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The origin of life on Earth has been a long-debated issue. There have been many theories as to how life evolved, but Professors Shigenori Maruyama (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology), Ken Kurokawa (National Institute of Genetics), and Dr Toshikazu Ebisuzaki (RIKEN) have found a way to narrow the field to a single likely theory. By identifying a list of nine essential environmental requirements, they suggest that the most likely location for the birthplace of life is a nuclear geyser where material and energy regularly circulated. The Hadean Bioscience Project has also produced a series of movies in cooperation with LiVE Company Ltd.'The whole history of the Earth and life' is available on YouTube.

The origin of Earth is a complex story. Its surface has undergone a long evolution, experiencing extreme changes over millions of years. Since its earliest accretionary phase, where gas and dust began to coalesce under the influence of gravity, it has been a dynamic planet. Bombardment from asteroids and a hot inner core meant that the earliest environment on Earth was hostile, bare rock. Geologists refer to this time, starting at Earth's initial formation 4.6 billion years ago, as the Hadean eon. The word Hadean derives from the Greek god Hades who ruled the underworld, and is an apt analogy for the hellish environment.

Geologists have long been studying the few remnants of this time recorded in rock in the hope of finding clues about the conditions on Earth. The only records from between 4.6 and 4 billion years ago that remain are found in a hardy crystalline mineral called zircon. However, it is vital that scientists learn as much as possible about this time, as it is in these inhospitable and hellish conditions that the origin of life occurred.

Professors Shigenori Maruyama, Ken Kurokawa and Dr Toshikazu Ebisuzaki are part of a team working on the Hadean Bioscience Project, mainly based at the Earth-Life Science Institute (Tokyo Institute of Technology). The project combines scientists from a range of backgrounds, including geology, biology and physics, creating an interdisciplinary team working towards answering the fundamental question of when, where and how life was born on Earth.

The Hadean Earth
Discovering the answer as to how the very first life began on Earth has long been a challenge for scientists. Could life have spontaneously appeared on Earth? If so, how could this occur? And does this mean that other planets with similar environmental conditions also contain life?
An interdisciplinary team working towards answering the fundamental question of when, where and how life was
born on Earth.
We know that life on Earth is built around compounds that contain elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. Complex sequences of these elements bond together, forming the very building blocks of life. They form essential organic molecules, such as sugars, enzymes, proteins and DNA. However, these organic molecules did not naturally exist on Earth during the Hadean eon, when the first origins of life appeared. The elements required existed only in inorganic form, bound up within the rocks, atmosphere and the early ocean.

The earliest Earth was a 'naked planet;' the Hadean Bioscience colleagues describe it as having no ocean or atmosphere when it first formed. These eventually appeared around 4.37 billion years ago after Earth had been pelted by aqueous asteroid material. Once there was liquid water and an atmosphere, there was a greater chance for prebiotic life to form (the chemical precursors to life on Earth). The first traces of life recorded on Earth are thought to be as old as 4.2 billion years, indicating that life may have evolved within 200 million years after the first appearance of liquid water.

Requirements for early life
We know that all the key elements for life are found on Earth, but they do not easily form organic compounds. Early experiments during the 1950s showed that it was possible for amino acids to form in water condensation within experimental conditions that mimicked the atmosphere of the early Earth. However, for this to occur, a powerful energy source was required. The input of energy caused chemical reactions capable of creating compounds based on hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen that would eventually form organic molecules.

The Hadean Bioscience researchers suggest that in order to understand how life began on Earth, we need to understand the specific environmental requirements that must be satisfied to allow this to occur. They identified nine specific conditions and unless all these environmental requirements are met, life cannot be born.

The nuclear geyser
There have been many theories as to how life began. One of the most popular was put forward by Darwin himself, who suggested that a 'warm little pond' could have been the most likely location for life to begin. Another popular theory states that hydrothermal vents along mid-ocean ridges would be an ideal location for the precursors of life to develop, whilst others propose that life was carried here from elsewhere in the Universe and delivered during an asteroid impact. By identifying the essential requirements for life, the Hadean Bioscience colleagues have been able to identify the most likely location for life to have begun.

Nuclear geysers are a phenomenon we do not see on present-day Earth. During the Hadean eon, some radioactive elements were much more common on the Earth's surface. Radioactive elements, such as uranium, have unstable isotopes which break down over time and release radiation. The charged particles that form radiation can react with the surrounding water, activating inert molecules and atoms and producing a flow of electrons that drive further chemical reactions. Water is heated by the natural nuclear reactor, and is periodically sprayed out onto the Earth's surface in a similar manner to the geysers we see on Earth today.
... understanding these key requirements for the formation on life on Earth and how they define the location for its earliest beginnings, we can begin to understand where we might find life
beyond our planet.
The appearance of first life
The Hadean Bioscience researchers have been able to show that the nuclear geyser is the only theory for the location of first life that fits all nine essential requirements:

1. For prebiotic life to begin, a powerful energy source is required. Energy from the Sun alone is not enough to break down inorganic compounds such as nitrogen (N₂), carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O) and convert them to complex organic molecules. However, a natural nuclear reactor would provide more than enough energy to drive the required reactions.

2. A supply of major elements is another condition for the formation of life, as most organisms on earth are made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The early Earth crust, along with the atmosphere and ocean, can supply these.

3. As well as the elements that form the building blocks of organic compounds, there must also be a ready supply of the nutrients that sustain life. The nutrient source on early Hadean Earth would have been the rocks on the Earth's surface, which were rich in iron and phosphorus as well as rarer elements like potassium and uranium.

4. A high concentration of gases containing compounds such as ammonia and methane is another key requirement. An enclosed space, such as an underground chamber occurring in the plumbing of a nuclear geyser, would collect a sufficient concentration of these gasses.

5. The team have also identified that dry-wet cycles are another essential environmental condition for the emergence of life. Alternating between hydration and dehydration can generate more complex organic molecules from amino acids, such as RNA.

6. For life to begin, water must be clean and non-toxic. The early oceans were highly acidic and very salty, and life would not have emerged nor survived here. This suggests that life would have formed in a watery environment on land, such as pool or wetland.

7. Water must also be poor in sodium and rich in potassium. We know this as modern cells contain little sodium, suggesting that life formed in an environment where this was relatively unavailable.

8. A cycle between day and night is another vital condition for the birth of life. Day-night cycles allow variations in temperature, with low and high temperatures driving different types of reactions, and encouraging self-replication of DNA sequences.

9. Finally, a diverse environment is necessary to emerge life. Variations in pH, salinity and temperature will help to drive different types of reactions, leading to more complex and varying organic molecules. Diverse environments would occur across the Earth's landmass through plate tectonics, but not within its oceans.

Life beyond Earth
The team have been able to show that a nuclear geyser is the most likely location to be the birthplace of life, rather than at a hydrothermal vent with toxic oceans, a lack of nutrients and not enough energy to drive the reactions that generate organic molecules. A nuclear geyser system is the only proposed location that meets all the conditions. By understanding these key requirements for the formation of life on Earth and how they define the location for its earliest beginnings, we can begin to understand where we might find life beyond our planet.

