Ray Kurzweil is one of our most brilliant scientists and technologists. I very much enjoyed his book The Age of Spirtual Machines. He will soon publish a sequel which will be available online.

Computers are becoming more powerful at an accelerating rate, but will they ever become conscious?

In the forthcoming book Are We Spiritual Machines? — a debate with leading critics of “strong artificial intelligence” — Ray Kurzweil says that nonbiological intelligence will become indistinguishable from conscious entities such as humans — at least from the observer’s perspective.

He explains how we will “reverse engineer” our software (our minds) and “upgrade” our hardware (our bodies) to indefinitely extend human life — before the dawn of the 22nd century.

Kurzweil says accelerating growth of computer power will result in machine intelligence exceeding human intelligence early in this century. In his view, nanobots will scan and enable the reverse engineering of our brains, provide 3D immersive virtual reality, and free the human mind from its severe physical limitations as the next step in evolution. And we will have the means to indefinitely extend our physical and mental lives.

Within a half century, he adds, “nonbiological intelligence will dominate because it is growing at a double exponential rate while biological intelligence is at a standstill.” Ultimately, humankind will “merge with its computational technology.”

Philosopher John Searle challenges Kurzweil’s position that machines will become conscious — that they are capable of “strong AI” — proposing his famous “Chinese Room” argument. Biologist Michael Denton disagrees with the idea that machines are capable of having the vital characteristics of organisms and argues that Kurzweil’s materialism doesn’t do justice to humans or intelligent agents.

Philosopher and mathematician William Dembski says attributing spirituality to machines entails an “impoverished view of spirituality.” And zoologist and evolutionary algorithm theorist Thomas Ray questions the ability to create intelligent machines by copying human brains into computers. Kurzweil offers counter-arguments to each of these positions.

“Although Artificial Intelligence may seem like an esoteric topic with little relevance to anything else, in fact, many of the most important questions we face from technology to theology converge on this single subject,” say leading futurist George Gilder and senior fellow and program director Jay Wesley Richards in the introduction.

The book grew out of the controversial closing panel session titled “Spiritual Machines” at the Gilder-Forbes Telecosm ‘98 conference in Lake Tahoe in October 1998. It was at this same conference that Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy had their discussion about the ethics of technology, which initiated another ongoing debate: over the promise and perils of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and AI.

Are We Spiritual Machines? will be published June 18 by the Discovery Institute. It will also be posted in full on KurzweilAI.net. Copies of the book will be available at Amazon.com and the Discovery Institute Bookstore or 800-643-4102.

The Discovery Institute’s mission is to “make a positive vision of the future practical.” The Institute discovers and promotes ideas in the common sense tradition of representative government, the free market and individual liberty through books, reports, legislative testimony, articles, public conferences and debates.

Originally published May 29, 2002 at KurzweilAI.net

 

Complexity is Just a Word! *

Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.

What is complexity, asks author-journalist George Johnson in a recent “Science Times,” the science section of The New York Times (May 5, 1997)? Below the headline, “Researchers on Complexity Ponder What It’s All About,” Johnson reports that there is still no agreed-upon definition, much less a theoretically-rigorous formalization, despite the fact that complexity is currently a “hot” research topic. Many books and innumerable scholarly papers have been published on the subject in the past few years, and there is even a new journal, Complexity, devoted to this nascent science. Johnson quotes Dan Stein, chairman of the physics department at the University of Arizona: “Everybody talks about it. [But] in the absence of a good definition, complexity is pretty much in the eye of the beholder.”

This is not to say that the researchers in this area have not been trying to define it. In the 1970s, Gregory Chaitin and Alexei Kolmogorov (independently) pioneered a mathematical measuring-rod that Chaitin called “algorithmic complexity” — that is, the length of the shortest “recipe” for the complete reproduction of a mathematical treatment. The problem with this definition, as Chaitin concedes, is that random sequences are invariably more complex because in each case the recipe is as long as the whole thing being specified; it cannot be “compressed”.

More recently, Charles Bennett has focussed on the concept of “logical depth” — the computational requirements for converting a recipe into a finished product. Though useful, it seems to be limited to processes in which there is a logical structure of some sort. It would seem to exclude the “booming, buzzing confusion” of the real world, where the internal logic may be problematical or only partially knowable — say the immense number of context-specific chaotic interactions that are responsible for producing global weather “patterns”, or the imponderable forces that will determine the future course of the evolutionary process itself.

