Cofounder, Offworld
TEDxDubai 2011 | Erika Ilves & Anna Stillwell | The Human Project |
THE HUMAN PROJECT
At the beginning of the 21st century we humans find ourselves in a bit of an existential pickle.
Some of us are even placing bets that we will not live to see the 22nd century.
Erika and Anna think that it all depends on who you see when you look in the mirror.
BIO
Erika Ilves and Anna Stillwell spend most of their waking hours understanding where we come from as a species, how we got to the present moment, what the big challenges of our time are, and where we should go next as a species and why.
About Erika Ilves
Erika Ilves, cofounder of Offworld, has given TEDx talks in which she argued that humanity is allocating its time and resources poorly and called for a shift toward "hyper-visionary ventures" aimed at species-level survival. In a 2013 talk, she cited Elon Musk's SpaceX, Modern Meadow's lab-grown meat, and the B612 Foundation's asteroid defense as examples of such efforts, and she urged audiences to "consider letting go of the rope and going for Superman" — a phrase she used to describe pursuing audacious, long-term goals. She described a "starter kit" for this approach as "cosmic perspective, science fiction, and nerves of steel," or more simply "read, steal and ignore." In a 2011 talk with Anna Stillwell, Ilves discussed "The Human Project," a framework she co-authored that proposes an agenda for humanity's survival. She argued that humans have the freedom to create and reach for the stars but that one billion people still lack access to basic survival needs. She suggested ideas such as crowd-funding a satellite to expand internet access, creating a "human technology road map 2050," and building a space-faring civilization. She stated that "from the human perspective it's a matter of survival it's a must we must create a space faring civilization to survive."
Transcript (13 segments)
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Erika Ilves0:11
Being human at the start of the 21st century can feel like this. We're going somewhere fast, but where are we going? It can look a bit foggy. On the one hand, we've gotten ourselves into all of these crises: economic crisis, environmental crisis, 18 active wars, people angrily taking to the streets all over the world. But then again, we are more prosperous and even more peaceful than we have ever been. Our technology is getting just magical. Millions of us are trying to whip this place into a better shape. So the question is: is it all going to work out for us humans? It all depends on who we see when we look in the mirror. It's not as simple as it sounds. It actually takes a bit of work to see who we are.
In Dubai, we're dreamers, big dreamers. We're going to need that too, but it's going to take more than that. Let's zoom out. That's a striking picture, still too small. Here we all live on this planet. We could see ourselves as global citizens. Some say we're interconnected, we're all one. Now that's a bit fluffy for our taste because it doesn't really tell us what we're about. So we think we can do better than this. Let's see who we are in relationship to everything else. This is deep space, the swirly things of galaxies. Our sun is a tiny dot at the outskirts of one of the galaxies. This makes us humans invisibly small. But then, all matter, space, and time were compressed into a single hot point, then it banged. Ever since, things have unfolded in a very orderly fashion, as if it were strictly following a script. Our universe has been expanding, losing heat, and clumping matter into progressively more complex structures. That's how we got our stars and galaxies. The big stars manufactured most of the building blocks like carbon and oxygen. Those elements clumped into molecules that we're now made of. It's all governed by the same forces, and like all matter, we're subject to those forces. But let's be clear, we're not just clumps of matter.
Reserves of matter inside them, and when they burn it all up, they're done. If you and I lived off only what's inside us, we'd be dead in a matter of days. To keep going, life harvests most energy and matter from the outside. What it keeps inside is this information and its DNA about how to do this. It then passes that information on from generation to generation, and it does it almost perfectly. But every now and then, it makes mistakes. So most genetic mistakes are harmless, some can kill you, some can make you look cute, but some actually give you a better chance to survive and reproduce. Now give life a few billion years, and we get this tree of life branching out in millions of life forms.
The other two scripts, stars and goats, don't get up on stage and wonder who they are and how to cut through the fog. We do, because we have a trick of our own: cultural learning. This is how it works. We learn some stuff, and then we tell each other about it. Life takes thousands of generations to come up with something new and useful. We can do it in a single generation, and the next generation can build on it. You didn't have to invent agriculture to get the food in your fridge, or a vaccine to avoid dying from smallpox. You didn't have to invent the airplane to fly, or the telescope to look into deep space.
Scripts. That's what we're about. We're becoming the rebels of our universe. That's who we are. How's that for a reflection in the mirror? So let's try this out. Back to deep space. When you look in the mirror, can you see yourself as human? Not the regular kind of human, the one you woke up to this morning. We're talking all caps human: a product of 14 billion years of cosmic, biological, cultural evolution. Can you see the 100 billion humans who came before us, 7 billion of us alive today, trillions waiting to be born? Can you see a great species that's going to give us a reason to be upbeat about ourselves? Second, we could rise above the fog and see our challenges in a whole new light. And third, seeing ourselves as human can even change what we do with the rest of our lives. We picked six or eight out of 16 challenges that confront the human project, just to give you a taste of what we're talking about. Let's start with the basics: how we sustain ourselves. We're not that good at it yet, so we've made a bit of a mess. Given the state of things, it's understandable that some of us think we should scale back, but from a human perspective, things look a bit different. We are no different than other life. We harvest matter and energy from our surroundings to stay alive, but we're smart.
