Petrov Day
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This day, September 26, is Petrov Day.
In 1983, the story of humanity nearly ended. We’re gathered here to remember that moment, and others like it.
But to really feel the magnitude of those events, we need to visit them in their proper context. Let us begin the story of human history…�
“In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
— Douglas Adams
Let’s fast forward over the thirteen billion year long prequel.
Our story begins in the age of myth, of fossils and legends.
It starts with the invention of fire.
“I’ve hunted down and stolen, inside the hollow of a fennel’s stalk, the seed of fire, a gift that has proven itself to be the teacher of every craft and the greatest resource for humans. Such is the crime I have committed and this is the penalty I am to suffer: nailed and chained on this rock beneath the open sky.”
— Prometheus Bound
Light the left-most candle, to represent the invention of fire
Then take a photo of yourself with your lit candle and upload that.
Depending which archaeologists you ask, fire was first used by either Homo Erectus of Homo Ergaster, some time between 400 thousand and 1.7 million years ago.
Cooking is believed to have enabled larger, more energy- intensive brains, allowing for the evolution of increased intelligence, and of language.
“Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.”
— Terry Pratchett
On your turn, briefly describe your earliest memory, then enter its year
Year:
“It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write.”
— Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (1871)
Language is the first key to technology; with it, early humans could accumulate knowledge, not just in genes, but also in sayings and traditions.
They gave names to people around them. They gave names to species of animals and plants. They gave names to actions and to places and to strategies. They called some of these good, and called some of them bad. They learned to share their knowledge, and they learned to deceive each other. They built families and communities.
On your turn, briefly describe the oldest story that has been passed down to you strictly by in-person telling, then enter its year
Year:
They began the long, slow process of taming the wilderness. Their tribes grew to cities. What became of them?
Take the second candle, which represents language. Use it to light the third candle, which represents agriculture
Sing, in unison, the first two verses of Uplift By Andrew Eigel�
“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”
— Thomas Malthus (1798)
Mankind lived in equilibrium between growth and collapse, knowledge gained and knowledge forgotten. In that world, stories would last only as long as memory, monuments only as long as wood. For two hundred thousand years, nothing but genes survived.
Extinguish the Third Candle
But that was enough. Though they could not preserve knowledge over generations, they could preserve domesticated plants and animals. They saved the best, and little by little, the world got easier. And then a select few humans started writing, and the equilibrium between learning and forgetting was finally broken. Of that age, what memories remain?
Using the second candle, which represents language, relight the third candle to represent the invention of writing
On your turn, briefly describe the oldest story you have read, including copies or translations, then enter its year
Year:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
What is the name of your earliest identifiable ancestor?
We know more about what the world was like after people started writing, but not very much survived.
One of the most important writings was discovered by French soldiers in the wall of Fort Julien: the Rosetta Stone, important because it was written in three languages, two previously untranslatable.
After a long string of honorifics and decrees about taxes and succession, it declares: there shall be a new holiday!
“On these days in every month, on which there shall be sacrifices and libations and all the ceremonies customary at the other festivals, and the offerings shall be given to the priests who serve in the temples. And a festival shall be kept for King Ptolemy, the Ever-Living, the Beloved of Ptah, the God Epiphanes Eucharistos, yearly in the temples throughout the land from the 1st of Thoth for five days ... This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in hieroglyphic and demotic and Greek characters and set up in each of the first, second, and third temples beside the image of the ever living king.”
— The Rosetta Stone (ca. 196 BC)
The majority of writing consisted of geneologies, legal codes, and fantastic stories. But some writing represented progress in philosophy and mathematics, eventually culminating in the invention of the scientific method.
What is an interesting fact you recently learned?
“Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences... Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.”
— Roger Bacon, Opus Majus (1266)
Using the third candle, which represents writing, light the fourth candle to represent the scientific method.
The scientific method, combined with writing and a university system, marked the start of an accumulation of knowledge. This could have marked the beginning of a slow transition into the modern era. Instead, 81 years after Roger Bacon, history was derailed by a great plague.