A number of researchers, especially those who are associated with the Santa Fe Institute, believe that the key lies in the so-called “phase transitions” between highly ordered and highly disordered physical systems. An often-cited analogy is water, whose complex physical properties lie between the highly ordered state of ice crystals and the highly disordered movements of steam molecules. While the “Santa Fe Paradigm” may be useful, it also sets strict limits on what can be termed “complex”. For instance, it seems to exclude the extremes associated with highly ordered or strictly random phenomena, even though there can be more or less complex patterns of order and more or less complex forms of disorder — degrees of complexity that are not associated with phase transitions. (Indeed, random phenomena seem to be excluded by fiat from some definitions of complexity.)

To confuse matters further, a distinction must be made between what could be labelled “objective complexity” — the “embedded” properties of a physical phenomenon and “subjective complexity” — its “meaning” to a human observer. As Timothy Perper has observed (on-line communication), the equation w = f(z) is structurally simple, but it might have a universe of meaning depending upon how its terms are defined. Indeed, information theory is notorious for its reliance on quantitative, statistical measures and its blindness to meaning — where much can be made of very few words. The telephone directory for a large metropolitan area contains many more words than a Shakespeare play, but is it more complex? Furthermore, as Elisabet Sahtouris has pointed out (on-line communication), the degree of complexity that we might impute to a phenomenon can depend upon our frame of reference for viewing it. If we adopt a broad, “ecological” perspective we will see many more factors, and relationships, at work than if we adopt a “physiological” perspective. When Howard Bloom (on-line communication) quotes the line “To see the World in a Grain of Sand…” from William Blake’s famous poem, “Auguries of Innocence”, it reminds us that even a simple object can denote a vast pattern of relationships, if we choose to see it that way. Accordingly, subjective complexity is a highly variable property of the phenomenal world.

Perhaps we need to go back to the semantic drawing-board. Complexity is, after all, a word — a verbal construct, a mental image. Like the words “electron” or “snow” or “blue” or “tree”, complexity is a shorthand tool for thinking and communicating about various aspects of the phenomenal world. Some words may be very narrow in scope. (Presumably all electrons are alike in their basic properties, although their behavior can vary greatly.) However, many other words may hold a potful of meaning. We often use the word “snow” in conversation without taking the trouble to differentiate among the many different kinds of snow, as serious skiers (and Inuit eskimos) routinely do. Similarly, the English word “blue” refers to a broad band of hues in the color spectrum, and we must drape the word with various qualifiers, from navy blue to royal blue to robin’s egg blue (and many more), to denote the subtle differences among them. So it is also, I believe, with the word “complexity”; it is used in many different ways and encompasses a great variety of phenomena. (Indeed, it seems that many theorists, to suit their own purposes, prefer not to define complexity too precisely.)

The “utility” of any word, whether broad or narrow in scope, is always a function of how much information it imparts to the user(s). Take the word “tree”, for example. It tells you about certain fundamental properties that all trees have in common. But it does not tell you whether or not a given tree is deciduous, whether it is tall or short, or even whether it is living or dead. The same shortcoming applies also to the concept of “complexity”. Although there may be some commonalities between a complex personality, a complex wine, a complex piece of music and a complex machine, the similarities are not obvious. Each is complex in a different way, and their complexities cannot be reduced to an all-purpose algorithm. Moreover, the differences among them are at least as important as any common properties.

What in fact does the word “complexity” connote. One of the leaders in the complexity field, Seth Lloyd of MIT, took the trouble to compile a list of some three dozen different ways in which the term is used in scientific discourse. However, this exercise produced no blinding insight. When asked to define complexity, Lloyd told Johnson: “I can’t define it for you, but I know it when I see it.”

Rather than trying to define what complexity is, perhaps it would be more useful to identify the properties that are commonly associated with the term. I would suggest that complexity often (not always) implies the following attributes: (1) a complex phenomenon consists of many parts (or items, or units, or individuals); (2) there are many relationships/interactions among the parts; and (3) the parts produce combined effects (synergies) that are not easily predicted and may often be novel, unexpected, even surprising.

