Adrian Wagner

The Interface

            In February of 2000, I spent a week in the snow-covered woods of the Anderondack Mountains.  As each day passed, I found myself spending the last moments of each, huddled around the warmth of a campfire.  I would circle my entire body around it for hours on end, trying to extract every morsel of warmth radiating from its embers.  And as I lay there, watching the flames dance among the burning wood, I thought about the tremendous amount of energy being released before me.

When the fire had finally finished, it was much changed.  What was once a mass of rich texture and vitality had become a pile of ash and a rising channel of smoke.  The complex cellular structure of the wood, a structure engineered over millions of years by the process of evolution, had given way to a mass of powdery white carbon.  This deterioration of structure did not happen in vain, as my body was well aware.  The structure of the wood was converted into heat via chemical reaction. 

I built a fire, intentionally destroying the wood that I placed upon it, so that I could enjoy the warmth that it had to offer.  The energy released came at the cost of destroying the order contained in the wood, a movement over time, from order to disorder.  Even if I had not burnt the wood and had let it rot in the ground, the result would have been the same.  Once separated from its parent tree, wood looses its structural integrity over time; it looses the very structure that defines it.  There is a natural progression from a state of structure to a lack of structure, from a state of order to one of chaos.  The only way that this progression can be overcome is at the expense of energy.

The theory of entropy states that in a given closed system, there is an increase in the amount of disorder over time. Take a box filled with an equal number of black and white marbles, such arranged that all the white marbles are on the bottom and the black ones on top, and begin to shake it.  Over time the marbles will be in increasingly random positions, until their distribution will look like pure noise.  The only way to get the marbles back to their original state of order is by rearranging them.  This can be done, but only at the expense of energy from an outside source.

The earth is a closed system just like the box, and as such, it seemingly defies the theory of entropy.  Evolution on our planet has led to a tremendous amount of order and complexity.  However, it has done so only at the expense of the vast amount of energy our planet has received from the sun.  Life can only exist where there is a source of energy, for only with a source of energy can such complex systems arise.   This fundamental requirement guides scientists' search for life on other planets.  For example, the possibility of life existing on Jupiter's moon Europa has been recently considered.  The moon may well contain a vast ocean under its icy surface, which if heated by the gravitational pull of its parent planet, may be able to sustain organisms that feed off the heat generated by the gravitational interaction.  Without this source of heat, there could be no life.  Similarly, without the sun, life on our planet could not exist as it does today.

Plants receive their energy from the sun, and convert that energy into chemical form through the process of photosynthesis.  In the example of the firewood, the structure of the wood arose while part of a living organism that consumed energy through such means.  The energy from the sun gave rise to a physical state of order in the wood.  The energy stored in the order of the wood was released before me as I sat in front of the fire on that February night.  There is a correlation between order and energy.  Energy is needed for order to arise; and order has a chemical ability to release energy.  Order can be seen as a universal battery, a medium of storage through which energy can be passed.  This phenomenon has allowed for such a complex diversity of life to evolve on our planet.

Plants gain their energy from the sun.  Animals consume the order of plants.  Other animals consume the order of smaller animals.  Therefore, the key to life and the proliferation of a species is its ability to consume order from the surrounding world, without exhausting the source.

The progression from plants to large animals depicted above, the 'food chain,' ultimately has, as its base, life forms that convert visible sun light into chemical energy through the process of photosynthesis.  Every other species on the planet is thus dependent upon the ability of plants to transform sunlight into usable energy.  Furthermore, the sum of energy consumed by every other species must not exceed that generated by plants.  The base of the food chain, would thus not be able to sustain all other life forms.  Every species must be in balance within the progression of energy from species to species, not only for the good of all species, but also to secure its own food supply.

The progression within a system, from order to chaos, is the basis of the idea of destruction.  If I tear up a painting, I am destroying the painting.  I am adding chaos to what was a unified piece of art.  It would take the energy of a skilled restorer to bring the painting back into its original state of order.  Therefore, the key to life is the ability to destroy order, and in doing so, use the energy released to create and maintain one's own state of order.  Life would not be possible without destruction, just as it would not be possible without order.