Personal Response
What first inspired you to investigate the origins of life on Earth?
Prof Maruyama: I have long been involved in research into the history of Earth and life. The mystery of the origin of Earth and the origin of life itself has not yet been unravelled. I decided to tackle this mystery by drawing upon our knowledge of world geology, the history of the Earth, and co-evolution of Earth and life. A key concept is that the environment drives life's emergence and evolution. The Hadean Bioscience CG movie series "The whole history of the Earth and life" is now showing on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/HadeanBioscience

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The origin of life: The conditions that sparked life on Earth

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The origin of life on Earth has been a long-debated issue. There have been many theories as to how life evolved, but Professors Shigenori Maruyama (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology), Ken Kurokawa (National Institute of Genetics), and Dr Toshikazu Ebisuzaki (RIKEN) have found a way to narrow the field to a single likely theory.

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Long before the emergence of writing, palaeolithic cave paintings represent the very first examples of human visual culture. They provide a shadowy glimpse of a prehistoric world in which signs were beginning to be used to communicate meaning.

Archaeologists have long been fascinated over what exactly compelled "cave men" to produce these enigmatic paintings. Because they're often located in caves - enchanting and atmospheric places in their own right - certain experts have argued that prehistoric painters may have produced their art under the influence of "altered states of consciousness". The theory essentially claims the painters in some way got high.

In support of this theory, a new study has found that low oxygen levels in poorly ventilated caves can induce hypoxia, which can inspire hallucinations. But while the theory is certainly plausible, here's why I think it fails to explain the majority of cave art.

Cave art

Over 65,000 years ago, the Neanderthals left finger dots and hand stencils on European cave walls. These basic markings were made using ochre, manganese and charcoal - common materials in Neanderthal life, likely also used to ornament the body.

Read more: How we discovered that Neanderthals could make art

Eurasian figurative art - featuring representations of people and animals - appeared some 40,000 years ago in Indonesia and 37,000 years ago in Europe. This appears to have been exclusive to the successors of Neanderthals: Homo sapiens.

These people's images of herbivorous prey animals were carved, engraved and painted on bone, stone and mammoth ivory - and on the walls of caves. The overwhelming dominance of prey such as horse, bison, deer and mammoth reflects the critical importance of these species to survival in the harsh environments of the Pleistocene north.

But why figurative "cave art" emerged and how it functioned has baffled archaeologists since its rediscovery and authentication in the late 19th century. Whether they're simple stencils of hands or complex drawings of prey, cave paintings are a window into the minds of the very first artists. Scholars believe that knowing what inspired them could teach us something about the very human compulsion to express ourselves creatively.

Why paint?

Successive theories have purported to explain the origins of ancient art - a rich and varied collection that we know was added to over at least 50,000 years of prehistory. Yet these theories inevitably say more about their proponents than about the motives of Pleistocene man.

To the Victorians, those motives boiled down to pure aesthetics. In the 20th century, scholars began to believe the paintings had a magical function, and theories of hunting and fertility magic arose to explain drawings of animals and sculptures of "venuses".

As we entered the information age, the images came to be seen as repositories of ecological information - recording details about things like prey animals and their behaviour. And by the 1980s, the worst excesses of new age thinking promoted the idea that cave art was the product of altered states of consciousness and the visions that can go hand in hand. Since then, the notion has never gone away.

Altered states

But what could have caused ancient altered states? Psychoactive substances other than fly agaric (the red and white topped mushroom) were not present in Pleistocene Eurasia. Ingesting ochre or manganese would give you a poor stomach, not hallucinations.

The new study has proposed altered states instead caused by low oxygen levels, produced by small hearths and simple animal-fat lamps that would have been burning in confined caves. The authors claim this could have induced hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), leading to hallucinations which, in turn, stimulated creativity in the form of cave art.

Typically, around 21% of air is oxygen. Any reduction below 18% produces a mild hypoxia, and below 13% produces severe hypoxia. The study uses computer simulations to demonstrate the plausibility of this new theory, while drawing on ethnography - notably the ubiquity of "shamanic" belief systems among hunter-gatherers, and the idea that caves form a link between this world and others.

Reviewing the theory

It's plausible that altered states stimulated some cave art. But it's just as plausible that hypoxia in caves produced far more common symptoms of weakness, headaches, drowsiness, nausea and breathlessness, which don't sound inspiring to me.

In any case, cave chambers vary considerably in size and are often decently ventilated. Niaux's Salon Noir in southwestern France is positively cathedral-like, and features many cave paintings. Many examples of cave art are also complex and highly skilled compositions that took hours to produce - they're unlikely to be the product of hallucinations.

It's difficult to falsify the new hypothesis scientifically - but even if it's true, what would it really tell us? At best, altered states could provide a mechanism but not an explanation for some Palaeolithic art. If they did cause some individuals to create, they would not explain the content, themes, style or wider function of the art.

To discuss altered states is therefore as meaningless as making the observation that the tomb builders of Egypt's Valley of the Kings drank beer: we know that, but we can be sure that it wasn't drunkenness that stimulated them to create the art on the walls of the tombs they built.

I have spent enough time underground, observing cave art in its context, to understand how making simple links between hallucinations, shamanism and cave art fails to do justice to the remarkably complex works created by early artists in these mysterious places.

A seductive theory

But why are altered states perennially popular explanations for Palaeolithic cave art? It's probably because caves are mysterious, suggestive places, triggering responses in our brains such as pareidolia - our evolutionary propensity to give meaning to natural things, like finding faces in clouds.

Read more: Warning signs: how early humans first began to paint animals

In our everyday lives, we constantly toggle between mild altered states of consciousness. They make our imaginary lives immensely rich, and may go some way to explaining how early art took the form it did. Ultimately, imagination is far richer than trance - and we do a disservice to our prehistoric ancestors when we argue their art was the product of a "high" rather than creative expression.

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Prehistoric cave painters might have been 'high' on oxygen deprivation - new study

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Long before the emergence of writing, palaeolithic cave paintings represent the very first examples of human visual culture. They provide a shadowy glimpse of a prehistoric world in which signs were beginning to be used to communicate meaning. Archaeologists have long been fascinated over what exactly compelled "cave men" to produce these enigmatic paintings.

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Archaeologists say they have discovered the world's oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago in Indonesia.

The finding, described in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, provides the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region.

Co-author Maxime Aubert, of Australia's Griffith University, told AFP it was found on the island of Sulawesi in 2017 by doctoral student Basran Burhan, as part of surveys the team was carrying out with Indonesian authorities.

The Leang Tedongnge cave is located in a remote valley enclosed by sheer limestone cliffs, about an hour's walk from the nearest road.

It is only accessible during the dry season because of flooding during the wet season - and members of the isolated Bugis community told the team it had never before been seen by westerners.