At the risk of inviting the wrath of the researchers in this field, I would argue that complexity per se is one of the less interesting properties of complex phenomena. The differences, and the unique combined properties (synergies) that arise in each case, are vastly more important than the commonalities. If someone does develop a grand, unifying definition-description of complexity, I predict that it will add very little to the tree of knowledge (pardon the pun). But that shouldn’t deter us from trying; the very effort to do so will surely enrich our understanding.

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 * With thanks to Howard Bloom, Timothy Perper, Elisabet Sahtouris, Peter Frost, Reed Konsler and the pseudonymous Just Mice for a provocative and insightful on-line discussion within Howard Bloom’s “International Paleopsychology Project” group.

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More by Peter Corning

Google Glossary on Complexity

 

Recently, the concept of memes has been presented here. Recall synergic scientist N. Arthur Coulter’s warning that we were caught in THE MACHINE. Held there by powerful protodynes and sociodynes. A protodyne is a strong unconscious belief that a human individual holds. This belief is programmed deep into the mind by one’s life experience. For any individual a protodyne is “real”. We humans will act as if these beliefs are true whether they are or not. An acrophobic believes that being in the open is very dangerous. They will not leave their homes. They cannot be convinced that it is safe to go out into the open. The root word “-dyne” is from physics it means force. Strong unconscious beliefs held by individuals that force them to behave in specific ways are called protodynes.

When a strong unconscious belief is held by a group of people or a nation of people, it affects the whole group or the whole nation. Sociodynes force groups of people or nations of people to behave in specific ways. Coulter coined these terms in the late 60s and early 70s. Independently of Coulter, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe the same forces. The term meme has survived and become much better known than the term protodyne although they have the same meaning. Protodynes are individual memes. Sociodynes are collective memes.  As Coulter explains:

The endless repetition of the Machine is nothing more than the projection, upon the screen of social consciousness, of the Identic mode of function.

This insight provides the basis for understanding why the Machine has such power over us. It is because we unconsciously give it that power. It is as if the Machine were under the control of a pseudomind, operating entirely in the Identic and Reactive modes. Like the Freudian Id, which imposes its protodynes to control the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions of the individual consciousness, this pseudo-mind imposes its sociodynes upon our social consciousness.

It will be useful to give this pseudo-mind a name. I call it Dysergy Prime because it is a primary source of dysergy upon the planet earth.

The opposite of synergy is dysergy. Dysergy is working against. If we are to escape from THE MACHINE AND DYSERGY PRIME, we must break the trance that our individual and collective memes–that our protodynes and sociodynes–hold us in.

This morning synergic scientist Peter Corning gives us a different perspective.

There is much ado in evolutionary biology and some of the social sciences these days about an imperialistic paradigm known as “universal Darwinism,” and the related concept of “memes.” Memes, it seems, are the “new, new thing” (to quote the title of a best-selling book on the high technology boom and Silicon Valley). According to the promoters of universal Darwinism, any form of evolutionary change may be viewed as Darwinian in character if it exhibits three key properties: (1) a system of “replicators” (genes are the model, of course), (2) variations among the replicators, and (3) differential “selection” among the varying replicators in each generation via competition. Some adherents also espouse a fourth, sometimes implicit assumption, namely that the replicators have a degree of autonomy that allows them actively to pursue their selfish interests. On the other hand, the selection process is viewed as a purely impersonal, amorphous (mindless) process. Accordingly, in universal Darwinism the replicators are often touted as the primary actors. The fountainhead for this paradigm is, of course, Richard Dawkins’ best-seller, The Selfish Gene.

Some universal Darwinists, Daniel Dennett, Gary Cziko and, most notably, psychologist Susan Blackmore in her new book The Meme Machine (1999), see this reductionist evolutionary dynamic at work in human societies as well. In cultural evolution, Blackmore claims, the replicators are hypothetical entities called memes, a term coined by Dawkins as a cultural analogue for genes. Dawkins intended it as a metaphor, but Blackmore (and others) argue that memes are real physical entities, like genes (DNA). Moreover, memes have a mind of their own; they compete among themselves “for their own sake” [Blackmore's emphasis]. Just as Dawkins characterized organisms as “machines” for making more genes, so every human is “a machine for making more memes….We are meme machines,” Blackmore tells us. Citing the dubious assertion by Stephen Pinker that humans have “surplus” mental abilities (especially imitative abilities) that cannot be accounted for as adaptations for survival and reproduction, Blackmore contends that the selfish interests of memes can explain the evolution of these otherwise inexplicable surplus abilities. Memes have taken control of our cultural evolution, she says. (In fact, Pinker’s thesis contradicts evolutionary theory. Such costly anatomical characters would have been subject to stringent adverse selection if they had not been adaptive for evolving humans. See the discussion of this issue in my new book, Nature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind.)

