Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia - Hardcover

Benford, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380975378 ISBN 13: 9780380975372

Publisher: Bard, 2001

Synopsis

States how the human race is sending strong messages about itself into the cosmos in the form of nuclear waste, global warming, and the extinction of species, considering the legacy we are constructing for future generations and the next occupants of the planet.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to sciences. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

Reviews

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.

Professor and distinguished sf writer Benford (physics, Univ. of California, Irvine; Foundation's Fear, LJ 3/15/97) adds another reflective title to his large and rapidly expanding oeuvre. Hearty and compelling, his new book elucidates some of the inherent problems humanity faces in communicating over the expanse of time. How will the hazards of, say, stored nuclear waste be communicated effectively to future generations? The prospect of leaving long-lasting, or "deep-time," messages is perplexing. This slim book addresses environmental issues in order to change how we think about the human impact on Earth; the goal is to make us good stewards. In the section "Digital Immortality," Benford writes one of the finest brief explanations of the limits associated with document preservation in a digital age. Much of the overall analysis seems somewhat anecdotal, but given the speculative nature of the subject, this sort of approach may serve as well as any other. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.?Dayne Sherman, Hammond, LA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bard
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380975378
• ISBN 13: 9780380975372
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240