Wordbook

A set of practices used to systemically grow plants and raise animals for human use or consumption. Its development, around 11,000 years ago, allowed humans to gradually abandon their previous hunter-gatherer existence and live in settled communities. Agriculture reduced the range of foods that humans ate, leaving them overly dependent on specific crops and grains in particular. With the advent of modern agronomy, agriculture has become a science based on the use of artificial fertilizers, genetic modification, and pesticides. This in turn has led to the loss of biodiversity, the destruction of pristine environments, the degradation of soil and the acceleration of climate change. At the same time, sustainable agriculture initiative across the planet aim to reverse that process and ensure a healthier future for humans and for the planet.

Agriculture is the only correct answer to the question: “if you could go back in time to 11,000 years ago, what would you tell people to never invent?”

A list of instructions that a computer program follows to obtain a result from given input. These instructions may come from a human developer or from another algorithm. Some algorithms can even modify themselves. AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications use algorithms to parse the volumes of data generated by online users in order to decide which content to show the users or the most effective ways to engage with them, thus creating a system that can know people better than they know themselves. See also: Screen Lock: Tasmanian Tiger

A set of rules designed to help computers individually convince Homo sapiens to purchase products they absolutely need to have right now.

An informal unit of geological time used to describe the epoch in which Homo sapiens’ activity started to change the Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including the ongoing climate crisis and species extinctions. The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek anthropos meaning “man” and cene meaning “new”. There are at least nine different debated dates for the beginning of the Anthropocene. Some say it started at the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution, while others believe it began with the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when the atmosphere started filling with greenhouse gasses. A third group thinks it began in 1945, when humans first used atomic weapons, producing radioactive particles which have been detected in soil samples all around the world. At the beginning of the 21st century, it’s hard to ignore the implications of this human epoch, and some urgent questions arise: Can we harness the same forces that transformed the Earth to make it a better place to live for humans and other life forms? Will the Anthropocene ever end? What can we do to mitigate the Anthropocene's effects?

A geological record of human achievement, composed primarily of plastics and radioactive particles.

A feature of machines that allows them to perform complex tasks usually performed by humans, in a way that is typically considered "intelligent", meaning that the machine’s actions depend on their environment and maximize their chance of achieving a certain goal. Well known examples include Google's search algorithm or Facebook's algorithm that chooses what content to show the user. Today, AI tools such as GPT and Midjourney can also create written and visual content. These are called "generative AI".  At the moment, all AI applications are so-called "narrow AI" - AI that specializes in one particular task. Even if it is not clear whether we will, one day, be able to create a "general AI", the possibilities offered by narrow AI are already enough to lead to major disruptions - from face recognition with potential use in mass surveillance to self-autonomous weapons; from self-driving cars to AI doctors, all of these uses hypothetically creating unemployment for millions of people. See also: Knowledge Nuggets | Are These People Real or AI?

A concept Homo sapiens were not intelligent enough to stop in time

An economic system which emerged in the early modern era, based on private or corporate ownership of property, assets and means of production; and free markets in which these owners can trade their assets as they choose, in keeping with the principle of supply and demand. It is associated with democracy and with the rise in standards of living in many countries, but also with unrestrained and unsustainable economic growth, which comes at the cost of global equity and the environment. Alternative economic systems, such as communism, have not historically been successful, but as rampant capitalism continues to ravage the planet and fuel climate change, there is increasingly widespread criticism of its unsustainable pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet.

A clever trick pulled by money to fool humans into making more of it.

The alteration or transformation of an object or an event from one state to another. The mere reality of this has been a heated philosophical debate for millennia. In the 21st century, when disruptive technologies and ecological collapse have made stability and stasis obsolete, change has become an obvious and fundamental part of human life, and the adjustment to it is a core value in the labor market.

The only constant in the universe. It is constantly ignored.

Any human society which reaches a particular level of complexity and development. In its broadest definition, civilization refers to the societies which emerged following the agricultural revolution, and featured settled urban communities, communal activities, systems of government and the development of cultural or spiritual practices. More narrow definitions of civilization have often been used to discriminate, denigrate or even seek to eradicate human societies perceived to be of lower cultural achievement or refinement, especially during the age of Imperialism.