The trouble is, memes don’t really exist as a distinct causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won’t make it so; I predict that they will prove to be more elusive than the Higgs boson. As a metaphor for various forms of learned cultural “information”, the term might be quite useful. It has the advantage of being more generic than such familiar terms as “ideas”, “inventions”, “behaviors”, “artifacts”, etc., and it is certainly preferable to such clumsy neologisms as Edward Wilson’s “culturgens”. But as a shaper of cultural evolution independently of the motivations, goals, purposes, compulsions and judgments — in short the minds — of human actors, memes rank right up there with the fiery phogiston and the heavenly aether. Indeed, there is no way I can conceive of to demonstrate (or falsify) the assertion that memes exercise an autonomous influence in human societies. Genes, and the coils of DNA that comprise the germ plasm, have an independent physical existence and known causal influences. Memes are labels that have been given to whatever we learn from one another — “stories, songs, habits, skills, inventions,” according to Blackmore. We are told that anything we imitate — hair styles, clothes, applauding, dances, cigarette smoking, superstitions, jokes, religion, and democracy, not to mention science and technology, is a meme.

The conceit that minds are “robots vehicles” — passive receptacles for various external inputs — vastly oversimplifies both the neurobiology and the psychology of human learning processes, not to mention the dynamics of cultural life. “Memetics”, as its practitioners like to call their hopeful monster (to borrow term), is a curious throwback to the Behaviorist tabula rasa hypothesis — the claim that human behavior is wholly determined by external inputs (”reinforcers”). To the contrary, memes are always embedded in minds (anything external is only a “latent” meme), and it is minds that do the selecting and use of memes. Humans do not slavishly imitate whatever they see, or hear. They are highly selective, and manipulative, both in terms of their personal choices and in what they may attempt to foist on others. Denial of the primacy of human actors in the selection and transmission of social behavior and cultural information is bad psychology — and bad anthropology. I’m reminded of a whimsical old poem about ghosts that I will take the liberty of bowdlerizing: “Yesterday upon the stair, I met a meme who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that he would go away.”

But can’t it also be said that ideas, ideologies, religions, books, music, technologies, etc., “compete” with one another? Yes, of course, but only metaphorically. To be precise, memes are differentially selected by prospective users, based on the users’ preferences. Memes themselves are “powerless” despite the uncharacteristic “hype” of Scientific American, which recently featured a promotional article by Blackmore on “The Power of Memes“. False analogies can do a lot of mischief, so it is important to keep the meme in its proper place as a term of convenience for a broad category of social phenomena and not as a distinct, self-serving causal agency. In so doing, we can also lend support to the null hypothesis: we call the shots on whether or not to imitate the purveyors of this particular meme.

Copyright © 2001 ISCS. All rights reserved.

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More by Peter Corning

With the article by Dr. Win Wenger on aerating the Oceans to feed the world, my attention has turned to the seas. And, I found another promising technology for use in the Oceans.

What is OTEC?

National Renewal Energy Laboratory

OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion, is an energy technology that converts solar radiation to electric power. OTEC systems use the ocean’s natural thermal gradient—the fact that the ocean’s layers of water have different temperatures—to drive a power-producing cycle. As long as the temperature between the warm surface water and the cold deep water differs by about 20∞C (36∞F), an OTEC system can produce a significant amount of power. The oceans are thus a vast renewable resource, with the potential to help us produce billions of watts of electric power. This potential is estimated to be about 1013 watts of baseload power generation, according to some experts. The cold, deep seawater used in the OTEC process is also rich in nutrients, and it can be used to culture both marine organisms and plant life near the shore or on land.

The economics of energy production today have delayed the financing of a permanent, continuously operating OTEC plant. However, OTEC is very promising as an alternative energy resource for tropical island communities that rely heavily on imported fuel. OTEC plants in these markets could provide islanders with much-needed power, as well as desalinated water and a variety of mariculture products.