Measuring 136cm by 54cm (53in by 21in), the Sulawesi warty pig was painted using dark red ochre pigment and has a short crest of upright hair, as well as a pair of horn-like facial warts characteristic of adult males of the species.

There are two hand prints above the pig's hindquarters, and it appears to be facing two other pigs that are only partially preserved, as part of a narrative scene.

"The pig appears to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs," said co-author Adam Brumm.

Humans have hunted Sulawesi warty pigs for tens of thousands of years, and they are a key feature of the region's prehistoric artwork, particularly during the ice age.

Aubert, a dating specialist, identified a calcite deposit that had formed on top of the painting, then used uranium-series isotope dating to confidently say the deposit was 45,500 years old.

This makes the painting at least that age, "but it could be much older because the dating that we're using only dates the calcite on top of it", he explained.

"The people who made it were fully modern, they were just like us, they had all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting that they liked," he added.

The authors say that, to their knowledge, the animal painting from Leang Tedongnge is the earliest known representational work of art in the world. However, other paintings in Spain have also been put forward as the oldest known cave paintings.

The previously oldest dated rock art painting was found by the same team in Sulawesi. It depicted a group of part-human, part-animal figures hunting mammals, and was found to be at least 43,900 years old.

Cave paintings such as these also help fill in gaps about our understanding of early human migrations.

It is known that people reached Australia 65,000 years ago, but they would probably have had to cross the islands of Indonesia, known as "Wallacea".

This site now represents the oldest evidence of humans in Wallacea, but it is hoped further research will help show people were in the region much earlier, which would resolve the Australia settlement puzzle.

The team believes the artwork was made by Homo sapiens, as opposed to now extinct human species like Denisovans, but cannot say this for certain.

To make handprints, the artists would have had to place their hands on a surface then spit pigment over it, and the team are hoping to try to extract DNA samples from residual saliva.

This article was amended on 22 January 2021 to add further context about the claim that the discovery is the world's oldest known cave painting.

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World's 'oldest known cave painting' found in Indonesia

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Archaeologists say they have discovered the world's oldest known cave painting: a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was made at least 45,500 years ago in Indonesia. The finding, described in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, provides the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region.

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Reading Slowly in The Society of Spectacles

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Audience prepares for the presidential election of 2020

We live in a society of spectacles, where we have little instant gratification machines in our pockets to give us a shot of dopamine straight to the veins as soon as we ask for it and we are constantly drowning in a stream of information overload. All of this noise has made it increasingly more difficult to take a step back, think about we are doing, and dedicate ourselves to slow, methodical, and honestly...

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Reading Slowly in The Society of Spectacles

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We live in a society of spectacles, where we have little instant gratification machines in our pockets to give us a shot of dopamine straight to the veins as soon as we ask for it and we are constantly drowning in a stream of information overload.

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A woke world still needs Guy Debord's idea of the spectacle | TheArticle

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"Woke-capitalism" is a phrase that appears to have entered our cultural lexicon in recent years. It is a phrase that has become synonymous with 21st-century identity politics. In a world where patterns of consumption appear to be dominated by the latest social justice cause, progressive values are now a very powerful tool when it comes to brand recognition. So pervasive has this become, that businesses from the smallest to the largest are adopting radical left-wing causes in order to sell products. Identity politics is built on a shared collective sense of injustice, framed around issues of identity - the building blocks of which are race, sexuality, gender and feminism. For capitalism to thrive, it has to adapt and survive. What better way to generate a profit than for a business to care about social justice?

But the concept of woke-capitalism is far from new. The theoretical antecedents can be traced back to the French cultural theorist, Guy Debord. Debord was the founding member of the Situationist International - a group of radical left-wing artists who focused on producing subversive literature and engaged in counterrevolutionary activism. In 1967, Debord published The Society of the Spectacle. Steeped in the ideology of traditional western Marxism, the 221 theses contained within the book offer a scathing indictment of culture under the capitalist system. From Marx, Debord borrows the terms "alienation" and "commodity fetishism" to describe how this process has developed.

It was Marx who first described how the worker, under the capitalist mode of production, became alienated from his labour. In breaking with Hegelian idealism, Marx's dialectical turn towards materialism initially conceived of humans as creative, conscious actors. By working in the objective natural world, workers were able to unleash their full potential, both creatively and culturally. Through meaningful work, labourers could achieve self-actualisation. They are what he calls "species beings". But, as the ruling class began to appropriate their wealth and labour power was exploited, workers became alienated and estranged from one another. As exchange value (money) comes to dominate, workers become alienated from the very products they create.

Once price appears to be the defining aspect of the object, commodity fetishism appears. According to Marxist theory, when life is governed by money, labour grows increasingly under the criteria of efficiency. As such, labour becomes rationalised. For Marx, commodity fetishism turns "being into having". György Lukács extended Marx's concept of alienation and commodity fetishism to all aspects of social life under capitalism. In his 1923 work History and Class Consciousness, the Hungarian philosopher uses the concept of reification to describe the power of capital to fundamentally alter human consciousness. Debord uses a quote from Lukács in his work that clearly sums this up. The epigram that starts the second section titled T he Commodity as Spectacle reads: "The commodity becomes crucial for the subjugation of men's consciousness...as labor is progressively rationalised'.

Debord agrees with Marx on alienation and he defined it as the origin of the spectacle. In thesis 25, Debord states that alienation is the "alpha and omega" of the spectacle. As consumption-alienation transcends labour-alienation, Debord argues that capitalism becomes the total alienation of life.

In his theory of the spectacle, Debord sees society slowly being divorced from reality, culturally denuded and subjected to false needs. Under the spell of capitalism, the individual loses the ability to accurately define and reflect critically upon modern society. Once this happens, we shift towards what the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre called "the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption". The concept describes how, under capitalism, individual consumers can no longer determine their own consumption behaviour. It is, according to Lefebvre, the bourgeoisie and mass media that regulate people's consumption patterns. Needs become defined by the capitalist class, who then meet the very demands they create. The individual is reduced to a consumption pattern, set by a corporate narrative. Citizens enter into a life that is nothing but a mere passive relationship with the social world. Consumer society, with its vast proliferation of goods and culture, offers up to the populace an illusory image (spectacle) of happiness and unity. This process, Debord states, turns "having into appearing".

Under the auspices of the spectacle, the rationale for the corporation becomes one of ersatz activism. What better way for a business to generate vast sums of money than by appearing to align with the latest social justice issue? But capitalists are far less concerned with social issues than they are driven by the profit motive. By making you, the consumer, feel as if you have done something genuine and worthwhile, it voids the business of any responsibility to do something constructive. All these corporations have done is to instil a sense of righteousness in the consumer, where in reality the corporation has done nothing tangible to affect any change in the structure or functioning of power. It turns the average political activist into nothing more than a passive consumer of products. For Debord, culture is the ideal commodity. No need for genuine reform, buy this - and change the world!