Many see human-made technologies as being inherently destructive.  I think that this statement is quite accurate.  However, I will argue that the fundamental purpose of our technology, a purpose endowed to our species by Mother Nature herself, is to destroy.  This must be expected, as any form of life cannot exist without destruction.  There are however fundamental differences between the nature of our destructive methods, and those employed by other species.  Through the rest of this paper, I will look at the effects of human technologies, and why they fundamentally separate us from every other species on the planet.  I will look at the ramifications of this separation, and what it means to the future of humans as a species.  I will also offer some ideas as to how we can keep our unique characteristics from killing us.

As I have already mentioned, life must be able to consume the order around it in order to survive.  Therefore, each and every form of life must have some type of interface through which it can consume this order.  I use the term interface because the process of consumption is more complex than just a physical input device.  All mammals, for example, have some form of mouth.  A bear, more specifically, has a fairly powerful jaw.  Yet, his jaw would be useless if it was not for the raw power of his claws and the intelligence required to use them.  It is the entire system, fine-tuned by thousands of years of evolutionary trial and error, which forms the bears interface.  Every species, therefore, has a unique interface that allows it to consume order from the rest of the world.  It is altered over time by evolution, and is molded by the gradual progression of genetic lineage that carries the information required to manifest it.  The interface is in a constant state of evolutionary change, moving through generations like a glacier carving its way across the landscape.  It seeks to find a gradual yet dynamic balance within the web of life.

The idea of natural selection is based on the notion that a species with the greatest ability to obtain food has the greatest ability to survive.  Yet, if a bear is able to consume all of his food supply, he will perish.  The web of life is dependent upon the balance of supply and demand.  I have stated already that the key to life is consumption.  No animal can survive without consuming energy.  However, no species can survive if there is no more order left to consume.

Because the process of DNA replication guarantees that any changes to a species' interface take place over the span of multiple generations, these changes have time to be thoroughly evaluated, their benefits and costs integrated into their progression over time. If over-consumption leads to food scarcity, the interface of the consuming species will be either altered or driven to extinction. Thus, the balance is maintained.  If a beaver was to evolve with a small nuclear bomb with which he could magnificently knock down all the trees in a 3-mile radius and thus build the most divine of all dams ever built...  he, in the process would either destroy himself or the habitat upon which he was dependent.  His genes would thus never be passed; no more nuclear bombs would be conceived.  Thus, the evolutionary relationship between cause and effect is maintained, such that the two are integrated through the balance of supply and demand.

There is a property of mans interface that distinguishes him from any other form of life on earth; our interface has escaped from the bounds of physical evolution, and thus the balance itself.

Evolution has given man a powerful brain and hands that can manipulate the world around him with fantastic precision.  While almost all other species effect change on the world around them through an interface that is a product of evolution, humans have the mental capability to create and discover interfaces that extend beyond our own bodies.  We can manipulate the world on a physical level, using the objects and tools that we find to aid in our consumption of order, as if they were a natural part of our species.  These self created interfaces are the technologies that we have developed and expanded upon over thousands of years.  Initially they took the form of clubs, fire, and the plow.  They now take form as entire industrial plants, themselves built by other machines.  All forms of our technology share the fundamental purpose of aiding us in the manipulation of order and chaos in the world around us.

Evolution has given humans the ability to evolve our own species far beyond the rate achievable by DNA replication and mutation.   "It took billions of years for the first cells of life to form on earth, and then in the Cambrian explosion, paradigm shifts only took a few tens of millions of years.  Then later, we went from primates to humanoids in only millions of years.  And then Homo sapiens emerged in only hundreds of thousands of years. [i] "  Finally, evolutionary progress became too rapid to be held within the bounds of DNA guided protein synthesis.  Technology was born.  Our own evolution is no longer physical in nature.  The slow but brilliant process of genetic mutation and replication has been replaced with the lineage of human knowledge.  No longer, do our claws evolve.  It is our knowledge of using long, sharp sticks to create massive projectile spears that is passed from generation to generation by oral and written means.  DNA has been replaced with language, evolution with knowledge, and genetic mutation with creative thought.

