Microcosmographia by William Van Hecke

Zoom Out

February 4, 2015

Microcosmographia ii: Zoom Out

Microcosmographia is a newsletter thing about honestly trying to understand design and humanity.

Do you know Bret Victor? He’s a universally well-regarded thinker on the topic of how humans work and learn with technology. A lot of smart people consider his Inventing on Principle to be one of the best talks of all time for people who, like, make things, or… do things. I got to see him speak about Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction at Edward Tufte’s See Think Design Produce seminar. His newest talk is called The Humane Representation of Thought, and it is also very good. The subtitle of that talk is “A trail map for the 21st century”. There is a thread through most of Victor’s work, and the way he talks about it, that makes it pretty clear: his thinking and his work are focused at the century level. He wants to do work that’s important enough to be remembered in holo-textbooks of the 22nd century. Maybe if he does a good job, he could have a multi-century impact.

Andy Matuschak’s blog Square Signals is post after post about this sort of thinking, and the values you end up with if you focus on that scale. (Incidentally, I met Andy at that Tufte/Victor event.)

David Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity argues for a worldview in which humans have started down a path of infinite progress, which you can participate in, probably at century scale.

Sheeeeeesh. Okay, so that is an intimidating boggle. If you aren’t making a dramatic difference to people’s lives four generations out, jeez, what are you even doing on this planet, right? But while I was dwelling on all that, I also happened to be absorbing some stuff on vastly larger scales. Numenera, a tabletop RPG set a billion years in the future, when Earth is utterly unrecognizable. Iain Banks’ Culture series of novels, which take place in a galactic civilization so advanced that the only real threat is boredom. And the excellent Wait But Why post about the Fermi Paradox, which takes very seriously the possibility of hyper-advanced civilizations in our own galaxy right now. (Group 2 Possibility 3 for life!)

At scales like that, century thinking seems… quaint? Self-important? How much of a role can you really believe you are playing in the fate of intelligent consciousness in this universe a dang billion years from now? So I started this exercise of trying to zoom out from where I’m sitting to look at as many time-scales as possible, and to think on what seems important to people at each one. This is superbly calming and meditative.

We disapprove when people only see the narrower views, and don’t plan for their own futures. And we admire the people who sacrifice those lower levels to tilt toward the higher levels. After writing it all out, it seemed like the natural center is at 1 lifetime. Which is I guess where I have been focused! I really want to use the understanding we have as a species to make tools for people to do meaningful things. But I am also careful about enjoying my own time here. I’m not so sure I want to sacrifice those more individual-human time scale goals in order to do the truly profound stuff at the longer-term levels. There’s a balance to be found.

Maybe someday I will get a chance to work directly on some 100-year stuff. But I know that things I have helped make, by doing my narrower-scale work, are being used by many people to do 100-year stuff. Which might be even better? Question marks??

A Novel For Your Consideration

I love everything about Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, but it’s best if you go onto it now knowing what to expect. I’ll just say it’s science fiction avec feels. But I’ll gladly talk about how it was written. I love that Leckie shipped it, her first novel, at nearly 50, after having several other jobs and being a stay-at-home mom of two. I love that the whole project started as a National Novel Writing Month exercise, and took ten years of on and off tinkering to finish. I love that what had begun as a project for fun went on to win nearly every major science fiction award. Everything about it denies the narrative of the obsessively creative life, the story that says if you didn’t decide at age 10 to be something and then dedicate yourself utterly to it, you’ll never be great. Some of my favorite artists did follow that path, but it is nice to hear that you can also succeed while being healthy and balanced, and you can try different things at different times in your life.

Thank You and Be Well

Nickd said this newsletter thing would be hard, and he was right. I will keep trying! I hope you are getting something out of it. If you like, please do reply — it’ll come right to my inbox and we can have a conversation! ^__^