For more information on OTEC technology, click on the items below:

• Achievements in OTEC Technology
• Needed Research
• Plant Design and Location
• Benefits of OTEC
• Markets for OTEC

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 More Information

OTEC Home ¦ Applications ¦ Resources ¦ NREL Home

 

One of the problems with a belief in Human Neutrality is that it causes great apathy. If I am truly independent, then I have no duty to family, community,  Life or the Earth itself.

Those humans who are waking up to the knowledge of their interdependence are putting away the illusion of neutrality along with its apathy and indifference. But to do so sometimes takes great courage. 

The Second Greenpeace Foundation

Captain Paul Watson

Since 1977, when I left the Greenpeace Foundation to establish the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, there has been a deep rift between the two organizations.

There are many complex reasons for this and the truth has been painted over with layers of revisionism so many times that only the original participants can say with certainty just what the circumstances were. However, for those of us who envisioned and founded the Greenpeace Foundation, the years have been frustrating as we have seen the faceless bureaucrats turn ideals into profits, secure in their understanding that the media myth of Greenpeace cannot be tarnished irreparably within the media culture.

Issac Asimov, whose classic science fiction masterpiece The Foundation trilogy actually inspired the description of Greenpeace as a foundation, also conceived the idea of the Second Foundation as a means of keeping the First Foundation on course with the original vision and objectives. In keeping with this, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has acted as the Second (Greenpeace) Foundation. Thus, those who have read the trilogy will understand just why it is that Greenpeace is so apparently hostile to Sea Shepherd. For the truth has been that Sea Shepherd has acted as both conscience and guide to Greenpeace.

This article will serve to provide insight into this, reviewing history and explaining how Greenpeace was recently manipulated into actual active participation against Norwegian whaling, despite having publicly expressed actual sympathies for the whalers.

“As a natural scientist I cannot accept that Greenpeace is opposed to whaling. One must be allowed to harvest a renewable resource. To me, this is an important principle.”  –Leif Ryvarden, former Chairman of Greenpeace Norway. From an interview with Dagbladet, August 2, 1991.

“The 1993 Minke whale harvest did not constitute a threat to the stock.”  –Ingrid Bertinussen, Greenpeace Norway Director. From an interview on Norwegian radio (NRK), October 22, 1993.

“Greenpeace is not opposed to whaling in principle.” –John Frizell, Director Greenpeace International. From the Greenpeace Policy Paper 1994.

 

IJmuiden, The Netherlands. June 28, 1994.

As I stand on the bridge of the Whales Forever, looking out beyond the IJmuiden breakwater, I can see the wind-tossed waters of the North Sea. Northward are forty-eight illegal Norwegian whaling ships. In a few days, we may be confronting one or more of them, and more than likely, the Norwegian Navy as well.

On the dock, a small group of Greenpeacers have come down to the ship to criticize our plans. They called me a fanatic and one of them had told a German journalist that “Paul Watson is completely insensitive to human life.”

I looked at them with pained patience. Twenty-three years ago, I had helped to establish the Greenpeace Foundation and now, so many years later, I was being confronted by paid Greenpeace employees protesting the actions of the all volunteer Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The irony of it all was sadly funny. In the beginning, I remember that we (Greenpeace) were poor, all volunteer, and 100% dedicated to our cause.

Greenpeace International last year raised nearly US$200 million. Greenpeace Germany is presently financing the construction of a 60 million German Mark office building (US$35 million). Last year, Greenpeace USA spent US$37 million to send out 48 million pieces of direct mail.

In the same year, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society raised just over $700,000 without direct mail, without door to door canvassing and without any investments.

And now the rich come to heckle the poor.

In the face of overwhelming odds, the last thing that I wished to contend with was a demonstration by Greenpeacers who waste our time by condemning the tactics of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

How had it come to this?

 

Vancouver, Canada. September 1974

I remember the meeting with Bob Hunter in the autumn of 1974 in the Alkazar Pub in Vancouver. He told me that he had an idea and a vision.

“Paul, what do you think of us getting a crew together to save the whales?”

I did not hesitate to reply. “I’m all for it Bob, what do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet,” he answered. “Something on the level of what we did at Amchitka in ‘71. Perhaps we can get between the whalers and the whales.”

Bob and I had both sailed on the original voyages of Greenpeace. We had taken two ships across the storm-tossed Gulf of Alaska in November 1971 in an attempt to prevent the underground detonation of a five-megaton nuclear bomb. We had failed to stop the blast but the attempt made worldwide headlines and our small group, The Don’t Make a Wave Committee, officially became the Greenpeace Foundation in 1972.