We are tapping into the resource that Mother Nature has given us, exploring our world and recording our findings so that those who precede us can build upon our own intellectual evolution.  In doing so, our evolutionary-technological powers have brought us so far beyond the capabilities of other species that we have lost track of our fundamental relationship with them.  We are no longer connected to the feedback system that once guided us.  Our rapidly expanding arsenal of interfaces is no longer dependent upon the balance within the web.  We are not flowing as glaciers, but tearing across the evolutionary landscape as Id-driven tornadoes.

The division between physical and mental evolution is of enormous consequence.  If we develop a technology such as a nuclear bomb, it can be implemented in a mater of decades.  It must no longer pass a thorough evolutionary evaluation over the span of hundreds of generations.  So while the beaver's genetic sequence may never stumble upon the physics of fission, our creative minds can.  Furthermore, we can implement any given technology before its consequences are fully known.  We thus have a moral obligation to evaluate the effects of our technologies, as no one else is.

The nuclear arms race of the late 20^th century was the product of political war and scientific ingenuity.  In its wake, we are left with over 34,000 nuclear warheads, capable of destroying the planet 4 times over [ii] .  While it can be argued that there is a vague line between a given technology's risk, and the value that it may have in terms of intellectual progress, nuclear weapons are clearly not worth their risk.  Nuclear warfare is a technology that was developed and implemented long before its consequences were fully understood.  In fact, the consequences of nuclear technology by its very nature will never be known until it is too late.  

In 1995, the world came 4 minutes away from nuclear holocaust.  On April 5^th, Soviet nuclear weapons systems armed themselves for retaliation against the United States, after being falsely triggered by a sea launched television satellite.  In the final four minuets before launch, the system was disarmed from its final state of alert.  The entire incident was the result of a mishandled paperwork [iii] .

The episode raises the question of whether or not we as human beings have the capability to fully understand the consequences of our actions.  Furthermore, upon a theoretical understanding of consequence, have we evolved enough as a species as to not be driven by such basic evolutionary artifacts as greed, lust, and hatred, even if the consequences lead to our own destruction.  As we push the technological envelope into new territory, this question gains fundamental importance.

Since the discovery of molecular chemistry in the early 1900's, scientists around the globe have invented over one hundred thousand synthetic chemicals.  Every year, a thousand new substances are introduced out of which, at best, 40% are tested before being put into production [iv] .  Technology has moved beyond the manipulation of the macroscopic world... beyond the building of shelters, the creation of spears, and the discovery of fire.  Technology has begun to alter the very building blocks that form our planets biological systems.  New chemicals are being invented that have never before existed in the natural world; we are using our earth as a global laboratory to slowly discover their consequences.

In 1929, a group of scientist invented a series of 209 compounds collectively named polychlorinated biphenyl's, or PCBs.  The invention of PCBs was heralded as a scientific breakthrough.  The compounds were nonflammable and very stable.  They soon found use as cooling compounds, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, and liquid seals.  "These chemicals also found their way into a host of consumer products and thus into the home. [v] "

In 1976, almost 50 years after their introduction into the environment, the United States Government banned the production of PCBs. 

PCBs have since been linked to such health problems as mental retardation, cancer, endometriosis, infertility, thyroid dysfunction, and permanent skin damage.  The exact scope of the damage caused by PCBs may never be known.  High levels of the chemical have been found as far as the arctic, and as close as in human breast milk.  "As other scientists began to look for PCBs, they, too, found them everywhere - in soil, air, water; in the mud of lakes, rivers, and estuaries; in the ocean; in fish, birds, and other animals. [vi] "  By the time the US banned their production, an estimated 3.4 billion pounds of PCBs had been produced.