Take the fourth candle, which represents the progress of science. Hold it, while this is read: , �
“The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive. ... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.”
— Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae (1360)
Blow out the candle. Then return it to its place on the candelabrum.
The plague killed about half the population of Europe during a four-year period, and it recurred repeatedly throughout the next three centuries killing double-digit percentages of the population each time. Between plagues, wars, and famines, there was little time to build or preserve knowledge.
Preserving knowledge required redundancy. In 1439, during the European Renaissance, Gutenberg perfected a device to do just that.
“Pray, friend Martin, how many impressions can be made by this press in a day?”
“About three hundred, if we work it constantly.”
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Peter. “Now indeed will books multiply. What will the plodding copyists say to this?”
— Emily Clemens Pearson, Gutenberg and the Art of Printing (1870)
“By the aid of a telescope any one may behold this in a manner which so distinctly appeals to the senses that all the disputes which have tormented philosophers through so many ages are exploded at once by the indisputable evidence of our eyes, and we are freed from wordy disputes upon this subject, for the Galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.”
— Galileo, The Starry Messenger (1610)
“Matters that vexed the minds of ancient seers, and for our learned doctors often led to loud and vain contention, now are seen in reason’s light: the clouds of ignorance dispelled at last by science. Those on whom delusion cast its gloomy pall of doubt, upborne now on the wings that genius lends, may penetrate the mansions of the gods and scale the heights of heaven. O mortal men, Arise! And, casting off your earthly cares, learn ye the potency of heaven-born mind, its thought and life far from the herd withdrawn!”
— Edmund Halley, preface to Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687)
“By calculations similar to these may be determined universally, what expectations are warranted by any experiments, according to the different number of times in which they have succeeded and failed; or what should be thought of the probability that any particular cause in nature, with which we have any acquaintance, will or will not, in any single trial, produce an effect that has been conjoined with it.”
— Rev. Thomas Bayes, An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances (1763)
“I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd’s house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection-water if I used a jet as in Newcomen’s engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. ... I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.”
— James Watt (1765)
“I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.”
— Dmitri Mendeleev (1864)
“I then shouted into the mouthpiece the following sentence: Mr. Watson, Come here, I want to see you. To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said, Mr. Watson come here I want to see you.”
— Alexander Graham Bell (1876)
“I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament. ... Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.”
— Thomas Edison (1890)
Take a minute to notice the time scale of these discoveries. Each one significantly changed society, and each change was at least mostly for the better.
— Galileo (1610)
— Isaac Newton (1687)
— Thomas Bayes(1763)
— James Watt (1765)
— Dmitri Mendeleev (1864)
— Alexander Graham Bell (1876)
— Thomas Edison (1890)
Using the fourth candle, which represents science, light the fifth candle to represent industrialization.
“If we continually sample from the urn of possible technological discoveries before implementing effective means of global coordination, surveillance, and/or restriction of potentially hazardous information, then we risk eventually drawing a black ball: an easy-to-make intervention that causes extremely widespread harm and against which effective defense is infeasible.”
— Nick Bostrom (2013)
As we enter the thirties and forties, many of the rules on which human society was built have given way to science and industry. Prior to this point, technological progress moved at the speed of civilization, and its effects were mainly effects on societies. Each technology has a name attached, but those names do not matter much.
“Those material inventions, beginning with the use of stones as weapons, which led to the domestication of animals, the production of fire by artificial means, down to the marvellous inventions of our own days, show clearly that an individual was the originator in each case. The nearer we come to our own time and the more important and revolutionary the inventions become, the more clearly do we recognize the truth of that statement. All the material inventions which we see around us have been produced by the creative powers and capabilities of individuals.”
Each of the inventors mentioned so far has been basically a good person, interested in finding truth, improving society or, at worst, making a business for themself. Newton mastered calculus; Watt mastered steam; Edison mastered electricity. History was changed by their inventions, but not by their characters.
But in 1939, someone figured out power - what we would now call political science. He learned how to effectively use film and radio for propaganda, when these were new. And this time, it matters a great deal who he was. He was the writer of the last quote. And he is now widely considered the most evil man ever to have lived.
