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Deep Time
 
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Deep Time [Paperback]

Gregory Benford (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)

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Physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford says there are two main impulses behind human efforts to communicate with future societies. The first, "High Church," shouts beauty, ego, and awe across the millennia: See how amazing our pyramid-building skills were? The Seven Wonders of the World would fall into this category--if they had lasted. Monuments, cathedrals, tombs, anything that says, "This great object meant something to us." On a much more mundane (and human) level is the "Kilroy" impulse: I lived! You needn't look hard to find evidence of this temporal communication: graffiti is as old as humanity, and latter-day taggers are following in the footsteps of Greek mercenaries (who left their names all over Egyptian monuments, Lord Byron (who carved his name into the Temple of Poseidon), and legions of anonymous ancient scribblers.

So, humans want and are able to communicate (wordlessly and otherwise) over thousands of years. But, asks Benford, can we accurately convey information over millions of years, or longer? We may need to do just that in order to responsibly protect future beings from our current, long-reaching messages--nuclear waste, climate change, extinction of species. Benford was part of a team of artists and scientists trying to come up with ways of saying "WARNING" to humans (or other beings) in the distant future. Deep Time is a fascinating look at the nature of communication and the future implications of things we do today. It's a terrifically intelligent, detailed, and comprehensive long view, with a message sorely needed by short-lived, but brainy, humans. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In his first foray into book-length nonfiction, acclaimed science fiction writer and physics professor Benford (Timescape, Cosm etc.) combines a scientist's perspective and a novelist's imagination to produce a provocative and disturbing look into "deep time," the far future that may be beyond the limits of our civilization and our species, but not beyond the reach of our technology. He begins with tales of the messages we have purposefully left for the intelligent beings who may exist thousands or millions of years in the future. Benford draws these stories from his experiences as a member of the teams that designed the message placed aboard the 1998 Cassini mission to Saturn and that defined the characteristics of warning markers for the radioactive waste storage sites that will still be dangerous 10 millennia hence. He ends with a look at the messages that we are inadvertently sending into deep time, messages written not in media but on Earth itself and the life it supports. Here, Benford deliberately provokes controversy by arguing that humans must take on the task of geoengineering?controlling the evolution of both life and climate?if we wish to survive. That message and his mind-stretching book leave readers with a frightening question: Where will we find scientifically knowledgeable, technologically enlightened political leaders to guide us to the right choices? Illustrations throughout.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
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2 star:    (0)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4.0 out of 5 stars A thought-provoking idea, not completely carried through, July 21 2003
By 
M. A Michaud "michael_michaud" (Dulles, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Deep Time (Paperback)
This book, by a physicist and science fiction writer, starts off well with a philosophical perspective on Humankind's collective attention span. The desire to convey some essence of ourselves, Benford writes, is the great impulse behind deep time messages. But there also is a desire to shape the future, and to use the idea of the future to shape the present. He describes his personal experience as a member of a group advising the Department of Energy on what kind of markers should be used to warn future humans of an underground radioactive waste depository. He then turns to the design of plaques to be attached to spacecraft that will leave the solar system, unfortunately getting bogged down in bureaucratic and interpersonal battles involving NASA officials. Other subjects addressed are preserving a record of biodiversity in a "Library of Life" and addressing human-caused climate change, leading toward "planetary management." These are all good themes, but Benford's conclusion does not propose an overall approach or a more systematic way of addressing our long-term future.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Deep Time/Deep Self-Revelation, Jun 11 2003
By 
Christine M. Rodrigue (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Deep Time (Paperback)
I very much enjoyed reflecting on the ideas presented in Benford's discussion. The content and organization of the book are not specifically addressed in previous reviews on this site, so for the reader wondering what the book is about, a road map might be useful.
Deep Time has four sections:
(1) Ten Thousand Years of Solitude describes a project in which the author was involved, which addressed how (or if) society can design safe repositories for nuclear waste with effective means of communicating across millenia to people who will not share our culture, technology, or language, "don't go near this place." Past epic attempts to communicate over the millenia and present attempts to preserve computer data for even a few years do not build confidence that this critical message will speak properly to its unimaginably distant audience.
(2) Vaults in Vacuum is a rather darkly amusing discussion of the etched plates NASA sent out on some space missions intended to communicate with whoever finds them about Earth, Sol, and humans. The unintended humor of the political process surrounding their design communicates more to us about human nature than the disks themselves could ever communicate to aliens! The fate of the diamond disk that was supposed to ride with Cassini-Huygens to Saturn is nothing short of hysterical.
(3) The Library of Life is a depressing description of the potentially Chicxulub-scale loss of biodiversity caused by humans in the last few centuries. It argues almost poignantly, perhaps quixotically, for building cryogenically-preserved DNA libraries to store the basic information on biodiversity, so our far descendants, if we manage to leave any, might be able to resuscitate what we are destroying -- "Jurassic Park" on ice.
(4) Stewards of the Earth: The World as Message is a vaguely postmodern discussion of the earth we're leaving behind us for our descendants as a text and what that text reveals about us. The message is not flattering or hopeful. Should human society with its next-quarter or, at most, decades time frame begin to design and effect centuries-long agendas to assist the planet to support us at a high level of technological civilization, our primate cleverness may yet evolve into wisdom and conscious design of what the earth says about us to our long-distant descendants.
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3.0 out of 5 stars I found it boring, Aug 18 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Deep Time (Hardcover)
The concept of public servants trying to communicate messages to a distant future it quite interesting. I found it interesting that even we have lost even the locations of some time capsules even 50 years ago. It certainly had some good ideas.

The main problem I felt was that the writer was trying to write like a science fiction and a philosophical work. It just could not keep my interest up.

However it would make a good project book for someone in a class trying to keep students interested. Which is what I am series thinking of doing.

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