The Memory of Mankind and what should be remembered | Martin Kunze | TEDxLinz

Data traffic needs a lot of energy and therefore data deletion will become a green planet issue: automated erasure of out-of-date-content and deletion of accounts. In 100 years, our most widely read blogs will not exist anymore. We have to decide today what our grandchildren will know about their roots - and take adequate precautions

Martin Kunze is an artist and the initiator of MOM (Memory of Mankind).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I think everyone in the audience
asked already about the future,

at least in Saskia's talk,
pressing the Forward button.

I am passionate about these
questions about the future,

and I want to know
how the future will see us.

Never before, information was spread
in such a density and speed,

and across our planet, we share
our thoughts and emotions in real time,

and what will remain from all these
shares, posts, likes and tweets?

How will the image of our world
look like in a distance of 100 years?

Or 1000 years?

Let's try to answer this
by what we know from the past.

Far less than 1% of the antique texts

are still known.

And since publishing and reproduction
then took some kind of effort,

we still - after 2000 years -

we still can reconstruct
the antique world and its way of thinking.

[In contrast], publishing today

is simple as a post or tweet
or video upload,

and not only scientists
or newspapers are publishing,

everybody can do it today.

And since pseudoscience
has such mass appeal,

those stories about
crop circles and aliens

find a lot of audience,

and they are spread much more often
than scientific papers.

That’s why a Google search
for 'crop circle'

yields 20 million entries,

whereas, for example, 'moon landing'
brings only six million.

A scary fact is that five million
from these six million

are moon landing hoax entries.

You know, there's the space probe Gaia

producing the most detailed
mapping of our galaxy,

producing lots of data?

And yet, over its five-year mission,

the entire data output
is getting microscopically small

compared to the daily
Internet data traffic.

The things we really spend money on,
we puts a lots off effort into,

they will all drown in oceans
of irrelevant, trivial contents

and, I would say, redundant bullshit.

So, you see?

A picture of our time
in a distance of 2000 years

will result in a very distorted
image of our time.

You know all these 'fail' videos, yeah?

Where people are hurting themselves
while doing stupid things,

like really trying to stand
on an inflated exercise ball?

You know what the people
will think in the future?

'‘Well, those guys from the 21st century
never performed spaceflight.

Too many documents prove

they're obviously misunderstanding,
misinterpreting the law of gravity.'

So, this picture in the future
will be very distorted,

and probably our era will be defined

by Minecraft videos, porn videos,

selfies, kitty images ...

But having a, in some aspects,
'fails' remembrance

is even better than having none at all.

Why this?

It says the Internet
doesn't forget, right?

But I want you to consider this:

These days our World Wide Web
turned into what it is per definition:

world wide.

3.4 billion people are online,

and that´s 3.4 billion Internet users

creating data and data traffic.

Every single minute,

600 hours of video material
are uploaded in YouTube.

This is only from this year, 2016.

In the total duration

of 35,000 years,

30,000 years ago,
we started to paint in caves,

and only 4500 years ago
we built the pyramids.

So this is quite a long thing we upload.

More and more videos
in higher definition from mobile devices

that leads to -

that our data traffic volume
in the last ten years,

it doubled, doubled,
doubled, every 18 months.

And now I want you to step
to a different perspective:

Data traffic needs energy,
and energy causes carbon emission.

In fact, the Internet
is already responsible

for 3% of the global carbon emission.

And if data traffic increases
in the coming ten years

as it did in the past ten years,

it will be more than 50
times higher than today.

Theoretically, we soon run out of breath.

This critical point is too close
as to rely on new technologies

such as unlimited energy sources
or electricity-free data transfer;

it was both far down the line.

That means that in a very close future,

economic and ecological reasons

will force us to delete data massively.

A profound erasure executed by algorithms.

In other words,

the image our grandchildren
will have of our time

will have been created by machines.

And what Snapchat started
could be a common feature in the future:

a deletion after a predefined period,

resulting in a society which
floats in a permanent presence,

having no past anymore.

This is why we should select today

what we want to be kept for tomorrow.

The project Memory of Mankind
keeps our stories,

both for our grandchildren
and for a remote future.