“I should like to call attention to the fact that the principle of parliamentarian democracy, whereby decisions are enacted through the majority vote, has not always ruled the world. On the contrary, we find it prevalent only during short periods of history, and those have always been periods of decline in nations and States.”
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1926)
Starting in 1939 and continuing until 1945, World War 2 killed about 60 million people. Had it gone differently, it’s likely that the entire world would have fallen under a single totalitarian regime. This would not have meant human extinction, exactly - but it would most likely mean the loss of humanity’s potential.
And so the world’s greatest minds believed they had no choice. They had to gather in secret, and create the atomic bomb - a weapon to destroy cities, or the whole world.
“Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
— Robert J. Oppenheimer (1947)
Photograph just the flame of your fifth candle
After the war, things settled down - but the pace continued:
In 1951, the first transistor.
In 1952, the first hydrogen bomb.
In 1953, the discovery of DNA’s structure.
In 1954, the first solar cell, model rocket, and nuclear submarine.
In 1955, the Polio vaccine.
In 1956, the first commercial nuclear power station.
In 1957, Sputnik, the first orbital space flight.
In 1958, the first integrated circuit.
In 1959, Lunik 2, the first satellite to reach the moon.
As our technology took off - figuratively and literally - no one knew what we would find. Predicting the future was left mostly to science fiction writers, and their predictions were not especially accurate.
But some scientists did take important questions seriously. For example, would there be life in space? The SETI project began in 1961, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia.
“I wrote down all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it’s going to be to detect extraterrestrial life. And looking at them it became pretty evident that if you multiplied all these together, you got a number, N, which is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy.”
— Frank Drake
“Humanity seems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the universe with lasting life. But the fact that space near us seems dead now tells us that any given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begetting such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?”
— Robin Hanson (1998)
In 1962, the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a crisis. US destroyers under orders to enforce a naval quarantine of Cuba did not know that the submarines the Soviets had sent to protect their ships were carrying nuclear weapons. So the Americans began firing depth charges to force the submarines to the surface, a move the Soviets on board interpreted as the start of World War III.
“We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace our navy,”
— Captain Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky (1962)
The launch of the submarine’s nuclear torpedo required the consent of all three senior officers aboard: Captain Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semonovich, and second in command Vasili Arkhipov.
Arkhipov was alone in refusing to launch the nuke, insisting the submarine surface to receive orders from Moscow. Had he chosen differently, the likely result would have been all-out nuclear war.
Meanwhile, technology marched on. And for the first time, it seemed that technological progress might not go on forever, but build towards an ultimate conclusion.
“Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”
— I.J. Good, Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine (1963)
Raise the unlit candle in the last spot, to represent future technology.
Two years later, Gordon Moore famously observed:
“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000.”
— Gordon Moore (1965)
Using the fifth candle, which represents industrialization, light the sixth candle to represent the invention of computers.
Photograph yourself with all six candles lit
“Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every 18 months, the IQ required to destroy the world drops by 1 point.”
— Source unknown (2005)
Meanwhile, the rockets that had first been developed for war were turned to exploration as well:
“Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind”
— Apollo 11 Plaque (1969)
Lest we forget how difficult predicting the future is, here is one predicted disaster that did not come to pass:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to “stretch” the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production and providing for more equitable distribution of whatever food is available. But these programs will only provide a stay of execution unless they are accompanied by determined and successful efforts to at population control. Population control is the conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meet the needs not just of individual families, but of society as a whole.
“Nothing could be more misleading to our children than our present affluent society. They will inherit a totally different world, a world in which the standards, politics and economics of the past decade are dead. As the most influential nation in the world today, and its largest consumer, the United States cannot stand isolated. We are today involved in the events leading to famine and ecocatastrophe; tomorrow we may be destroyed by them.”
— Paul Ehrlich (1968)
But as we approached the 1980s, the threat of nuclear war began to loom larger again.
