9 ms·

A Monument to Outlast Humanity

37 points by prismatic 10y ago

b_emery 10y ago
And here it is on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/qLSZxPZaATM2 https://goo.gl/maps/qLSZxPZaATM2
- harlanlewis 10y ago
  Looking at it from space, I'm much more interested in the small circular clearings of regular size that are everywhere in the surrounding landscape. Each one looks the size of a truck. What are those all about?
  - DanielStraight 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation
    - diggernet 10y ago
      I suspect the question was about these, which are MUCH smaller: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0316037,-115.4345986,129m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0316037,-115.4345986,129m/da...
      - harlanlewis 10y ago
        Yup, exactly. I don't think they're a source of materials used in the project (my first guess) because they can be found quite far away from the site, are present across varied terrain, and lack road access and indicators of work (eg tailings). Such uniformity in natural features always piques my interest. Will just be one of those endless mysteries of the desert, I suppose.
        Sanddancer 10y ago
        Those look a lot like creosote rings [1]. Creosote's native to southern Nevada and grows in clonal colonies that end up looking like rings, and that looks like a nice wide place where water would gather. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea_tridentata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea_tridentata
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Looks like natural phenomenon they are all over the place could be this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18855020/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18855020/ Or could be simply natural water drainage pools the middle dark spot in the middle kinda suggests that. Too many of them and they are all over the desert for it to be man made.
jefurii 10y ago
I thought this was going to be about the Long Now Foundation's 10,000 year clock.
- hprotagonist 10y ago
  slowly but surely we'll get the first Math built.
- aab0 10y ago
  It's interesting trying to compare this to Long Now. The article mentions his 'Double Negative' from ~1970 and that it's already badly decayed (a look on Google Maps supports this) after barely 40 years. It doesn't give much detail about the City, but the illustration (photo?) suggests that its most prominent features are mounds of unreinforced concrete. The famous Sandia study on long-term building that Long Now and Steward Brand often cites finds that unreinforced concrete does very poorly over the long run, and that to last, concrete needs to be reinforced and mixed extremely dryly with tons of manual labor (one reason Roman concrete has lasted so long); Heizer is doing this with a skeleton crew and must take shortcuts. So it sounds like the depressions are going to fill in quickly on a 10,000 year timescale and the exposed concrete is going to break down on the order of centuries. It might last a relatively long time in a buried form like Mayan pyramids, but not as an artwork with integrity, and I doubt much will be left at all by 10,000 years.
ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
What an ugly work of art. This is the long lasting record of humanity?
- KON_Air 10y ago
  I'm afraid so. We can only hope aliens get the gist of it and don't catch "humanity".
- ASpring 10y ago
  I personally find it compelling and inspiring the lengths that Heizer went to for this monument. We're all ready to admire the single-minded devotion and amount of work that goes into TempleOS and I view this monument the same way.
  - douche 10y ago
    There are lots of crazy people that obsessively build monuments. http://inhabitat.com/incredible-cathedral-built-by-one-man-with-salvaged-materials/ http://inhabitat.com/incredible-cathedral-built-by-one-man-w... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle Weird coincidence, tuberculosis was involved in both cases.
  - lmm 10y ago
    I think the admiration of TempleOS is dumb. The whole phenomenon is a tragedy and the guy needs help.
  - hueving 10y ago
    You can find it inspiring and still think it's ugly.
- jefurii 10y ago
  So how long is your work going to last?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Ugly that lasts is still ugly. In fact, in a way it's even worse.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kaybe 10y ago
And in a few thousand years people will wonder about it and say that it was used for ritualistic purposes, presumably.
jseliger 10y ago
I think the real monument to outlast humanity will be in the infrastructure we build in space. That's the real long game.
- hprotagonist 10y ago
  That's _Seveneves_, not _Anathem_ ;-)
SaberTail 10y ago
I was expecting this to be about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant[1]. They're disposing of radioactive waste from weapons production there, and it will remain dangerous for 10000 years. It happens to be in the Permian Basin, which has deposits of oil and gas. Also, the area has salt and potash that can be mined. WIPP itself is in salt. So there will almost certainly be people digging for one reason or another in that time. The problem is how to place a message that will be understood as a warning to humans over that long of a time scale. The last thing you want is future archaeologists digging there because they think it is a tomb or monument. Gregory Benford also talks about it (and some other interesting topics related to communicating over long time intervals) in his book Deep Time[2]. It's an interesting read. [1] http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-Millennia/dp/0380793466 https://smile.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-Mil...
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Is WIPP back in use? They had an accident (used artificial kitty litter as packing material instead of natural, caused a storage malfunction) about 2 years ago. My understanding is that the clean up will run around $2 billion. Don't know if the clean up needs to be complete before use restarts...
  - SaberTail 10y ago
    I don't know if they're actively receiving waste shipments yet. The facility itself is running, though. I used to work on a science experiment there, and some of my former colleagues have been able to get underground starting earlier this year.