Artificial fertilizers feed billions of us, but now they're killing our oceans. Fossil fuels powered massive leaps in our capabilities, but now they're also heating up our climate. So back to the drawing board. Look, the givens are good: we've got plenty of land, 20,000 times more solar energy than we use today, and water everywhere. Now we need to rethink what we do with them. If you're into sustainability, let's push beyond. Think global, act local for the next thousand years. Let's think human, act planetary. And to shatter our concepts about what's possible, let's imagine sustaining not just for 7 billion of us, but for the trillions waiting to be born. Let's not disappoint them.
We use the word poverty to describe this. From the human perspective, it's not just about wealth. It's more fundamental than that. It's about time. The time of our lives is the most valuable resource we have as a species. Millions of years ago, all we got was 20 years, and we spent all of it hunting and gathering our food. Then we invented agriculture, and we were able to produce more food than we needed. With a bit of it saved, we could lift our eyes off the fields and figure out smarter ways to meet our other needs too. Now fast forward a few thousand years, and for a billion of us, life is sweet. We live four times longer and have more free time. Imagine where we would be with the human project if all of us had the freedom to do this. But that's not the case yet. One billion of us are still reaching for food. Survival is the full-time job. That's a poor way to run the human project. We have centuries worth of inventions to get beyond survival, but we're just not that good at sharing them yet. We trade, we give local governments money and technology, we run amazing pilots that transform the lives of a few villages, but we struggle to scale these things. So if you're into development, we could use a fundamental rethink here. How about an open development architecture that draws in the best ideas from everyone?
Solutions to our problems. But now that we're getting so technologically powerful and moving so fast, the way we develop technology is turning into a challenge in its own right. In this century, we'll be designing our own life forms: synthetic microbes that can absorb CO2, or potentially a lethal virus. We'll get inside our genetic code to fight disease and create superhuman capabilities. We're edging closer to creating strong artificial intelligence, robots that can help us solve problems or turn on us. The stakes are high. Some say we should go full throttle, others say we should slow down. From the human perspective, we need to find a way to harness the power of our technology without succumbing to the mess. If you're into technology, here's a hardcore contribution we make: technology roadmaps for companies and nations. We need one for us as a species. Think human technology roadmap 2050.
This is a volcano. Today we think of events like this as an act of nature, something we can't do anything about. Now, from the human perspective, if we think like this, we're scheduled for trouble. Volcanoes can do more than just ground a few flights. They can get pretty bad. Take the one that blew in Indonesia 74,000 years ago. The ash and gas in the atmosphere triggered a planet-wide winter, and we were down to 10,000 people and just 500 fertile women. A pretty dramatic part of a simple script that we should get a handle on. So if you're into big rocks, help us master our geology.
We got big rocks and snowballs flying around in space too. They make for entertaining programs on the Discovery Channel, but from the human perspective, these rocks are serious business. The largest confirmed impact was 64 million years ago. It was only 10 km across, but it killed off the dinosaurs. We think we've mapped out where 90% of the really big ones are, but then there's the remaining 10%. And the smaller ones could do serious damage too. Today, if an astronomer spots one headed our way, it's not clear what to call or what to do, because right now we're looking a little insecure. We need planetary defense. There are well thought through plans, but not a lot of funds. If you're wondering what to do with your fortune, put it in planetary defense. That's a legacy project.
We take our sun for granted. From a human perspective, big mistake. Suns are not forever, and our sun is no exception. It's going to go, and with it our source of energy and a place to live. So we have about a billion years to find a new home in our galaxy. I know it sounds like a ridiculous amount of time, but we can't really know how long it's going to take us to figure this one out. Today, we think of space exploration as something we do for power, or the best technology, or the fastest technology we can now imagine. Not creative, just imagine. It would take a 100 years to get there. So we're starting with baby steps. We've landed on the moon. That was a three-day trip. Our next stop is Mars. It would take around 9 months to get there. We're already working towards building self-sustaining colonies on Mars by 2050. So if you're an adventurer, you can actually take a trip that counts. NASA is looking for volunteers to settle the red planet. It's a one-way ticket, but it's a contribution of a lifetime.
Entropy. Most of us don't think about it, but from the human perspective, it's the ultimate challenge. This force may be strong, but that's no reason to wimp out. We think that theoretical physics is about satisfying scientific curiosity, and science fiction purely entertainment. From the human perspective, both are a matter of survival. When it comes to theoretical physics, there's still so much we don't understand. What's dark energy and dark matter? How many dimensions are there? Is our universe the only one? Answers may yield ideas for how to prevail over entropy. We might learn to manipulate the laws of physics in our own universe, or if there are multiple universes, we might be able to create portals that lead to other ones. Does that sound like something we're supposed to be good at?
Cultural learning is our trick, but we're still getting the hang of it. How many times have we had to reinvent the wheel because we didn't have access to each other's work, because we lost some knowledge? We've even deliberately destroyed some. But now, with the invention of the internet, we can truly up our learning game. We could learn to learn at the speed of light. Imagine all of us with instant access to an organized knowledge bank and to each other. Imagine easy ways to get up to speed on what's already in the bank, and easy ways to join in and contribute. Think maximum learning power. That would be the trick of all tricks. We're not there yet. But if we learn to learn at the speed of light, we can rock everything else. If we dare to think big about ourselves, to see ourselves as human, we can make things work out for us. We can have a very interesting future, lead interesting lives. We can see our lives not as a momentary flash of time between our birth and our death, but as a contribution to the ongoing human project. A project that can carry beyond this century, beyond the end of our sun, maybe even beyond the end of our universe. So who do you see when you look in the mirror? Some days, all you see is nothing special. But we hope you can also see yourself as human.