A method for relieving the boredom of wandering wherever you like and doing whatever you want by living in cramped conditions, doing the same things every day.

The ongoing global catastrophe of climate change. Since the industrial revolution, massive emissions of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide) are modifying the Earth's climate by increasing temperatures at an unprecedented speed. The average temperature of the planet has already increased by about 1.1°C and the consequences are seen all around the world with uncontrolled and unpredictable wildfires, exceptional flooding, severe droughts and record temperatures all becoming more frequent. Every increase in global warming intensifies these effects and their impact on human societies. Rising sea levels, crop failures, and extreme weather fluctuations exacerbate conflicts, reduce food and water access, force increasing numbers of the most vulnerable into poverty, and lead hundreds of millions of people to become climate refugees.

A story told by people who, for some reason, hate dying from water shortages and hot temperatures.

A state of refusal to accept that the climate of the planet is changing adversely due to manmade causes. It manifests itself as either vehement and conspiratorial denial, or else as a simple lack of concern about the future of the climate. Climate denial obstructs attempts to address the crisis developing on a global level.

The lack of concern expressed by a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water.

A term used to describe awareness of one’s own existence, of the external world and of the thoughts and feelings that arise internally. It is a notion one has intuitively, but it is difficult to define and has been subject to philosophical and scientific controversy for millennia. Even today, there are more questions than answers. A core debate is whether consciousness actually exists, and if so, what constitutes it: Is it merely the result of electrical signals shooting through the brain, or is there more to it? And in any case, why does the state of consciousness arise in the first place? What purpose does it fulfill? Do plants and microbes have consciousness? Should we treat other beings on Earth by the degree of consciousness they have? In the 21st century, consciousness plays a crucial role in man-machine interfaces and the development of AI. For example, can a machine be truly intelligent without having consciousness? Can consciousness arise in machines? Can chips implanted in our brains or fMRI reveal our consciousness, and can telepathy be achieved by linking the brain to a computer?

A pesky little thing that keeps humans up at night thinking thoughts like: Who am I? Who is the I asking this question? Wait, who’s asking who is the I asking this question? Who’s there? Hello?

A gene-editing technology which allows precise alteration of a sequence of DNA inside a cell. The implications are dramatic: from eliminating genetic disorders to the creation of genetically designed babies. By way of selecting edited DNA sequences this technology can alter the future of humanity. One of the main fears is that only wealthy individuals will be able to afford CRISPR treatments enabling them to produce tall, beautiful, and healthy babies, thus creating a caste of superhumans, while leaving the rest of the human kind with an outdated set of “flawed” genes.

A gene-editing technology that makes power and beauty a part of wealthy people’s DNA.

Sets of values, facts, statistics and information about a person or an object. In the 21st century, data contracted from the use of electronic media is one of the most sought after and valuable commodities. Political and commercial entities compete for the ability to gather as much data as they can, in order to extract and analyze it, so as to accurately predict and to manipulate people’s desires and intentions. The worldview that sees everything as composed of data is called Dataism, and as it becomes more and more socially accepted, people put their trust in the ability of algorithms to make an increasing number of decisions for them, based on their data. This puts privacy, transparency and even free will at risk.

A 21st century answer to the age-old philosophical question: “what is the universe made of”.

Genetically modified organisms describe any organisms which have been subjected to genetic engineering. Using techniques such as CRISPR, genetic engineers aim to insert genes with desirable characteristics into the genome of existing microbes, plants or animals. This can result in crops which are immune to pests, are more productive, or have other preferred traits, such as height, beauty or certain colors. Opponents argue that GMO production may pose risks to the environment and the health of both humans and natural crops and animals. Additionally, the possibility of copyrighting or owning a resulting GMO means that large agribusinesses and other gene engineers could obtain 'patents on life'.

