->Now consider a communications satellite: its circuits might host thousands of long-distance conversations at a time, its antennae might relay thousands of e-mail messages per second, but only a tiny fraction of the conversations it carries will be about the satellite itself.  The comsat is ''in'' space, and through it, people are talking about a world in space (Earth).  But it's hardly "a world in space" itself, much less one "worth talking about" for most people.  As for the network -- people talk more about their satellite dishes for TV reception than they talk about the satellites themselves; and they talk ''much'' more about what they see on the programs received by those dishes than about the dishes.

->Finally, look at the software system behind a [[MMORPG]]. It might be much less complex than the electronics and control software in a 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 anything in space, natural or artificial.  Simply hosting MMORPG's on satellites doesn't solve the Project Persephone problem - it would just make any such "paracosms" far more expensive than their terrestrial competitors.  Nothing would be happening on that satellite except things most people don't talk about anyway: surges of electrical charge through wires and semiconductors.

->Earth is clearly the highest cost-benefit celestial-body conversation piece around.  Is that because we got it for free?  Hardly.  Not all solar system planets are equally "worlds worth talking about."  For example, we also got Mars for free.  But nobody's there, we can't see anything living there, and not much else seems to be happening there except weather.  That limits how much people will talk about Mars.  Even the idea of a Mars that could someday be much ''more'' worth talking about isn't much worth talking about for most people.  We can't get there now, and it will be a long time before anyone does.  Robotic exploration of Mars has increased talk about Mars, but only at some cost.  Talking about Mars-related science fiction doesn't really count -- the author only creates a "paracosm" packaged as a mass-market entertainment, and that's the world people are really talking about: an imaginary one.

-> 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 is 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.

->By this "words volunteered" measure, a space station "world" like [[ISS]] might seem modestly successful.  Some space enthusiasts follow ISS developments closely and discuss them with each other in person and over electronic networks.  ISS gets mentioned in the news when there's a spectacle or an event of unusual human interest -- a launch, an arrival, a departure, a return; some particularly intriguing experiment; some especially harrowing accident.  However, if measured by the dollar cost per voluntary conversational word generated, ISS is probably a dismal failure.

-> 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 a mavenish amateurs.  For space development professionals, especially retirees, Project Persephone might provide a more creative outlet for their honed skills than is offered by any current space program.

-> 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 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. But a concrete focus of group effort is still essential.  As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously said: "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: 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.

[[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 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''.

-> If nothing changes much, you run out of things to talk about.  Even the most limited and controlled [[exovivaria]] will change unpredictably.  No ecosystem is perfectly predictable.  They can be a source of interesting surprises.  As the experience of trying to balance [[Biosphere 2]] indicates, the surprises will keep coming.  In some sense, however, that very fact can help add experience value to exovivaria: change can help drive Engagement.

-> Living things inspire feelings.  We might love butterflies even though they have no useful purpose, but only "love" aphids as butterfly food.  Living things evoke affection when they are amusing or attractive, and stimulate disdainful action when they clearly endanger the qualities of a valued ecosystem.  Try feeling completely neutral about something that's alive (or that died.)  It's not easy.  Some have attempted to explain or formulate these feelings under the [[Biophilia]] Hypothesis.

-> Even exovivarium users who have no great interest in space, attracted to exovivaria only for their novelty at first, might stay with them out of sense of responsibility for keeping them healthy -- even if the exovivaria are still only ground-based prototypes, and "tele-operated" only over the Internet.  For the unabashed space enthusiast, not employed in a mainstream space program (or employed by one but unfulfilled in their work), exovivaria projects -- research, prototyping, refinement, launch, maintenance -- would form a space program to which they could contribute more actively if they are amateurs, and perhaps more meaningfully (or at least more enjoyably) if they are professionals.

-> Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of collaboration, and can feed back into them.  Exovivaria should ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously said: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."  Communication for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and mutual disdain.  When people are aligned toward concrete goals, however, conflicts can often dissolve in the realization that the cost of communication failure is high: something bigger than yourself might fail.  Working together to create and support something real and alive, something meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious personal bonds where mere communication would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.

[[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.

-> Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of collaboration, and feed back into them.  Exovivaria should ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously said: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."  Communication for its own sake can easily dissolve into boredom, if not acrimony and mutual disdain.  When people are aligned toward concrete goals, however, conflicts can often dissolve in the realization that the cost of communication failure is high: something bigger than yourself might fail.  Working together successfully to create something real and alive, and meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious personal bonds where mere communication would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.

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.

-> Change, engagement and purpose can grow out of collaboration, and feed back into them.  Exovivaria should ultimately be more about the people involved than the plants, animals, and microbes being kept alive in orbit. As one early pioneer of flight, St. Exupery, famously said: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."  Communication for its own sake can easily dissolve into acrimony and mutual disdain.  When people are aligned toward concrete goals, however, conflicts can often dissolve in the realization that the cost of communication failure is high: something bigger than yourself might fail.  Working together successfully to create something real and alive, and meaningful to others in the effort, can forge precious personal bonds where mere communication would only yield casual (and soon enough, stale) acquaintance.

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.