In 1972 and 1973 Greenpeace protested French nuclear atmospheric testing in the South Pacific. We had chartered David McTaggart’s sailing yacht Vega. What Bob was suggesting would mean a radical departure from the Greenpeace anti-nuclear agenda.

Dr. Paul Spong, even then already acclaimed as a whale scientist and Orca expert, had approached Bob and pleaded a case for the whales.

Hunter knew that I was concerned for the whales and thus he approached me first with his idea, knowing that I would be gung-ho about it. Greenpeace had been, until then, exclusively an anti-nuclear testing group.

I was twenty-three and a rescue officer in the Canadian Coast Guard besides being an original Greenpeace crewmember.

“Bob, I’ve got just the thing. In the Coast Guard we’ve been using these inflatable fast boats called Zodiacs. We could put them between the whales and the whalers. In the true tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, we could place our bodies between the whalers and their defenseless victims.”

Hunter’s eyes lit up. “That’s it. That’s what we’ll do. We can use the Phyllis Cormack. John Cormack will skipper the boat and I would like you to be in charge of organizing some, what do you call them, zodiacs. If you can train some people to run them, we can do this!”

Thus was the genesis of the Greenpeace whale campaigns. Inspired by Dr. Paul Spong, embraced and conceived as a campaign by Robert Hunter and with strategy and tactics provided by me the idea blossomed. Roberta Hunter provided the financial organization and Rod Marining, David Garrick, Taeko Miwa, George Korotva, Hamish Bruce and many others organized both a sea-going crew and a land-based support crew. We called it Project Ahab and renamed the Phyllis Cormack the Greenpeace V.

In the late spring of 1975, a crowd of thousands of well-wishers cheered as we pulled away from the dock and set forth to hunt for the Soviet whaling fleet. It was a small crew of thirteen. I was the First Officer under Captain John Cormack, a grizzled old sea-dog of a fisherman. Bob was the Expedition Leader and David Garrick was the cook. We had three zodiac inflatables. Patrick Moore, George Korotva and I were the drivers and along with Bob Hunter, photographer Rex Weyler, camermen Ron Precious and Fred Easton we made up what we called the Kamikaze Squad.

 

The North Pacific Ocean. June 27, 1975.

“Hold on, Bob, we’re going in!”

Hunter braced himself, I gave my outboard full throttle, then thundered into position before the plunging steel prow of the Vlastny, the 160-foot Russian hunter killer ship. Finally, we had intercepted the Russians some sixty nautical miles west of Eureka, California. It was our first engagement with the Pacific fleet of the Soviet whaling industry.

Bob Hunter, my partner in this act of controlled folly, stood just in front of me. Legs apart and knees flexed, feet planted firmly on the wooden deck plates, he wrestled and grappled the bow line like a wild west bronco rider. He was a weird, wild and wonderful sight in his black wet suit, his long hair flying from under the flaps of a rainbow-coloured Peruvian toque. I sat back on the starboard pontoon, clad in a blue wetsuit, leaning forward on my right elbow, left hand on the throttle of the roaring Mercury 50. Tightly bound around my head; two white lengths of a Japanese banzai scarf whipped crisply in the wind. My eyes focused forward; concentrating on the fleeing pod of sperm whales, only metres ahead.

Magnificent! Eight leviathans plunging in unison, their broad slick ebony backs glistening with reflected sunlight. Over the roar of the outboard, I could plainly hear the short punctuated bursts of exhalation, as the whales, near exhaustion; surfaced. Their blowholes gaped open in frantic desperation, sucking for breath. They could not take in enough to dive, they could only run, frantically, their powerful living flukes no match for the untiring mechanical bronze muscle of the Russian killer’s mighty propeller.

As Bob and I sped along, we passed through the rainbow tinted mist of their breath. We could smell what the whales had just exhaled. With each breath that I took, I became more aware of the fear and the desperation of the creatures before us.

In vain the whales struggled to regain the security of the sea. Their frustration was evident. They needed time to absorb oxygen into their blood, time that the merciless Vlastny would not give.