On December 12, 1979, NATO announced plans to put Pershing II nuclear missiles in West Germany, only six minutes flight from Moscow.
Yuri Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB, claimed the US was “actively preparing for nuclear war” and ordered spies to “organize a continual watch … for indications of a decision being taken to use nuclear weapons against the USSR.”
In 1981, NATO air forces began making suspicious maneuvers just outside of Soviet airspace.
“They didn't know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home.”
-- William Schneider, US undersecretary of state for military assistance
On September 1st, 1983, a passenger airplane en route from Anchorage to Seoul passed over Soviet airspace and was shot down.
Then U.S. President Ronald Reagan called the destruction a “crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten,” a “violation [of] every concept of human rights,” and an act with “absolutely no justification, either legal or moral”.
Soviet analysts saw this as rhetorical preparation for a nuclear first strike.
We now reach the historical event that is today’s namesake: the Petrov incident. On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at the Oko nuclear early warning system.
“An alarm at the command and control post went off with red lights blinking on the terminal. It was a nasty shock. Everyone jumped from their seats, looking at me. What could I do? There was an operations procedure that I had written myself. We did what we had to do. We checked the operation of all systems - on 30 levels, one after another. Reports kept coming in: All is correct; the probability factor is two. ... The highest.”
— Stanislav Petrov
“I imagined if I’d assume the responsibility for unleashing the third World War - and I said, no, I wouldn’t. ... I always thought of it. Whenever I came on duty, I always refreshed it in my memory.”
— Stanislav Petrov
Procedure was clear: report up the chain of command that the Americans had launched missiles.
This could have set off a nuclear war.
If the launch was real, failing to report it promptly could mean losing a nuclear war.
“My cozy armchair felt like a red-hot frying pan, and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn't even stand up. That's how nervous I was when I was making this decision.”
— Stanislav Petrov
Hold your breath
Instead of telling his superiors what the system was saying, Petrov told his superiors that it was a false alarm - despite not really knowing this was the case. (It was.)
At the time, he received no award. The incident embarrassed his superiors and the scientists responsible for the system, so if he had been rewarded, they would have to be punished.
Twenty years later, he received many prizes, including one from the United Nations in 2006. Nevertheless, he refused to call himself a hero:
“I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all.”
He died peacefully in his home in 2017.
Things eventually calmed down. The Soviet Union dissolved. Safeguards were put on most of the bombs, to prevent the risk of accidental (or deliberate but unauthorized) detonation.
In 1985, Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin made a disturbing discovery. The ozone layer, the part of our atmosphere that filters out most UV radiation, was disappearing due to chlorofluorocarbon pollution. Just two years later a treaty was written to ban the use of CFCs, and two years after that, in 1989, it was in effect. As of today, every country in the United Nations has ratified the Montreal protocol.
“The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch’s brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.”
— Carl Sagan (1998)
But not every threat to humanity is as easy to understand or address as nuclear weapons or the ozone layer.
Twenty-four years after the Lighthill Report declared AI a failure, in 1997 the computer program Deep Blue defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. Chess, it turns out, was not as difficult as we thought. Fully general intelligence, however, remained out of reach.
“Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.”
— Garry Kasparov, world Chess champion, after losing to IBM’s Deep Blue
“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”
— Ken Jennings, Jeopardy champion,
after losing to IBM’s Watson
Jeopardy, it turns out, was not as difficult as we thought. But fully general intelligence remains out of reach.
We think that it is difficult.
“An unFriendly AI with molecular nanotechnology (or other rapid infrastructure) need not bother with marching robot armies or blackmail or subtle economic coercion. The unFriendly AI has the ability to repattern all matter in the solar system according to its optimization target. This is fatal for us if the AI does not choose specifically according to the criterion of how this transformation affects existing patterns such as biology and people. The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else. The AI runs on a different timescale than you do; by the time your neurons finish thinking the words “I should do something” you have already lost”
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk (2006)
“What we do have the power to affect (to what extent depends on how we define “we”) is the rate of development of various technologies and potentially the sequence in which feasible technologies are developed and implemented. Our focus should be on what I want to call differential technological development: trying to retard the implementation of dangerous technologies and accelerate implementation of beneficial technologies, especially those that ameliorate the hazards posed by other technologies.”
