👋 Hi, Ed & Chris here. In the Atlas of the Long Now, we interpret our rapidly changing world. We do this through historic-futuristic lens of the long-term thinker and the toolbox of the speculative maker. After all, by interpreting the past, all kinds of new images of the future reveal themselves, almost automatically.

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Besides writing big think pieces, or elaborate research notes, we're also going to periodically share with you a 'best of the web' titled: Writings on the Wall. In which we'll share articles, charts, books, videos, images and other content that, we believe, say something interesting about the world of tomorrow. In other words, unrefined fuel for the strategic mind and the speculative creator.

🔮 Writings on the Wall

Primitive Communism 🛖 In this fascinating essay, anthropologist Manvir Singh describes, using many interesting examples, how the different cultures of hunters and gatherers that we know (from archaeology or anthropology) were culturally vastly different from each other. He counters the Romantic myth that all hunters and gatherers lived in radically equivalent societies. And that it was the invention of agriculture that drove humanity out of paradise. The cultural diversity of humanity is enormous, and much is possible - including radical equality.

The Dawn of Everything ✊ Archaeologist David Wengrow and anthropologist David Graeber, who died in 02020, also argue in their bestseller The Dawn of Everything (02021) that human cultural diversity knows no boundaries. In their book, they oppose another myth: the neoliberal notion that social inequality is an inalienable part of societies based on far-reaching division of labor - like ours. There are, according to the authors, plenty of examples of equal and complex societies in history. Here's Wengrow's TED.

Catalytic Government ⚡ According to thinker, writer and venture investor Azeem Azhar, neoliberal government is passé and the future belongs to something he calls catalytic government. What makes Azeem's catalytic government different from the already much-discussed revival of industrial policy is not yet entirely clear to us. What is clear is that the rise of China, Putin's gas blackmail, Big Tech, climate change and the loss of biodiversity are forcing governments into a more strategic mode of operation. ("There Is No Alternative" is dying. Except in Britain, where Liz Truss has just become Prime Minister 🙄)

Visual Utopias 🌱 Cheerful speculative animations in which Jan Kamensky transforms gloomy inner cities full of dirty cars into people-friendly and nature-friendly utopias. As far as we're concerned, it could be a bit more exciting, it could definitely use more punk, but we're still fans. Previously, his videos were known as the Flying Car Movement.

These are flying cars on the Rotterdam Bergweg. To see what Kamensky thinks the Bergweg should look like, check out the video.

The final year of China's growth model 📈 The structural problems are piling up in Xi's China. With the underlying issue being the dominant development model. According to China expert Michael Pettis, "The problem is that at a certain point you close the gap between the investment a country needs and the investment that is there. China reached that level 15 years ago. If you keep investing, it amounts to wastefulness. After all, you only need so many bridges." In other words, bubble logic: investment that no longer converts into productivity growth. An interesting take on the trajectory of rapid development economies.

The Great Demographic Contraction 📉 An additional underlying problem for China's growth ambitions is its shrinking population. In the chart below, found on The Economist, you can see that China's population is already shrinking and, it is expected, will shrink faster and faster. And, given the unreliable statistics from China, chances are the numbers are rosier than reality.

My Quantum Leap 👁️ In this essay from February, in Nautilus, Bob Henderson describes how Qbism, a theory in quantum mechanics, turned his understanding of reality upside down. According to Qbism, some aspects within quantum mechanics are subjective in nature. For example, according to this theory, the state of a particle is affected by the observer's expectations. According to Qbism, we live in a "participatory reality". In the essay, Henderson describes his conversations with Qbist Chris Fuchs of the University of Massachusetts.

The above painting is called Danseuse au café and was done by Jean Metzinger in 01912.

Qbism vs. Cubism 🖼 Qbism is an abbreviation of Quantum Bayesianism. This abbreviation was coined by David Mermin. He prefers the abbreviation because reality, he says, differs from our contemporary cultural perception of it, like a cubist painting differs from a Rembrandt

Cultivated Steak 🥩 Researchers at UCLA have developed a method by which cultured meat with a muscle-like texture can be produced at scale. The promise of cultured meat is enormous, but so are the challenges. The promise is as follows: 70% of the world's arable land is devoted to livestock production, which is 30% of the earth's land area. If we can make this area wild, we not only save a lot of emissions, but the recovering ecosystems would suck large amounts of CO2 from the air. Cultivated meat is still in its infancy, but developments are moving fast. Singapore is already up for it.

Everyone a Coder 💻 A report in Wired about how users of Open AI's vaunted GPT-3 language program discovered that the program not only improved their English sentences, but also their code - the users were computer programmers. One thing led to another, and now there's Open AI's Copilot: An AI that writes computer code for you. So you could ask the AI, "I want a program that scours the Internet for the latest technological and cultural trends and developments and translates them into a weekly newsletter". The result will still be messy, but the tone has been set: tomorrow everyone will be a coder.

Talking About My Generation 🤘 According to this article in The Economist, societies change their minds faster than individuals. Or, put another way, cultures change primarily because generations come and generations die. Not so much because people in a society change their opinions. This dynamic does vary by topic. And, for the activists among you, 'In general, battles for hearts and minds are won by grinding attrition more often than by rapid conquest.'

Much love ❤️
Ed & Chris

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Atlas of the Long Now

📉 Qbism, Historical corrections, and how…