Bob swiveled around only to gape in near horror at the source of the whales’ abject fear. The Russians’ bow savagely split the wake of our outboard. We were like mice, running before the onslaught of a descending meat cleaver. The look of horrified shock on Bob’s face made me turn. We were only ten feet before the on-coming prow, another ten feet behind the fleeing whales, two insects in a cockle shell caught between a developing collision of titans. But it was not the rust-encrusted wedge of rushing steel that had caught Bob’s attention. He was looking upward. 

Above us, perched like a ravenous peregrine ready to strike, a muscular blonde ape of a man, swiveled a mounted 90 mm cannon. Jutting out from its mouth; a grenade harpoon five feet in length, with foot-long barbed flanges pivoted on hinges. The hooked flanges were bound down with light rope, waiting for the shock of impact to unleash its awesome promise of destruction. He was concentrating on the whales, seemingly oblivious to our presence. The ship had one single deadly purpose; to strike and slay a whale. Our purpose in being where we were was to stop this killer! It was a strategy that seemed so brilliantly simple for the last year but within the last few minutes the brilliance of that idea had been ebbing away like a drunken high as the sight of that heart-stopping deadly harpoon sobered us rudely into reality.

It had never been done before but we were doing it now. Placing human lives, our own, between the hunted whale and the whale hunter. We were proud traitors to our species with the innocence to believe that somehow, someway we could reach our fellow man with a message to end the whale wars and to silence the harpoon cannons. We were also innocent enough to believe that humans would not kill humans in their lust for the whale. Our mistake, we found we were not dealing with humans. We were in a duel with a metallic moving mountain, intent upon our destruction. How do you reason with an onrushing wall of rusted steel? How do you argue with a harpoon cannon? The harpoon was painted a bright baby blue and when the bow threatened to overrun us, and the harpooner was obscured, the cannon waggled and waved against the early evening sky like a unicorn’s horn.

Bob looked at me and laughed. He reached back and I reached forward. Our eyes met and held and our hands clasped. He shouted, his words reaching me as a whisper in the wind above the noise of the outboard.

“We’re doing it Paul! We’re doing it!” The chase thundered on.

Minutes raced by and it became obvious that the harpooner was indeed hesitating. He was passing up opportunities to shoot. Although he had appeared to ignore us, it was becoming clear that he was indeed worried. This situation had the makings of an international incident.

Our Zodiac skipped across the choppy water where the whales had been only seconds before. The Vlastny plunged along in our wake, only seconds behind us. Bob and I were poised in motion between life and death, intervening between the forces of darkness and light. Amazingly, we were not afraid, instead we were both in the grip of a spiritual high, not caring for the consequences. Our lives at this point had only one purpose; To shield the whales, to stop the harpoon, to risk all for the eight unknown beings who were swimming frantically only a few feet in front of our bow.

I had to be careful. Too much throttle and we would overrun the whales. If they were to surface beneath us, we would be flipped into the water and possibly chopped to a bloody pulp by the spinning blades of the Vlastny’s churning propellers. Most importantly, we had to keep positioned before the point of the harpoon.

We could not know where the whales would surface next. However, the harpooner knew. We could only follow his gaze. At one point, he left his station to consult with the Captain. I shot off to the side and dropped back slightly and looking back, I could see the two of them, the bearded bastard of a Captain frantically screaming at his frustrated harpooner. The harpooner turned and ran quickly back to his station. The captain followed, walking slowly along the catwalk to the bow. Bob and I quickly returned to our station.

After twenty minutes, the pursuit was stalemated. I was beginning to worry that our fleeing friends would die of exhaustion. Something in this trinity had to give. The weakest link proved to be our small craft.

Our outboard engine suddenly choked, died and fell silent. Our momentum dragged quickly to a halt and we were dead in the water with the Vlastny only thirty feet behind and bearing down upon us. Both the Captain and his harpooner, standing on the bow beside him sported wide evil grins. The Captain slashed his forefinger back and forth across his throat. He clearly relished the prospect of running us down.

Bob feebly flashed a peace sign to the Russians. I clawed desperately at the engine. The fuel tank had bounced into the air and landed on the fuel line, cutting off the supply. There was no time to think and little time to act.

Bob yelled, “I think we’re going to have to jump, Paul.”

There was no time, we could only watch as the ship bore down on us in what seemed like slow motion. I watched her come plunging down upon us, staring with a feeling of strange detachment. Six hundred tons of steel hurtled down off a swell, the full weight of which was about to land upon our heads.