Take for example, Nike. During the Black Lives Matter protests that dominated the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, the company promised to donate $40 million to grassroots organisations in the bid to help fight systemic racism. But it was revealed in The New York Times that the retail giant had been lobbying congress to vote against the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act. This legislation demands that companies ditch business with anyone using forced labour from Xinjiang. The Xinjiang region of China is where, it is alleged, Uighur Muslims are being used for slave labour.

It's not limited to multinational corporations. You only need to take a (socially distanced) walk through any street-side market to find stalls literally adorned with everything from Karl Marx mugs to Che Guevara T-shirts. Maybe you're sympathetic to BLM and want to feel like Huey P. Newton? In that case, get online and buy a replica Black Panther beret. Be sure to buy the requisite badges for that "authentic" revolutionary appeal.

Why do companies behave like this? Well, to offer one potential answer - woke-capitalism is a good PR campaign. Little to no effort is required in order to generate maximum profit. An Edelmansurvey of 35 countries revealed 64 per cent of customers said they would reward companies that took a stand on social justice issues. Corporations know their target audience. Millennials are now the largest living adult generation. As such they make up a huge percentage of consumers. Worth an estimated $1.4 trillion in 2020, this is an immense amount of spending power. As millennials are the chief advocates of social justice activism, it is clear that the market is targeting this demographic.

There is a part of me that understands this eco-Darwinian survival instinct. The market will always favour the easiest option when it comes to maximising profit. While much of Marxism has been discredited - for example, when it comes to determining prices, the labour theory of value has been discredited and marginal utility has displaced the concept of surplus value - Debord's situationist spectacle still offers a useful explanatory framework for understanding the tactical evolution of capitalism.

So what did Debord himself say was the solution to this commodification of reality? Well, as was common with a lot of 20th-century French philosophy, the answers are vague, saturated with poetic metaphors and highly abstract. His answer was by "confronting the spectacle with its own irrelevance" - by which he means the creation of new "situations" where creativity is inseparable from daily life. As Debord sees ideology as the means by which even the most radical acts become integrated within the capitalist system, it is only by the complete and utter rejection of ideology that the individual can unleash their full creative, spontaneous potential - or "situation".

This is something Raoul Vaneigem called "the reversal of perspective". Where capitalism fragments and divides, a new world (hence new consciousness) must be achieved, in totality. As Debord states: "To make the World a sensuous extension of man rather than have man remain an instrument of an alien world, is the goal of the Situationist Revolution. For us the reconstruction of Life and the rebuilding of the World are one and the same desire..."

Debord's work must be seen in the context of its time. France in the late 1960s was a hotbed for dissent and radical political action. People were looking to artists and intellectuals for inspiration. The student protests emerging from the universities in Paris catalysed the May 1968 movement, culminating in wildcat strikes that severely threatened the legitimacy of the Gaullist presidency. Disillusionment with authority and society was expressed in situationist-inspired slogans, such as "Never work" and "Live without dead time" appearing on posters and graffiti all over Paris. It could be argued that the Situationists were the true originators of meme culture.

The movement ultimately failed. The vast majority of France was either not ready for or not interested in a radical transformation of society. The group fractured (as all such groups do) due to the increasing radicalisation of some of its members. The internecine fighting that followed led the group to split into a number of different directions. The Situationists were finally disbanded by Debord in 1972 after its original member Raoul Vaneigem left.

Capitalism is a powerful ideology, one that has lifted millions out of poverty. As a market system, no other model has existed that is better suited when it comes to the allocation of scarce resources. But no system is perfect. As much as I admire capitalism, I am sceptical of those that place an almost messianic faith in its ability to solve every conceivable problem. A 100 per cent free market system does have its limitations. One only has to look at the near absolute power enjoyed by tech companies as they go unregulated - severely restricting freedom of speech on the internet - to see the negative effects of unlimited growth. To paraphrase Churchill, capitalism is the worst form of allocating resources, except for all the others.

This is why we need both a functioning Left and Right. Both sides need to exist in order to constrain the wild and capricious forces that threaten freedom and human rights. We can't dismiss ideas simply because they come from an ideological quarter with which we disagree. Debord's theory of the spectacle is still incredibly useful in a world dominated by woke-capitalists.

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A woke world still needs Guy Debord's idea of the spectacle | TheArticle

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"Woke-capitalism" is a phrase that appears to have entered our cultural lexicon in recent years. It is a phrase that has become synonymous with 21st-century identity politics. In a world where patterns of consumption appear to be dominated by the latest social justice cause, progressive values are now a very powerful tool when it comes to brand recognition.

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While working on my project and doing research on my subject, "information overload", I wondered how much information there is on information on Google. the result was shocking: 10.510.000.000!!!!

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I am planning to make an artwork inspired by Aram Bartholl's "Dead Drops". Of course, if I have time...

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Work-Don't be overwhelmed by information!!!

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Work-Don't be overwhelmed by information!!!

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I have tried to gather all messages we got on the Canvas for Co-Lab Project for the last two weeks and have seen 300 pages so far. I'd like to create a work about it.

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information | Etymology, origin and meaning of information by Etymonline

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Research-The etymological origin of information

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Research-The etymological origin of information

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late 14c., informacion, "act of informing, communication of news," from Old French informacion, enformacion "advice, instruction," from Latin informationem (nominative informatio) "outline, concept, idea," noun of action from past participle stem of informare "to train, instruct, educate; shape, give form to" (see inform). The restored Latin spelling is from 16c.

Meaning "knowledge communicated concerning a particular topic" is from mid-15c. The word was used in reference to television broadcast signals from 1937; to punch-card operating systems from 1944; to DNA from 1953. Information theory is from 1950; information technology is from 1958 (coined in "Harvard Business Review"); information revolution, to be brought about by advances in computing, is from 1966. Information overload is by 1967.

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information | Etymology, origin and meaning of information by Etymonline

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late 14c., informacion, "act of informing, communication of news," from Old French informacion, enformacion "advice, instruction," from Latin informationem (nominative informatio) "outline, concept, idea," noun of action from past participle stem of informare "to train, instruct, educate; shape, give form to" (see inform). The restored Latin spelling is from 16c.

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I have made a mindmap about "Information" in general, but focused specifically on "Information Overload".

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Interpretation

Potentially the interpretation of data into information is a very complex issue. The figure (below) highlights that the interaction between data interpretation and knowledge drives the transformation from data to information. Humans achieve this relatively easily and make use of a variety of means:

cultural background

unconscious intuitions,

concrete memories or similar observations of the past,

expectations (depending on context),

text book knowledge, and

domain dependent heuristic rules.

Computers cannot do such things as easily, although advances have been made in the fields of artificial intelligence, this level of sophistication is currently beyond the scope of knowledge based computational systems. This does however, highlight the ways in which information is created by putting data into context through interpretation.