PCBs were introduced into the environment in the name of innovation, without thorough understanding of their consequence.  As early as 1937, the toxic effects of the chemical began to appear, yet it took 39 years for these effects to be officially recognized.  PCBs are only 209 out of 100,000 new synthetic compounds constructed in the past century.  If it took the US Government 50 years to react accordingly, what kind of resources and time will it take for us to gain an understanding of the effects of the other 9,791 synthetic chemicals in production?  The scale at which these chemicals effect our environment in any manner is drastic. 

"U.S. production of carbon-based synthetic chemicals, which represent the lion's share of synthetic chemicals, topped 435 billion pounds in 1992...  Global production is believed to be four times greater. [vii] "  The question must thus be raised, where do the trillion plus pounds of synthetic chemicals end up?

In 1998, the culmination of 25 years of EPA testing showed that 75% of people tested contained chemical toxins in their bodies.  While it is impossible to determine with scientific certainty what effect each of the 9,791 synthetic chemicals has on our bodies, it is easy to see their cumulative effects.  In 1994, the Office of Technology Assessment released a report estimating that 90% of all cancers are environmentally induced, such that they are theoretically avoidable.  Between 25% to 35% of all Americans will die of cancer.  This means that out of 250 million Americans, 56 million will die of cancer caused by chemical intoxication, radiation, and environmental poisoning.

Is this the murder of 56 million people, or is environmental poisoning simply a devastating, but unavoidable consequence of the same technological innovations that have increased life expectancy three folds since the signing of the declaration of independence [viii] ?

There is a delicate balance between the good of innovation, and the possibility of harmful long-term consequences caused by new technologies.  An increase in life span is useless if there is no world left for future generations to live in.   If the human species remains on the current path of rampant population growth and the misuse of our very interface, we may well be on the path to extinction.  Our evolution, our technology, our interface, is no longer kept in check by Mother Nature.  Yet, our survival is still dependent upon the systems that she provides.  We are destroying these systems; we are thus destroying ourselves.

Human action has transformed between one-third to one-half of the earth's landmass.  Over the last 50 years, 17% of the planet's soils have been severely degraded, nearly 2 billion hectares, the size of China and India combined [ix] .  Since 1970, the world's forests have shrunk from 11.4 to 7.3 square kilometers per 1,000 people since 1970.  We are slowly altering the landscape of the entire planet, and thus the systems upon which our population depends.  Every 20 minutes, the world adds another 3,500 human lives but loses one or more entire species of animal or plant life - at least 27,000 species per year.  This is a rate and scale of extinction that has not occurred in 65 million years.

As we destroy the web of life, we destroy the balance of systems that sustain us.  Virtually all of our food is derived from agriculture.  Our vegetables, fruits, wheat, meat, and dairy are dependent upon a stabile environment in which plants can grow.  Natural systems are able to adapt to long term change, but if their environment is altered at a rate at which DNA based evolution can not keep up, the systems will collapse.  By drastically altering our environment, we are running the risk of destroying the very systems that sustain our population.

The global emission of carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas" that most researchers say causes global warming and disruption in weather patterns, has quadrupled since 1950, largely from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. The atmosphere now contains 30% more CO2 then at the beginning of the industrial revolution [x] .  As a result, the planet has seen a rise in global surface temperature of 1 degree Celsius in the past century.  "Scientists expect that the average global surface temperature could rise 1.6-6.3°F by 2100, with significant regional variation. Evaporation will increase as the climate warms, which will increase average global precipitation. Soil moisture is likely to decline in many regions, and intense rainstorms are likely to become more frequent. Sea level is likely to rise two feet along most of the U.S. coast."