37 points by prismatic 10y ago

b_emery 10y ago

And here it is on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/qLSZxPZaATM2 https://goo.gl/maps/qLSZxPZaATM2

harlanlewis 10y ago
Looking at it from space, I'm much more interested in the small circular clearings of regular size that are everywhere in the surrounding landscape. Each one looks the size of a truck. What are those all about?
- DanielStraight 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation
  - diggernet 10y ago
    I suspect the question was about these, which are MUCH smaller: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0316037,-115.4345986,129m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0316037,-115.4345986,129m/da...
    - harlanlewis 10y ago
      Yup, exactly. I don't think they're a source of materials used in the project (my first guess) because they can be found quite far away from the site, are present across varied terrain, and lack road access and indicators of work (eg tailings). Such uniformity in natural features always piques my interest. Will just be one of those endless mysteries of the desert, I suppose.
      - Sanddancer 10y ago
        Those look a lot like creosote rings [1]. Creosote's native to southern Nevada and grows in clonal colonies that end up looking like rings, and that looks like a nice wide place where water would gather. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea_tridentata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea_tridentata
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Looks like natural phenomenon they are all over the place could be this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18855020/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18855020/ Or could be simply natural water drainage pools the middle dark spot in the middle kinda suggests that. Too many of them and they are all over the desert for it to be man made.

jefurii 10y ago

I thought this was going to be about the Long Now Foundation's 10,000 year clock.

hprotagonist 10y ago
slowly but surely we'll get the first Math built.
aab0 10y ago
It's interesting trying to compare this to Long Now. The article mentions his 'Double Negative' from ~1970 and that it's already badly decayed (a look on Google Maps supports this) after barely 40 years. It doesn't give much detail about the City, but the illustration (photo?) suggests that its most prominent features are mounds of unreinforced concrete. The famous Sandia study on long-term building that Long Now and Steward Brand often cites finds that unreinforced concrete does very poorly over the long run, and that to last, concrete needs to be reinforced and mixed extremely dryly with tons of manual labor (one reason Roman concrete has lasted so long); Heizer is doing this with a skeleton crew and must take shortcuts. So it sounds like the depressions are going to fill in quickly on a 10,000 year timescale and the exposed concrete is going to break down on the order of centuries. It might last a relatively long time in a buried form like Mayan pyramids, but not as an artwork with integrity, and I doubt much will be left at all by 10,000 years.

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago

What an ugly work of art. This is the long lasting record of humanity?

KON_Air 10y ago
I'm afraid so. We can only hope aliens get the gist of it and don't catch "humanity".
ASpring 10y ago
I personally find it compelling and inspiring the lengths that Heizer went to for this monument. We're all ready to admire the single-minded devotion and amount of work that goes into TempleOS and I view this monument the same way.
- douche 10y ago
  There are lots of crazy people that obsessively build monuments. http://inhabitat.com/incredible-cathedral-built-by-one-man-with-salvaged-materials/ http://inhabitat.com/incredible-cathedral-built-by-one-man-w... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle Weird coincidence, tuberculosis was involved in both cases.
- lmm 10y ago
  I think the admiration of TempleOS is dumb. The whole phenomenon is a tragedy and the guy needs help.
- hueving 10y ago
  You can find it inspiring and still think it's ugly.
jefurii 10y ago
So how long is your work going to last?
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Ugly that lasts is still ugly. In fact, in a way it's even worse.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kaybe 10y ago

And in a few thousand years people will wonder about it and say that it was used for ritualistic purposes, presumably.

jseliger 10y ago

I think the real monument to outlast humanity will be in the infrastructure we build in space. That's the real long game.

hprotagonist 10y ago
That's _Seveneves_, not _Anathem_ ;-)

SaberTail 10y ago

I was expecting this to be about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant[1]. They're disposing of radioactive waste from weapons production there, and it will remain dangerous for 10000 years. It happens to be in the Permian Basin, which has deposits of oil and gas. Also, the area has salt and potash that can be mined. WIPP itself is in salt. So there will almost certainly be people digging for one reason or another in that time. The problem is how to place a message that will be understood as a warning to humans over that long of a time scale. The last thing you want is future archaeologists digging there because they think it is a tomb or monument. Gregory Benford also talks about it (and some other interesting topics related to communicating over long time intervals) in his book Deep Time[2]. It's an interesting read. [1] http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-Millennia/dp/0380793466 https://smile.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-Mil...

rabboRubble 10y ago
Is WIPP back in use? They had an accident (used artificial kitty litter as packing material instead of natural, caused a storage malfunction) about 2 years ago. My understanding is that the clean up will run around $2 billion. Don't know if the clean up needs to be complete before use restarts...
- SaberTail 10y ago
  I don't know if they're actively receiving waste shipments yet. The facility itself is running, though. I used to work on a science experiment there, and some of my former colleagues have been able to get underground starting earlier this year.