Fig 1. The role of knowledge in driving the transformation process

Elaboration

Elaboration occurs once data has been interpreted as information. This may be regarded as a secondary interpretation process. Information may be elaborated on for two reasons, these are:

so that the information can be better understood, and

for deriving, or inferring new information from current information.

Inferred information includes:

additional problem features,

generated hypotheses,

consequences of hypotheses,

suggested solutions to problems,

explanations and justifications of suggestions, and

critiquing arguments.

If we consider that the interpretation of data into information is a form of pre-processing, then during decision making frequent interaction occurs with the environment and this in turn blurs the overall picture. Therefore a more realistic view of this is that in a decision making process, elaboration and data interpretation are often interleaved.

Learning as knowledge acquisition

A systems knowledge grows and changes depending on interactions within its environment. The process of change of knowledge is generalised as learning. One particular view is that: learning is the integration of new information into an existing body of knowledge, in such a way that makes it potentially useful for later decision making.

Where does knowledge come from?

Knowledge within a system can be derived from two sources:

as integrated new information via the process called learning, and

as a result of an inference process. This is where knowledge can use existing knowledge to infer further knowledge.

These two processes are visualised in the above figure.

A definition of knowledge

Knowledge is information that can be used within a reasoning process. In practice knowledge can be viewed in a number of ways, knowledge:

can be viewed as an integrated totality such that it consists of a connected network of interrelated subcomponents that give it its power of:

data interpretation,

information elaboration, and

learning.

is the outcome of a learning process which links knowledge to its potential use (as we have stated the purpose of knowledge is to be used in a reasoning process), or that learning as a process is always related to a purpose.

is flexible such that when it is acquired within a particular context it can be re-used dynamically in different situations.

is: that which we come to believe and value based on the meaningful organized accumulation of information through experience, accumulation or inference.

is information incorporated in an agent's reasoning and made ready either for active use within a decision process or for action. It is the output of a learning process.

As we have shown knowledge is an active concept about action – knowledge must be used for some purpose. From a practical point of view it would seem that this is intuitively correct, since knowledge is key to all the transformational processes such as interpretation, elaboration and learning.

For further details of the EDC's activities please get in touch with us through our contact page.

A full list of commercially available research facilities for Newcastle University can be found on the Services for Business web pages.

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Transforming data into knowledge. The Newcastle Engineering Design Centre is a research centre for collaborative research between industry and the academic sector. We specialise in the design, development and performance of systems for the production and operation of complex products, which are made on an engineer-to-order basis with high levels of customisation.

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The Information Age began around the 1970s and is still going on today. It is also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age. This era brought about a time period in which people could access information and knowledge easily. The Renaissance influenced the Information Age by creating the idea inventions, while too advanced for the time, the basic idea was used to develop modern inventions. The Renaissance also changed literature. At first, only books that told stories of religion and religious heroes were written. During the Renaissance, people began to write realistic books and not just religious stories. People's mindset about themselves changed. It was no longer about what humans could do for God, but what humans could do for themselves. This way of thinking is called humanism.

Influences of the past on the Information Age

The Scientific Revolution changed the modern era by introducing important scientists such as Galileo, Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton. Their discoveries paved the way for modern tools, inventions and innovations.

The Industrial Revolution brought about major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology. This era had a profound effect on the social, economic, and cultural conditions of the world.

There were many different inventions that came about because of the Information Age, one of which was the computer. The Internet allowed people to access information with the touch of a button.
Inventions and Innovations of the Information Age

The Internet has turned society into homebodies, individuals who do everything from the comfort of their homes instead of venturing outdoors to complete tasks. People can do everything online; shopping, communicating, bill paying, working, education, entertainment, even ordering food. This may be good, but it has also made us a very lazy and uneducated society.

Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are several important people of the Information Age. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Jobs who was created the first effective personal computer called the Apple 1
The Apple 1 was a huge advancement in computer sciences and it carved the path for the computers we have now. Apple has created iPhone, iPod, iPad, iMac, and Apple TV. Gates is also a huge force in the Information Age. He founded Microsoft, which creates almost everything that has to do with computers. Microsoft develops programs like Microsoft Office, Windows, and many other influential products.

Changes of the Information Age
The Information Age has changed people, technology, science, economies, culture, and even the way people think. The Internet is arguably the most prominent innovation of the Information Age. The Internet changed the way people do everything. It has made people lazier, but it also makes a large amount of the population smarter. The Information Age has made industrial countries stronger. With online companies being some of the most successful and economically stimulating businesses out there, economies receive more from them and keep our world turning. People are becoming more mature and more educated due to things like the computer and the Internet. This time period has reshaped governments, with new technology being created every day. Governments can now have more advanced and effective militaries. Because of things like the Internet, new laws had to be put in place to stop hacking, piracy, and identity theft.

The Information Age brought about many new inventions and innovations. Many communication services like texting, email, and social media developed and the world has not been the same since. People learn new languages easier and many books have been translated into different languages, so people around the world can become more educated. However, the Information Age is not all good. There are people in the world that believe they can live their entire life through the Internet. Also, huge criminal organizations rely on hacking into government systems and obtaining confidential information to continue their way of life. Jobs have also became easier, and some jobs can even be done from the comfort of your own home. The Information Age is also known as the Age of Entrepreneurship. Now entrepreneurs can start and run a company easier than ever before. It also impacts our work ethics by distracting us and causing us to lose interest in the task we are doing. This time period has also created a shortage of jobs and making many jobs obsolete because machines are now being used to do the work humans once did.
Impacts of the Information Age

The Information Age is now. Every era from the Stone Age up to The Industrial Revolution has led to the world as we know it. Without the information, knowledge and discoveries of those from the past, we would not be where we are today. The past has shaped our present and will continue to shape our future.
In conclusion...

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The Information Age began around the 1970s and is still going on today. It is also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age. This era brought about a time period in which people could access information and knowledge easily.

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What I felt the next morning after the first day's serial Zoom meetings of the Co-Lab Project was similar to that of GREGOR SAMSA, the main character in Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis". This situation, which continued in the following days, made me think about "INFORMATION OVERLOAD"! Then I have decided to work on this as a theme for the Anthropocene - Being Human Project.

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"Dead Drops" preview

I am pleased to preview 'Dead Drops' a new project which I started off as part of my ongoing EYEBEAM residency in NYC the last couple weeks. 'Dead Drops' is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am 'injecting' USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. 'Dead Drops' is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. Full documentation, movie, map and 'How to make your own dead drop' manual coming soon! Stay tuned.
Dead drop (Wikipedia)
In the meanwhile drop some files here!
87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot)
Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo)
235 Bowery, NY (New Museum)
Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St)
540 West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)
--------------------------------------
Udate:
I have to admit I wasn't prepared for this unbelievable feedback I am got in the recent days. The preview post became a major release! This means while I try to hold up against a journalistic DNS attack I am putting together this site on the fly with my left hand:

The site is still a bit naked but step by step I am adding content (FAQ, how to, movie docu etc). If you want to embed your own dead drop in your city you are free to go. Check the instructions here.