Food that humans improved because nature didn’t know what it was doing

A highly prevalent political system in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, which emphasizes not only democratic elections but also the ensuring of human rights, civil rights and political freedom for the minority. In the 21st century, with the rise of tribalism and anti-globalist tendencies, the hegemony this system once enjoyed is at stake, and with it, the civil liberties that many of us take for granted.

An endangered species of government. Life expectancy in the wild: 100 years.

An item that is regarded as a medium of exchange, and that is accepted as payment for any object. Although today money is thought of as a very materialistic and objective concept, it is a perfect example of a fiction: money only has value if a large enough group of people believe in it; it is objectified trust. The first instance of money can probably be traced to late 4th millennium BCE Mesopotamia, where fixed amounts of barley were used as units of account. In the Bronze Age, as people put more trust in the bureaucratic system, inedible materials such as shells and metals were used as money. Today, most money is nothing more than lines of code in a computer and has no physical embodiment. This goes to show that money is indeed the greatest trust system humanity has ever established. However, the fact that almost all money in the economy today is created by banks when they grant loans, means that the amount of money available is equivalent to the amount of debt. So, when trusting in money as a common fiction, we basically put our trust in debt.

The only story everybody believes in.

Nationalism is a term that has acquired a negative connotation in the democratic west, but is what maintains the functionality of countries. Nationalism brings together different people who have never met, and perhaps will never meet, to support common goals. It is a feeling that brings people together, makes them engage in shared interests, and encourages them to pay taxes to help their country and fellow countrymen thrive. In contrast, tribalism, which is sometimes confused with nationalism, is the feeling that your group is superior to all others and therefore has more rights. It is a feeling much older than nationalism, as it stems from our evolutionary history. But while nationalism can bring about beneficial outcomes, tribalism is a dead-end street to global cooperation and human progress.

A feeling of love a plant has for its pot.

A now extinct species of hominid who emerged around 200,000 years ago and flourished across Eurasia until the arrival of Homo Sapiens. Though often characterized as brutish cavemen, more recent evidence suggests that Neanderthals successfully adapted to cold climates, and developed a complex hunting culture, including the development of tool use, clothing, music, visual art and possibly ritual behavior. A small percentage of Neanderthal genes may still be found in the DNA of some modern humans, suggesting that interbreeding was not uncommon.

A type of hominid which invented art, clothing, music, jewellery, and religion, but wasn’t good enough at killing other hominid species to survive.

Explosive and non-discriminating devices based on either nuclear fission or a combination of nuclear fission and fusion. A single nuclear bomb can deliver enough explosive energy to destroy an entire city and irradiate a large area for potentially tens of thousands of years. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare since 1945, when America used them to attack the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the very existence of thousands of such weapons in the hands of multiple nations poses an existential risk to the planet and all life upon it. An estimated 19,000 such weapons are currently in existence, down from a peak of over 70,000, and 90% of these are held in American or Russian arsenals. If only a small fraction of these were to be used, the resulting 'nuclear winter' would pose a serious threat to all plant and animal life, and would likely kill billions of people through irradiation and as a further result of this, starvation.

A way to keep your nation safe by threatening the existence of the entire planet.

A system of practices and beliefs shared by a large number of people, often involving the worship of a supernatural or transcendent power. Throughout human history, religion has played a central role in both public and private life. Many religions present an all-encompassing world view that provides answers to questions in a broad range of philosophical and scientific disciplines, such as physics and metaphysics (What is the world made of?), philosophy (What is the meaning of life?), and ethics (How should people behave in a community?). In religions that involve a transcendent source of knowledge, this source is usually believed to provide an unchanged and unquestionable set of laws and beliefs. Nevertheless, major religions have gone through substantial changes over the years. Mechanisms within each religion enabled people to make such alterations without formally defying the authority of the transcendent entity. One of these mechanisms, for example, allows certain people to interpret holy scriptures, therefore broadening the possible meaning of what is believed to be an unchanged transcendent message. These variations in interpretation mean that followers of the same religion in different times and places may lead very different lives and follow very different sets of rules, while adhering to the same text, and worshiping the same divine entity. It is hard to evaluate how many people on Earth are religious, but according to a Pew report in 2010, when there were 6.9 billion people on the planet, 83.7% of the population was affiliated with some religion. Due to the current influence of religious ideologies and their ability to evolve and adapt, religions can play a pivotal role in tackling future global challenges, such as the ecological collapse or emerging technologies that try to grab all of our attention.