Our effects upon the system are beginning to appear.  As I write this paper, I sit in my New York apartment, in 90-degree heat.  These are the first days of April.  To the north of me, the Great Lakes face the "most drastic decline in water levels in over a century."  In some parts of the Lakes, the largest body of freshwater in the world, water levels are already 3-4 feet below normal.  Across the globe, Australia is bombarded by 100 billion crop eating locusts, "triggered by unusually heavy summer rainfall brought on by a series of tropical cyclones."  Another unusual series of cyclones has left 350,000 homeless in the aftermath of the worst flooding in Mozambique's history.  Meanwhile, the wells and cisterns of the people of India’s Orissa State have run dry as the result of two weeks of severe drought and temperatures hovering above 118 degrees.  "The situation has been made more dire in the aftermath of a super cyclone that struck last year, leaving many people living in makeshift shelters that provide inadequate protection against the heat. [xi] "

The current rate of environmental intoxication that our human interface has given us the ability to effect, is not sustainable.  The human population is consuming the order of the planet, without giving it time to be replenished through photosynthesis.  We are thus destroying the order of a system that is dependent upon itself to exist...  It is like using the energy contained within a battery at such a rate, that the battery looses the ability to recharge.

The worlds human population consumed 350 exajoules of energy in 1998.  The entire array of plant species produced roughly 170 exajoules of energy in the form of biomass.  The worlds population is thus consuming energy at over twice the rate than it is currently being replenished.  We are destroying our natural resources, and the consequences on our own population are already beginning to show.  Out of the 6 billion people currently alive, an estimated 800 million are malnourished.  Yet, our population is somehow continuing to expand.  It is estimated that by the year 2050 it will reach 10 billion.

The technologies that we have created are allowing us to milk the planet of its order at phenomenal rates and from sources that we would otherwise not have.  We are able to sustain our population through the use of oil.  Our consumption of 100 billion gallons of oil every year allows us to boost plant production by the order of a magnitude.  We are using the order in the oil, to sustain our consumption of order, which would otherwise not be possible.  The problem is, oil, like our forests, our fish supplies, our natural gas, our fresh water, is not a instantly renewable resource.  We are draining the ecological battery, and it soon may run dry.

"The Newtonian idea here is that the population follows the geometric pathway of its own inertia in the absence of intervening forces - that is, a population will follow its inertial trajectory until food scarcity acts in the guise of a force to brake that increase. [xii] "

A change is desperately needed before the order runs out.  A rapid decline in the rate of energy consumption coupled with a decrease in the global population must be effected, yet, by who? 

The greatest problem in implementing such global action is that the 'developed' nations who hold the greatest political power are, as of now, the most unaffected by consequences of our destruction of order.  The richest 20% of the worlds population consumes 86% of all goods and services and produces 53% of all carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest fifth consumes 1.3% of goods and services and accounts for 3% of C02 output.  An average American's environmental impact is 30 to 50 times that of the average citizen of a developing country such as India [xiii] .  Yet the effects of global climate change do not devastate the American population; they are felt by the 3 billion people who still rely on subsistence farming and who are thus delicately dependent upon their environment.  No American is going to give up his plush technological pillow, to return to subsistence agriculture.

A comprehensive solution to the problem that threatens our entire species is beyond the scope of this paper.  I believe the solution is beyond the scope of any paper.  It would have to be, at the very least a global understanding of the consequences of our actions, and a initiative by every citizen to act towards the sustainability of our species.  Such action would require mass education, or a direct confrontation with the consequences of our actions.  We, as a species, just may have to fall on our feet, before we see the necessity of saving the soil upon which we stand.  Mother Nature may already be pushing us. 

The Aids epidemic has been traced to a moment of contact between a man and a monkey in the 1930's.  Humans do not belong in the rainforest and jungles, just as monkeys do not belong in our cities.  It is precisely when the human population begins to encroach upon habitats not native to our species, that we are stung with diseases such as Aids.  Aids is mother natures defense system against our rapid population growth.  The virus spreads when we reproduce, killing each human mate and their offspring.  If this is not a warning, there never will be.  If we encroach just far enough, will we uncover an airborne form of aids, which also defies all of our technologies?