Dead Drops 'How to' - NYC from Aram Bartholl on Vimeo.

All pics on flickr !

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I am pleased to preview 'Dead Drops' a new project which I started off as part of my ongoing EYEBEAM residency in NYC the last couple weeks. 'Dead Drops' is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am 'injecting' USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space.

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2010-ongoing
public intervention

Dead Drops started in 2010 as an ongoing participatory project at five different public spaces in New York. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs and are accessible to anybody. Each dead drop is installed empty except for a readme.txt file explaining the project. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. To date, over 1.400 of these 'dead letterboxes' have been set up in dozens of countries all over the world. To install a dead drop in your city/neighborhood, follow the 'how to' instructions and submit the location and pictures to the online databank of the project.

Full documentation / project page : http://deaddrops.com

Exhibitions:

Dead Drops at Palais de Tokyo, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015

Innere Armut, POHLEN, Berlin, 2018

Biennale d'art contemporain de Strasbourg, Hotel des Postes, Strasbourg, France, 2018

Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, Coventry, Coventry, 2019

Asuntos De Nuestro Espacio, Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires, 2019

A Ripple in the Data Flow, Pfizer Building, New York, 2020

Tap To Edit, Renk Rosenblat Alexa, Berlin, 2020

A Brief Inquiry Into Empty Space, ZhdK, Zurich, 2020

DeadDrops in H4v4n4, El Paquete Semanal, Havana, 2022

Asuntos de nuestro espacio, EAC Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, 2023

Street 3.0, Osaka Kansai International Art Festival, Osaka, 2023

Decoding the Black Box, Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen, 2024

Read statement

Hide statement

Creative Commons by-nc-sa. Data Privacy. Aram Bartholl 2023

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2010-ongoingpublic intervention Dead Drops started in 2010 as an ongoing participatory project at five different public spaces in New York. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs and are accessible to anybody. Each dead drop is installed empty except for a readme.txt file explaining the project.

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If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected] . Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected] . For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research-and-learning/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected] . If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected] .

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Alighiero Boetti. La Stampa from Insicuro Noncurante. 1966-75 | MoMA

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Alighiero Boetti. La Stampa from Insicuro Noncurante. 1966-75. One from a portfolio of eighty two mixed media prints. each: 21 5/8 x 17 11/16" (55 x 45 cm). 2r (Rinaldo Rossi), Genoa. 2r (Rinaldo Rossi), Genoa. Committee on Prints and Illustrated Books Fund with support from Marie-Josée and Henry R.

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In autumn 2014 Serpentine Galleries commissioned Gustav Metzger's first digital work.

Gustav Metzger's first digital work Mass Media: todayandyesterday.co.uk, co-commissioned by The Serpentine Galleries in partnership with The Space, coincided with the Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future, which Metzger both inspired and co-curated. It followed in the footsteps of his Serpentine exhibition Decades 1959-2009 (2009), and 100,000 Newspapers (2003), a 'public-active installation' at T1/2 Artspace, London, comprising the artist's montage of cuttings placed under headings such as 'EXTINCTION', 'WORK' and 'BIOTECHNOLOGY'.

Metzger's digital commission built on Mass Media: Today and Yesterday, a long-standing and ongoing work, composed of a participatory installation involving the collection of thousands of newspapers, currently installed as Facing Extinction, an exhibition at Herbert Read Gallery, UCA (University for the Creative Arts), Canterbury. Over the course of the two days of the Extinction Marathon, a special live transmission took place from Facing Extinction on www.todayandyesterday.co.uk - forming a connection between the two physical sites of the Serpentine Galleries in London and Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury.

Thousands of newspapers were found stacked at the heart of the gallery space, as sourced by staff and students from UCA and partner institutions. Throughout the two-day broadcast, Fine Art students from Farnham and Canterbury could be found in an act of dynamic activation of Metzger's work, selecting, cutting and collaging articles across the gallery walls in response to the subject of EXTINCTION. The online transmission highlighted Mass Media: Today and Yesterday as an installation in a continual state of flux and growth, with each day punctuated by a frozen panorama of the actions that preceded it.

Gustav Metzger's digital commission was one of several online works commissioned in partnership with The Space. The commissions were hosted through The SPACE, alongside EXTINCT.LY, which deploys a digital map of the world's surface toassemble the contributions of all participants in this years Extinction Marathon.

Gustav Metzger (b. 1926), best known for his concept of auto-destructive art elaborated in his 1959 manifesto, considers the work of art as a form of political consciousness-raising - he has addressed the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorist bombings and global warming.
Facing Extinction conference and exhibitions at www.gustavmetzgerucafarnham.wordpress.com

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Gustav Metzger: Mass Media: todayandyesterday.co.uk - Serpentine Galleries

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In autumn 2014 Serpentine Galleries commissioned Gustav Metzger's first digital work. Gustav Metzger's first digital work Mass Media: todayandyesterday.co.uk , co-commissioned by The Serpentine Galleries in partnership with The Space, coincided with the Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future, which Metzger both inspired and co-curated.

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Lawrence Weiner, Mel Bochner, Lucy Lippard, Paola Antonelli, Kynaston McShine, Hanna Girma

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Society of the Spectacle - 3rd SBP Edition

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This, the third Soul Bay Press edition of Society of the Spectacle features 'The Fragile Perfection of Capitalism' a new foreword by Martin Jenkins. Originally published in France in 1968 The Society of the Spectacle is a brilliantly lucid analysis of the forms of social control and domination under modern capitalism.

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Sarah Cook is a curator, writer, and new media art historian. Her recent curated exhibitions include Right Here, Right Now (2015) at The Lowry in Salford; Alt-w (2014) at the Royal Scottish Academy, SSA Annual Exhibition in Edinburgh; and Not even the sky: Thomson & Craighead (2013) for MEWO Kunsthalle in Memmingen. She is the author (with Beryl Graham) of Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (MIT Press, 2010) and co-editor (with Sara Diamond) of Euphoria & Dystopia: The Banff New Media Institute Dialogues (Banff Centre Press, 2011). She co-founded and co-edits crumbweb.org, the online resource for curators of media art. She is currently Dundee Fellow at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, where she curates the programme for LifeSpace Science Art Research Gallery and works as an associate curator with New Media Scotland and the digital arts festival, NEoN. In 2008-2009 Sarah was the inaugural curatorial fellow at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York, and was adjunct curator of new media at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art until 2006.

Erica Scourti was born in Athens, Greece (1980) and is now based in London and Athens. Her work across different media draws on personal experience as a way to explore networked subjectivities and the infrastructures of life, labour and love in a fully mediated world. Recent presentations of her work include Block Universe festival, London; Big Bang Data at Somerset House; The Practice of Theories at Wysing Arts Centre; Trace Programme at Flo Skatepark, Nottingham; and Dark Archives, a solo commission at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. . Her work has been shown internationally at institutions and galleries like Microscope Gallery, New York; The Photographers' Gallery, London; Munich Kunstverein; EMST Athens; and South London Gallery. In 2015, Scourti was in residence at Wysing Arts Centre and the White Building, London, and she is a Near Now Fellow 2015/6. She is currently finalising a commission for Bedlam: The Asylum and Beyond at the Wellcome Collection.

