Alas, Babylon, NY

Babylon in l932

Record amounts of rain fell on the Long Island several weeks ago and the inundations, which left cars stranded on flooded highways—brought back the not too distant memories of Sandy on the East Coast and the devastation caused by Katrina in New Orleans The poles are melting, el Nino is more unpredictable than ever (“El Ninos Are Highly Unpredictable,” Science/AAAS, 1/3/13) and whole ways of life in Micronesia are in imminent danger of destruction (“11 Islands That Will Vanish When Sea Levels Rise, “ Business Insider, 2/12/12_ But the odd thing about climate change which is predicated on the transmogrification of the earth by green gases is the degree to which it resonates a biblical quality. For every flood that we read about in the press, there's the complementary drought (“Rain Soaks California causing floods, but won’t end drought,” Reuters, 31/14) It seems that California is always fighting forest fires which are perilously close to major cities and in July, 19 fire fighters were killed trying to quell a blaze in Arizona (“Loss of l9 fire fighters in Arizona blaze, ‘unbearable,” governor says,” CNN, 7/2/14). Religious fundamentalists must be turning to the scriptures (the story of Noah in Genesis is one example) for the view of a God camouflaging his anger at man through climate change. It's curious that the objects of man’s creation have reduced him to such a level of powerlessness that only the intervention of a divine being would seem to quell they adverse effects. Even though scientists inveigh against pollution they indicate in the same breath that the damage may already be done. Global warming may be  irreversible. Yes, mankind may some day migrate to greener pastures, finding planets amenable to life through epic journeys to other solar systems. But as long as they are inhabitants of the earth, men and women may find themselves more at the mercy of the elements, with their options so limited that he may actually find themselves with no other choice than to cry out to God for help. In the not to distant future, modern men may literally find themselves reduced to the condition of their biblical forbears and with a similar lack of resources to deal with the calamities that befall them. Then atheism will be a luxury and they’ll be no choice but to hope for divine intervention.

The Digital Faust

Burgess Meredith in “Time Enough to Last"

In an article in Foreign Affairs (“The Rise of Big Data, May/June 2013), Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger make the following comment, “In the third century B.C. the Library of Alexandria was believed to house the sum of human knowledge. Today, there is enough information in the world to give every person alive 320 times as much of it as historians think was stored in Alexandria’s entire collection—an estimated 1200 exabytes’ worth, If this information were placed on CD’s and they were stacked up, the CD’s would form five separate piles that would all reach to the moon.” There is a famous Twilight Zone, “Time Enough to Last," where Burgess Meredith plays the role of a man who just wants to be left alone with all his books. He gets his wish. The problem is that he is nearly blind and as he is about to sate his desire, his glasses crack. Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger describe the advent of a condition which is a little like the effect global warming has had on weather and the environment. Shrinkage of polar ice caps have unleashed huge amounts of water which affect sea levels and inevitably in a kind of domino effect air and water currents (like El Nino), ultimately resulting in many of the explosive, tornadoes, tsunamis and severe tropical storms from Katrina to the recent debacle created by Sandy. In a short period of time the information explosion created primarily by digitalization, the internet and most importantly by what Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger term “datafication,” (in their words “a far broader activity: taking all aspects of life and turning them into data. Google’s augmented reality-glasses datafy the gaze. Twitter datafies stray thoughts. LinkedIn datafies professional networks.”) has reached tsunami levels. It’s as if we are drowning in information, with only soothsayers aka search engines like Google, who themselves are driven by mysterious algorithmic forces that few really understand, providing a beam of light. It’s Faust all over again. Mankind has sold its soul in his quest for ultimate knowledge. Will the price for the striving be a form of ignorance in which the brain, like old car radiators, boils over and finally quits? It’s a theme that Jorge Luis Borges developed in his famous story "The Library of Babel." You can know a lot about a little or a little about a lot. But it’s virtually impossible to know a lot about a lot.