Timefulness: Thinking Like a Geologist with Professor Marcia Bjornerud

Our planet’s history, from its initial formation to present day, spans over a long period of time. It is not easy to conceptually imagine such a large timescale and most of us adopt a narrow perspective of temporal proportion. This constricted view, according to professor Marcia Bjornerud underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The lifespan of Earth can seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but a narrow view of time makes it difficult for us to understand our roots in Earth’s history and the magnitude of our impact on the planet. Bjornerud, in her recent book “Timefulness: How Thinking Life a Geologist Can Help Save the World” stresses that an awareness of Earth’s temporal rhythms is critical to our planetary survival. I speak with Professor Marcia Bjornerud in this episode of Bridging the Gaps and we discuss fascinating research and intriguing ideas that she presents in this book. We explore in detail, one of the main points presented in this book, which is “how knowing the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future”. Bjornerud emphasizes that overlapping rates of change in the Earth system — some fast some slow– require a poly-temporal worldview that she calls “timefulness”.

Marcia Bjornerud is professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University. She is the author of Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth and a contributing writer for Elements, the New Yorker’s science and technology blog.

“Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World” presents a new way of thinking about our place in time, enabling us to make decisions on multigenerational timescales. “Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future. Featuring illustrations by Haley Hagerman, this compelling book offers a new way of thinking about our place in time, showing how our everyday lives are shaped by processes that vastly predate us, and how our actions today will in turn have consequences that will outlast us by generations”.

By |December 4th, 2019|Geology, Knowledge, Podcasts|
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“The Technology Trap” and the Future of Work with Dr Carl Frey

An intriguing set of questions that is being explored by researchers across the globe and is being discussed and brainstormed in various organisations and think tanks is: “what is the future of work”; “how forthcoming AI and Automation revolution will impact on the nature and structure of work”; and “what would be the impact of these changes on the fabric of society from social, economic and political perspectives”.

In a 2013 study “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?” researchers Dr Carl Benedikt Frey and Dr Michael Osborne made an important observation: about 47% jobs in the US will be lost to automation. Dr Carl Frey is the co-director of programme on technology and employment at Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. His research focuses on “how advances in digital technology are reshaping the nature of work and jobs and what that might mean for the future”. In 2016, he was named the 2nd most influential young opinion leader by the Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer.

A recent book by Dr Carl Frey presents a thorough review of the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. The title of the book is “The Technology Trap: Capital, Labour and Power in the Age of Automation”. The Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. This books demonstrates that the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present and the forthcoming AI and automation revolution.
Dr Carl Frey shows the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the labour share of income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends, Frey documents, broadly mirror those in our current age of automation, which began with the Computer Revolution.

Just as the Industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. But Frey argues that this depends on how the short term is managed. The decisions that we make now and the policies that we develop and adopt now will have profound impact on the future of work and job market. In the nineteenth century, workers violently expressed their concerns over machines taking their jobs. The Luddite uprisings joined a long wave of machinery riots that swept across Europe and China. Today’s despairing middle class has not resorted to physical force, but their frustration has led to rising populism and the increasing fragmentation of society. As middle-class jobs continue to come under pressure, there’s no assurance that positive attitudes to technology will persist.

Dr Carl Frey joins me for this episode of bridging the Gaps. In this podcast we discuss the ideas that Dr Frey presents in this book. Before discussing the future of work, we look at the history of work and how the nature of work evolved through various ages and how did it impact the equality in the society. Dr Frey notes in his book that the age of inequality began with the Neolithic revolution; we discuss this in detail. We then discussed first and second industrial revolutions and the age of digital transformation. We also discuss the rise of politics of polarisation and finally we discuss the future of work. This has been a fascinating conversation with a thought leader, on a hugely important subject.

Complement this with discussions on Artificial Intelligence and the future of humanity by visiting “Artificial Intelligence: Fascinating Opportunities and Emerging Challenges” with professor Bart Selman and discussion with professor Toby Walsh “2062: The World That AI Made”.

By |October 22nd, 2019|Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Future, Knowledge, Podcasts|
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How Cooking Made Us Human with Professor Richard Wrangham

Humans are the only animals that cook their food. One of the implications of cooking food, as noted by Oliver Goldsmith is, “of all other animals we spend the least time in eating”. In a ground-breaking theory of our origins, primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that the shift from raw to cooked food was a key factor in human development. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity as we know it, began. Wrangham notes that as a result of eating cooked food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Eating cooked plants or meat makes digestion easier and the energy we formerly spent on digestion was freed up, enabling our brains to grow. Cooking increases the proportion of nutrients that can be digested, makes food easier to digest and kills pathogens (harmful bacteria and viruses). Time once spent chewing tough food could be used instead to hunt and undertake other tasks and activities. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created household and shaped family structures, and even led to a gender based division of labour.

Richard Wrangham is a professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and founded the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in 1987. He has conducted extensive research on primate ecology, nutrition, and social behaviour. In his book “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” Wrangham argues that cooking food is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations and the cooking, in particular, the consumption of cooked food might explain the increase in human brain size, smaller teeth and jaws, and smaller more effective digestive system. Wrangham’s “Catching Fire” presents an interesting narrative that how we came to be the social and intelligent beings that we are today.

“Cooking was a great discovery not merely because it gave us better food, or even because it made us physically human. It did something even more important: it helped make our brains uniquely large, providing a dull human body with a brilliant human mind” – Richard Wrangham

Complement this with slightly different but equally interesting discussion “Robots, Artificial Life and Technology Imagined by the Ancients” with Adrienne Mayer.

By |July 20th, 2019|History, Knowledge, Podcasts|
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