— Nick Bostrom (2002)
Hold the sixth candle of computers in between the seventh and eighth candles of bad and good outcomes, then photograph yourself doing so
“Recently, several scientific research teams have achieved some success in modifying influenza A/H5N1 viruses such that they are now transmitted efficiently between mammals, in one instance with maintenance of high pathogenicity. ... The NSABB was unanimous that communication of the results in the two manuscripts it reviewed should be greatly limited in terms of the experimental details and results. The life sciences have reached a cross-roads. The direction we choose and the process by which we arrive at this decision must be undertaken as a community and not relegated to small segments of government, the scientific community or society. Physicists faced a similar situation in the 1940s with nuclear weapons research, and it is inevitable that other scientific disciplines will also do so.”
— Natl. Security Advisory Board for Biosecurity, (2012)
After several months, the decision was reversed, and a revised version of the bird flu paper was approved for publication, by a vote of 12 to 6
But deadly new diseases need not be artificial. In December of 2019 in China, a new deadly human-infecting Coronavirus was identified and named covid-19.
By February of 2020 there were tens of thousands of confirmed cases and thousands of deaths. And an exponential growth pattern that showed no signs of stopping on its own.
By March, the disease had spread to many countries, including the United States. But the United States government forbade all testing save for patients who had been to China. Officially, the test was not validated against covid contracted within the United States.
Did they want the disease to thrive? Did they want to fight the perception of disease, having forgotten about reality? Were they simply following rules, having forgotten about goal-oriented behavior entirely? We will likely never know.
But Seattle Virologist Helen Chu conducted the tests anyway, proving the disease was spreading within the United States, and enabling people to take action against it.
Thus far, she has been neither rewarded nor punished for her heroic actions.
Along with heroic defiance, there was heroic cooperation.
Even when it was thought that masks only blocked outbound transmission, people wore masks. When they could not buy them, they made them. For themselves and for others.
And when hospitals ran low on face shields, a loose consortium of 3d-printing enthusiasts gathered to produce them by the millions.
And so we reach the present situation: neither dead nor triumphant. And not in any kind of stable state.
The present day. Neither the past, with its clarity, nor the future, with its wonders. But with its own unique gift: that we -- the people gathered here -- can act in it.
I can act.
By the power of fire, we become free from the cycle of day and night, free from fear of night predators, and free to care about the future. We can make light, even in the darkest places.
I can act.
By the power of language, my thoughts escape my mind alone. I am able to share what I know, and to hear what others have learned before me.
I can act.
By the power of writing, I take on the wisdom of those who came before me. I stand upon the shoulders of giants, and I see far -- often farther than they did, though I am not a giant myself.
I can act.
By the power of Science, and of Printing, I learn that truth is not the province of some small, chosen elite. It is the birthright of all who dare to seek it. So too is saving the world, not the province of kings, priests and geniuses alone, but of any who seize an opportunity.
I can act.
By the power of Industrialization, my basic needs are easily met. No longer are most fated to toil in the fields. There is specialization. And there is surplus, freeing me from to do other than what I must.
I can act.
By the power of Computers, my the power of my mind is amplified. That power from which all these others arose.
I can act.
By the power of Industrialization, my basic needs are easily met. No longer are most fated to toil in the fields. There is specialization. And there is surplus, freeing me from to do other than what I must.
I can act.
By the power of Computers, my the power of my mind is amplified. That power from which all these others arose.
Today we celebrate in the shadow of many fears.
May we see the day when none need fear anything.
All say together:
Be this our will
Closing Silly Songs: We Will All Go Together by Tom Lehrer
Still Alive by Jonathon Coulton
To the tune of Try To Remember from The Fantasticks�Lyrics by Daniel Speyer, Melody by Harvey Schmidt
The ritual is over.
Get up.
Stretch.
Think twice before you
turn the lights back on.