This is accomplished
in a very durable way,

stored deep and protected
deep in a salt mine in Hallstatt,

a UNESCO World Heritage
region in the Austrian Alps.

And ceramic tablets
carry analog information -

that means text are letters
and images are photos.

These ceramic tablets

are the most durable
data carriers we ever used:

They are resistant
to high heat and pressure,

and water and chemicals,

and radiation,

magnetism.

And in order to be recovered
sometime in the future,

everybody who takes part
in this project receives a token -

a small ceramic disc
indicating the location of this archive

and at the same time serving as a barrier
against unauthorized access.

It can only be comprehended by a society

which has at least a similar
technical understanding as we have.

Languages are changing,
so there‘s a deciphering tool:

You can imagine a Pictionary of photos -

thousands of photos
of things and situations

directly labeled
with the respective words,

combined with the theoretical volumes
of our main languages,

such as thesaurus, grammar,
phrases, orthography.

The contents of this
Memory of Mankind project

are split into three sections,

there is common content,
specific content and individual content.

In order to transmit a mostly objective,
global, overall image,

we created some mechanisms
to fill this archive with content.

For example,

big newspapers of every country
send their daily editorials.

Editorials are more than just news,

they are already
some kind of interpretation,

can be contradicting.

Similarly, we invite significant magazines
to store their monthly issues.

And common content is also
randomly selected Facebook profiles.

And, of course, also the weird things,

like the conspiracy theories
or the alien crop circles,

but, of course, declared as such.

Probably to give them something
in the future to laugh about.

Specific contents
are contributions by institutions

like museums, universities
or awards for literature or science.

And an important part
of Memory of Mankind is the documentation

about our nuclear waste repositories
by the atomic industry.

Individual contents
is created by you and me:

stories of life, wedding photos,
cooking recipes,

whatever you find worthwhile
to be preserved for eternity.

Everybody can take part
in the Memory of Mankind.

Send your personal message
in a bottle to the future.

The Memory of Mankind project
certainly raises some questions.

One is:

Who in the future
might be interested in our legacy?

Well, as long as societies are based
on the principle of cause and effect,

and the academic
application of this principle,

the question 'What was before?'
is part of the common understanding.

That's why we are interested in our roots

in the same way
as the Romans were in theirs.

The more interesting question,
however, for me, is:

What side effect may this
project have on our presence?

Isn't there a huge discrepancy

between the physical traces
we leave behind and our virtual legacy?

Never before have human beings
exercised such an impact on our biosphere.

The toxic chemical waste
will outlast our species many times over.

And the effects of global warming

will shape the lives
of countless generations.

And yet, at the same time,

we don't leave any durable records
about our present activities at all.

In fact, we inhabit this planet
like there is no tomorrow:

wasting the place and leaving
without paying the rent.

Think of surveillance cameras:

We accept to be permanently watched

because we understand this should
prevent us from committing criminal acts,

and if something happens,

the suspect swiftly is detected.

There are no surveillance cameras
watching our planet.

And in the future it will be unknown,
completely unknown,

'Who did it?

Who was responsible
for this ecological disbalance?'

So is this probably the reason
why we behave like reckless morons?

Because nobody will ever know?

In reverse, would a permanent record
about our present activities

make us behave more responsibly?

If it is known forever, who profited
from the exploitation of our planet,

which families, which groups,

which companies
are to be made accountable for,

will this change anything?

I think so.

A big common voice, as we know,
can change things.

Think of Avaaz, for instance.

So, let´s take this big selfie.

I mean, despite all the mess around,

there is so many
fascinating things happening.

Breathtaking, really
breathtaking discoveries.

You remember the images of Pluto

and the quantum physics effects,

or the last indigenous tribes,

or how the smartphone changed our life?

I mean, like any generation,

we do have some
pretty good stories to tell.

Or the TED Talks - what a wonderful
portrait of what moves us today.

So let's keep the roots
of our grandchildren,

presenting them with a yesterday

to give them the chance
to survive our tomorrow.

We, ourselves, we too need the past
to understand our presence.

And as a great humanist,
Wilhelm von Humboldt,

200 years ago, put it into the words:

'Only who knows his past,
can have a future.'

Thank you.

(Applause)