An agreement between Sapiens about the things they can’t see.

AKA Human. Sapiens is the only remaining species of the Homo genus, and the most widespread species of primate on planet Earth. Although not distinct from the animal kingdom, its rapid brain evolution and storytelling abilities enabled Homo sapiens to develop complex societies whose cultures led to the transformation of the planet’s climate and biodiversity, putting life on Earth in grave danger.

A great ape with an extraordinary ability to invent stories about how to ruin the world

Technological singularity is a term used to describe the hypothetical moment in the near future when technological development becomes irreversible and impossible to control. Common scenarios for the singularity are the development or emergence of a sentient machine intelligence, which would potentially initiate a runaway cycle of constant self-improvement, and the merging of man and machine to a point where the newly formed cyborg would be so different from today’s Homo sapiens that we cannot imagine its capabilities. The term was first coined by the mathematician John Von Neuman, and later popularized by science fiction writer Vernon Vinge and futurist Ray Kurzweil.

A much catchier term than “we have no idea what’s going to happen and at this point we’re too afraid to ask”.

A catch-all term to describe electronic methods of communication characterized by interaction, community-generated content and collaboration, usually manifesting as websites or apps. Following the advent of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s, social media sites began to displace the more democratic and free-for-all format of earlier forms of the internet as the primary method for people to communicate online. This has led to the growth of a small number of corporations with disproportionate and multifarious power. These corporations are able to harvest the immense amount of data created in order to discover more about people than they know about themselves.

A place people go to find strangers to hate.

Modifying a planet’s conditions to make them similar to the environment on Earth so that the planet will be hospitable for humans. This hypothetical process includes the modification of the atmosphere, temperature, geology and ecology, and has so far been described mainly in science fiction books and films. However, this idea has been studied and proposed by astronomers such as Carl Sagan and scientists in NASA since the middle of the 20th century, with Mars being the most likely candidate. This raises many ethical issues, mainly the concern that interfering with and altering conditions on a planet is an extension of ethnocentrism into space and of the destruction of nature by humans.

Modifying a planet’s conditions to be similar to the environment of Earth, so humans can destroy that planet as well.

Tribalism is a term that sometimes gets confused with nationalism, but is very different. It stems from our evolutionary history. Since the dawn of human evolution, humans have organized themselves into tight social groupings. Anthropologists estimate that most of us can maintain a maximum of around 150 relationships. This helps us collaborate and share interests, but can also be dangerous. There's a risk of feeling that our group is superior to all others and of demonizing people outside it. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a relatively new concept. Even though nationalism has acquired a negative connotation in the democratic west, it is what maintains the functionality of countries. Nationalism is what brings together different people who have never met, and perhaps will never meet, to support common goals. It is a feeling that brings people together, makes them engage in shared interests, and encourages them to pay taxes to help their country and fellow countrymen thrive. While nationalism can bring about beneficial outcomes, tribalism is a dead-end street to global cooperation and human progress.

A feeling of hatred a plant has towards another plant in a neighboring pot.

Any significant armed conflict between groups, whether nation states, or non-state actors such as paramilitary groups, militias or other types of insurgents, such as political separatists. Warfare dates back at least to the paleolithic age, with evidence of armed conflict having taken place in the Nile valley some 14,000 years ago. War usually indicates a breakdown in diplomatic negotiation, but rarely, if ever, succeeds in resolving disputes. The development of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the 20th century now poses an existential threat to the whole of humanity. A widely disseminated quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, predicts that a fourth world war will be fought with stone spears, since a third world war will likely destroy human civilization as we know it.

1. A group dynamic observed in both ants and humans, in which humans show as little humanity as ants.

2. A self-destructive method for resolving any kind of dispute.