Ignoring this prospect of viral Armageddon, I see two possible outcomes to the current global situation.

The first is that we act immediately, and severely, to change the course of our global future.  It is estimated that the earth can support and sustain a human population of about 2 billion.  This figure is derived from a consumption rate of one half that of the average American, approximately the level of consumption of an average European.  In order to save ourselves, governments and corporations around the world will have to become conscious of our global destiny.  Foresight will have to replace hindsight.  Conservation will have to replace Consumption, and our technological momentum to make our lives that much more comfortable, will have to be replaced by a movement of technologies that can sustain our lives.

The second outcome is that we continue on the current course of rapid and drastic expansion and environmental damage.  Doing so, we will have to directly face the impact that our species has had on our planet, and learn to adapt to its consequences.  We will thus be gambling our future on the ability of our technology to provide basic life support, in the face of drastic change to the planets natural systems.

Already, we have tried to sustain seven lives within an artificially regulated 'biosphere.'  The results of that trial were an infiltration of cockroaches.  In order to succeed, we will need to engineer plants that can withstand environmental extremes such as droughts and floods, and perhaps desert-like conditions.  We will need to find a renewable source of energy, such as wind, fusion, or solar power, and we will need to develop and implement these technologies before our oil supply runs out (estimated 2050).  We will need to avoid global nuclear conflict is the face of dwindling resources and an increasing population, and will we have to find a way to keep undeveloped nations from perishing from a lack of technological resource (Flooding in Mozambique).

To win this greatest of gambles, we will need to push the envelope of technological innovation to new limits.  We must find ways to understand and manipulate a world governed by the enigmatic rules of chaos theory.  This is no small task.

In the year 2000 all of the combined computational power on earth can not predict weather patterns to an acceptable level of accuracy, more than 12 days in advance.  Weather patterns are governed by chaos theory, the mathematical equivalent of the Buddhist idea of samsara: the interconnectedness of all things.  If we are to be able to understand the entire array of life systems that have evolved over billions of years, we will need virtually infinite computational power, another gamble, but possible.

 In 1947, a research team at Bell Laboratories designed the first transistor.  In 1957, Jack Kilby came up with the integrated circuit.  These two inventions started the computer revolution, which has since touched the entire globe.  Computers are slowly becoming more than useful tools, with which we manipulate numbers.  Complex programming techniques such as neural networking have begun to create artificial entities which process information in the same way as the human brain.  As the speed of computers push onwards, approximately doubling every 2 years, we will soon find ourselves with artificial minds trillion of times more powerful than our own.  As such, we have embarked upon a journey in which we are breaking away from our biological barriers all together.  A reliance on technology allows us to escape from the last evolutionary restraints placed upon our greatest tool, our mind.

Thus, not only will we have to rely on our physical technologies to save our planet, but we will have to rely on their ability to think of how.  No human mind can trace and understand the complex web of life that exists.  We will need such an understanding if we are to be able to gain control over the ecological fuses that we are now lighting.

The question must be asked, is life worth living if it is based on such a dependency of technology.  We run the risk of literally being slaves of our technology, slaves to our interface... an interface so unique in its ability to exist without through testing.  Already, we can not venture into the woods without bottled water or purification pumps.  Will we soon not be able to eat without ingesting a genetically altered species of plant?  Like PCBs, do we have the time to learn the effects of our innovations?  This is the gamble we must place on our interface.

Non technological interfaces rise out of their direct relationships with the systems that formed them.  They come into existence because they work, and in working they fundamentally keep in balance within the entire systems at hand.  Man made technologies are the product of creative thought.  Not linked to the gradual lineage of genetic information, they can thus emerge separate from the testing process.  It would seem as though Mother Nature would have maintained some type of check on us, to keep our interface from running astray and ruining her most incredible creation.  Perhaps Mother Nature knew this, and perhaps she thus decided to give us morals, so that we may keep the balance, while not being bound by it.  And perhaps it is this very freedom, given to our species alone, that we should honor.