Tom McCarthy is a writer and artist. His first novel, Remainder, won the 2008 Believer Book Award and was recently adapted for the cinema. His third, C, was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, as was his fourth, Satin Island, in 2015. McCarthy is also author of the 2006 non-fiction book Tintin and the Secret of Literature, an exploration of the themes and patterns of Hergé's comic books; of the novel Men in Space; and of numerous essays that have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Harper's and Artforum. In 2010 he wrote the screenplay for Johan Grimonprez's multiple award-winning film Double Take. In addition, he is founder and General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network of writers, philosophers and artists whose work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Palais de Tokyo Paris, Tate Britain and Moderna Museet Stockholm. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction by Yale University.

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Documents of Contemporary Art: Information - Whitechapel Gallery

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Sarah Cook is a curator, writer, and new media art historian. Her recent curated exhibitions include Right Here, Right Now (2015) at The Lowry in Salford; Alt-w (2014) at the Royal Scottish Academy, SSA Annual Exhibition in Edinburgh; and Not even the sky: Thomson & Craighead (2013) for MEWO Kunsthalle in Memmingen.

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Ancient humans stored information in cave paintings, the oldest we know of are over 40,000 years old. As humans evolved, the emergence of languages and the invention of writing led to detailed information being stored in various written forms, culminating with the invention of paper in China around the first century AD.

The oldest printed books appeared in China between AD600 and AD900. For over a millennium, books remained the main source of information storage.

Humans achieved more technological development in the past 150 years than during the previous 2,000 years. Arguably one of the most important developments in human history was the invention of digital electronics.

Since the discovery of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated microchip in 1956, our society experienced a shift. In just over 50 years, we've achieved unprecedented computing power, wireless technologies, the internet, artificial intelligence, and advances in display technologies, mobile communications, transportation, genetics, medicine and space exploration.

Most importantly, the introduction of digital data storage also changed the way we produce, manipulate and store information. The transition point took place in 1996 when digital storage became more cost-effective for storing information than paper.

Digital data storage technologies are very diverse. Most notable are magnetic storage (HDD, tape), optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) and semiconductor memories (SSD, flash drive). Each type of memory is more useful to specific applications.

Semiconductor memories are the preferred choice for portable electronics, optical storage is mostly used for movies, software and gaming, while magnetic data storage remains the dominant technology for high-capacity information storage, including personal computers and data servers.

Read more: A Jane Austen quote encoded in plastic molecules demonstrates the potential for a new kind of data storage

All digital data storage technologies operate on the same principles. Bits of information can be stored in any material containing two distinctive and switchable physical states. In binary code, the digital information is stored as ones and zeroes, also known as bits. Eight bits form a byte.

A logical zero or one is allocated to each physical state. The smaller these physical states are, the more bits can be packed in the storage device. The width of digital bits today is around ten to 30 nanometres (billionths of a metre). These devices are very complex because developing devices capable of storing information at this scale requires controlling materials on the atomic level.

Big data

Digital information has become so entrenched in all aspects of our lives and society, that the recent growth in information production appears unstoppable. Each day on Earth we generate 500 million tweets, 294 billion emails, 4 million gigabytes of Facebook data, 65 billion WhatsApp messages and 720,000 hours of new content added daily on YouTube.

In 2018, the total amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed in the world was 33 zettabytes (ZB) - the equivalent of 33 trillion gigabytes. This grew to 59ZB in 2020 and is predicted to reach a mind-boggling 175ZB by 2025. One zettabyte is 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits.

To help visualise these numbers, let's imagine that each bit is a £1 coin, which is around 3mm (0.1 inches) thick. One ZB made up of a stack of coins would be 2,550 lightyears. This can get you to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 600 times. Currently, each year we produce 59 times that amount of data and the estimated compound growth rate is around 61%.

Data storage

Most digital information is stored in three types of location. First is the global collection of what are called endpoints, which include all internet of things devices, PCs, smartphones and all other information storage devices. Second is the edge, which includes infrastructure such as cell towers, institutional servers and offices, such as universities, government offices, banks and factories. Third, most of the data is stored in what's known as the core - traditional data servers and cloud data centres.

There are around 600 hyperscale data centres - ones with over 5,000 servers - in the world. Around 39% of them are in the US, while China, Japan, UK, Germany and Australia account for about 30% of the total.

The largest data servers in the world are China Telecom Data Centre, in Hohhot, China, which occupies 10.7 million square feet and The Citadel in Tahoe Reno, Nevada, which occupies 7.2 million square feet and uses 815 megawatts of power.

To meet the ever-growing demand for digital data storage, around 100 new hyperscale data centres are built every two years. My recent study examined these trends and concluded that, at a 50% annual growth rate, around 150 years from now the number of digital bits would reach an impossible value, exceeding the number of all atoms on Earth. About 110 years from now, the power required to sustain this digital production will exceed the total planetary power consumption today.

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The world's data explained: how much we're producing and where it's all stored

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Ancient humans stored information in cave paintings, the oldest we know of are over 40,000 years old. As humans evolved, the emergence of languages and the invention of writing led to detailed information being stored in various written forms, culminating with the invention of paper in China around the first century AD.

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Research-History of Digital Data Storage

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Research-History of Digital Data Storage

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Information storage ???

From the beginning of mankind, man tried to find a way to store information for the following generations. When people nowadays hear the word storage or computer storage they normally think about CD Rom, USB key or DVD. Things like the floppy disk or the punch card are nearly forgotten. In fact, the history of information storage goes back to pre-historic times where mankind used red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal to paint information about their life on rock walls, caves and ceilings.

In Ancient Egypt Papyrus, which is an early form of paper, was used to store information. It remained in use until about 800 AD, when it was replaced by cheaper paper. Before then, however, the use of parchment and vellum had replaced papyrus in many areas as they are much more durable. The Chinese ordinarily wrote documents on bamboo. Also silk, bones, shells and ivory were used, later bronze, iron, gold, silver, tin, jade, stone and clay. In India, palm leaves served for storing information. In the late 4th millennium BC Sumerians created the cuneiform script that was drawn on clay tablets. Finally, sometime between 150 BC and 105 AD paper was invented. In medieval England the so called tally stick was a wide spread mnemonic device of the Exchequer for the collection of taxes by local sheriffs. Its origins go back to the Stone Age. Also the Incas (ca. 1400-1632 AD) had a kind of "memory aid" which was the Quipu and consisted of knots. In 1440 AD the invention of printing by Gutenberg was really a milestone in the history of information storage.

After the 17th century inventions that usually need some kind of aid to read the information from a particular storage were made. Examples of that are the punch card, punched tape, Phonograph, magnetic tape, magnetic drum, Telegraphon and the selectron tube. In 1956 IBM invented the hard disk with a size of 5 MB, what was really fantastic for this time. In the years between 1950 and 1980 some storage devices where build that nowadays hardly anyone would remember, for example the bubble memory or the twistor memory.

On the other hand there were some technologies introduced that were very important for the development of the computer industry and some of these technologies are still in use today. One of these technologies these technologies are still in use today. One of these technologies was the first memory disk, called the floppy disk, invented by Alan Shugart at IBM in 1971. It was considered as a revolutionary device for transporting data from one computer to another. Floppy disks were not able to store as much data as hard disks, but they were much cheaper and more flexible. This invention was also the end for punch cards.

Between 1980 and 2000 there were two new techniques of digital data storing introduced. At the beginning of the 1980s the first optical devices, the CD and the CD-ROM were released. In the middle of the 1990s these and several other optical devices started to get more and more important and nowadays they are widely used. Exactly at that time the first electronic devices were developed. These devices, e.g. Compact Flash Cards, Memory Sticks etc., are very small but they can store a lot of data and so they find their use in digital cameras, PDAs etc. But nevertheless the development of the magnetic devices did not stop, several new technologies like the Advanced Intelligent Tape were introduced and the main hard disc in a pc is still based on magnetic technology.

In the 21st century the development of the technologies will lead us from the now widely used optical devices to the laser device up to holographic memories. In 2003 the first blue-laser based disc, the Blueray disc, was released and the first PC drives are to be expected in 2006. Several other "versions" of the DVD, e.g. HD-DVD have been released or are planned to, all modified to store more and more data and to gain faster access. The real next generation of data storage will be holographic memories, but this is yet to come

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Information storage ??? From the beginning of mankind, man tried to find a way to store information for the following generations. When people nowadays hear the word storage or computer storage they normally think about CD Rom, USB key or DVD. Things like the floppy disk or the punch card are nearly forgotten.

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From the dawn of civilization people have sought a way to store information for long amounts of time, ultimately forever. Ancient Egyptians built pyramids with their inside walls covered with hiero…

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From the dawn of civilization people have sought a way to store information for long amounts of time, ultimately forever. Ancient Egyptians built pyramids with their inside walls covered with hieroglyphics and even had their rulers mummified. Today, in the era of Facebook and Twitter we are experiencing very similar problems on a different level. It is estimated on a single day people exchange as much information as our grandparents did in early 1950s in an entire year. So where will we store all that data? This is the story of us and how we got here, the story about the history of data storage.

Several millennium before people used stone tablets to store their data. With the invention of paper writing became easier but, paper was not as nearly lasting as stone. The oldest known immediate precursor to modern paper dates to the 2nd century BC in China. Paper was an effective substitute for silk, as silk was also widely used in that age. Paper spread from China through the Middle East to medieval Europe in the 13th century.

Paper contributed to the creation of the very first modern form of data storage, the punch card created by Basile Bouchon in 1725. The punch card is a perforated paper loop used to store patterns rather than actual data. With a capacity of 960 bit,  punch cards were normally used to store settings for various machines as the only known secondary storage at that time.
Invented in 1932 by Gustav Tauschek, drum memory was primarily used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory and as secondary storage. His original drum memory had a capacity of 62.5 kilobytes. In one of the first mass-produced computer’s an IBM 650 there was about 8.5 kilobytes of drum memory. They were in use until semiconductor memory entered the scene.
In early 1950s the magnetic tape changed broadcast and recording industries forever. Made of a magnetizable coating on a long, thin strip of plastic, magnetic tapes allowed unmatched amounts of data to be created, stored and rapidly accessed. Magnetic tape cleared the path for hard disk drives unveiled by IBM in 1956. The very first hard drive, was a true revolution in data storage, capable of storing up to 4.4MB. Since their introduction, hard drives have been under constant improvement and today, they are smaller, cheaper, faster and can store up to 5 TB of data. For several decades magnetic based was the the media of choice.
The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 as a read-only 8 inch disk capable of storing 80 kB of data. Two years later, a disk with the same format factor had a storage capacity of 256kB and the ability to write new data. Since then, floppy disks have gotten smaller but with more data storage.
The compact disk, commercially available in 1982, was an evolution of LaserDisk technology developed by Philips and Sony independently. The CD was originally developed to store and play back sound recordings, but the format was later adapted for storage of data as in CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, VCD, SVCD, PhotoCD and other variations. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimeters (4.7 in) and can hold up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or 700 MB of data. At the time of the technology’s introduction it had more capacity than computer hard drives common at the time.
The mass storage device used in portable electronic devices, CompactFlash was first specified and produced by SanDisk in 1994 and now used for a variety of devices. Most contain flash memory but some, such as the Microdrive, contain a hard disk in the same format. CompactFlash became the most successful of the early memory card formats. It remains popular and is supported not only in many high end consumer devices but in some professional applications, such as Canon and Nikon in their digital still cameras.
Another media which was not a market success nevertheless in use for almost a decade, primarily by floppy disk enthusiast, was the ZIP Drive. The Zip drive was introduced by Iomega in late 1994, originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB.
The digital video disk or DVD is an optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. It was primarily developed to replace VideoCD as it has the same form factor but a much higher capacity and was eventually adopted as the media of choice for both video and data. DVD specification provide a storage capacity of 4.7GB for a single-layered, single-sided disc and 8.5GB for a dual-layered. There are two major DVD types, read-only and read and write for multiple sessions.
Following the invention of the Universal Serial Bus in the mid 1990s flash drives became the standard and media of choice for most computer users today. The USB flash drive is basically a memory chip attached to USB connector. USB flash drives were invented by Amir Ban, Dov Moran and Oron Ogdan, from the Israeli company M-Systems. USB flash drives come in a variety of storage capacities up to 1TB and are the largest USB drives on the market today.
During the first decade of the 21st century there were several media introductions like portable or external hard drives which are now available mostly with USB connections. On the other side optical media had one major breakthrough with Bluray able to store up to 128 GB of data in several layers.
Today, bloggers are writing about another important mile-stone the ability of storing data inside synthetic DNA chains. Soon we might be able to achieve our beginning and ultimate goal. To store data and make it last forever.

We’ve come a long way from stone tablets to DNA based storage. Some scientists claims that a single grain of sand can hold terabytes of data in its molecular structure. We will be there to witness this cutting edge of storage media in the near future. In the mean time don’t forget to back up your data!

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Zoom meetings and briefings on the first day of the Co-Lab Project created a complete confusion. At the end of the day, I was left alone with a lot of questions in my mind: How many people spoke? Who said what? Why? ... Questions such as flying around.

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The film "Anthropocene" begins with these words and ends by stating that the history of the earth can be read from rocks. And we humans can do this reading. In other words, everything animate and inanimate is a source of information and only humans can reveal that information.