The sea intervened. The bow wave swept us away from the axe-like descent of the prow. We were swatted lightly to the side, passing so closely to the Vlastny that I could have reached out and touched the cold rusty steel of her rampaging hull with my hand. Within moments, our little boat was bobbing impotently in the tumultuous wake of that ruthless whaler. The Russians, free of us, were bearing down intently on their prey.

We were not completely alone. As commander of the Zodiac squad, I had two additional boats in the water. George Korotva raced in toward us. His passenger, Cameraman Fred Easton, jumped into my boat with his gear. Within seconds, Bob was with George speeding off in pursuit of the Russians. Dr. Patrick Moore took up a position on the starboard side of the whaler so that his passenger, photographer Rex Weyler, could cover whatever action might unfold.

I was not far behind as I cleared my fuel line and pulled the starter viciously to regain life to my engine. Fred had barely the time to balance himself on the deck plates before I zipped off in full pursuit of my squadron and her quarry.

An albatross gliding overhead would have been treated to an incredible sight. His view would not only have taken in the three inflatables buzzing like angry hornets at the Russian whaler in full pursuit of eight marine titans but the bigger picture as well.

Not far ahead, our mother ship, the 85-foot seiner the Phyllis Cormack, struggled to come to the aid of her children. Her stabilizing sail reflected the sunlight like the wings of an awaiting angel. And moving in at a right angle to our position, the gargantuan Soviet mother ship, the Dalyni Vostok was effortlessly steaming on a course towards the action.

From all directions, the nine identical sister ships of the Vlastny had abandoned their search for whales to head in our direction, curious about the drama unfolding before the charging attack of their comrades.

The whales were leading the Russians directly towards the Phyllis Cormack. As I raced to regain my position that had now changed, I could see Bob and George moving rapidly into the blocking position. It was now my responsibility to get Fred into position to record the history of this event on his camera. I could also see that the Phyllis Cormack now appeared to be on a collision course with the Vlastny. The whales were seeking out our mother ship as if they knew her for the protector that she was. Our captain, old John C. Cormack, was on the bridge wing and there was no question about it. He would not back down. Indeed, he was changing course bringing the bow of his wooden-hulled seiner directly in line with the steel prow of the whaler. As wood against steel, it was no contest but this was the will of one Captain against another and there was no doubt in my mind who would emerge the victor.

The whales dove before and beneath the Phyllis Cormack, and as we were following, we were forced to cut around. Two Zodiacs raced by the starboard side of Captain Cormack with my boat hurtling by on the port side. The Russians followed, her captain deciding to pull his wheel to port to pass by on Cormack’s starboard side. The bow waves of both boats collided with a splat and an explosion of spray. John immediately spun about in pursuit of us.

It would not be long before the Russian mother ship, the Vostok, charging to intercept like a raging rogue elephant, would reach us. The event was building, the air clearly crackled with the intensity of the confrontation. We all knew that something had to happen and soon.

In my boat, Fred was having his problems. He had only thirty seconds of film left and his battery pack had just died. The whales were staying under the surface for shorter and shorter periods, as their near breaking hearts began to surrender to the diesel powered juggernaut intent on their blood. Within moments, the Russians would strike or abandon the chase. We knew that the radio waves around us were polluted with Russian voices communicating with each other over tactics and the political repercussions of any action or inaction taken.

Instinctively I felt that the moment was on hand. With a burst of speed, I surged ahead of the other boats, the Russians and the whales. I throttled down and stopped my boat in the water.

“Get ready, Fred!” Fred stood up, readied his camera. He had nothing to lose. The chase had been underway for three quarters of an hour. The light was fading as early evening began to close in. He was not sure that he could even film, with a seemingly dead battery, and thirty seconds would not capture much. But he hoisted his camera, swung it towards the Vlastny’s bow and pulled the trigger. He was astonished to find the battery come to life. He panned quickly from the bow towards George and Bob in their boat. Through his lens he could see and capture the urgency and apprehension in their windblown faces. He kept panning towards the whales as they broke the surface and then he began to pan back, when with a shock, a horrific explosion shook the air and the harpoon bomb hurtled violently and fatally through the centre of his recorded image. He followed it as it struck with an explosion of reddish foam into the soft backside of one of the frightened whales. He panned back immediately, as the blockading Zodiac rode up on a swell and the taut slashing cable sliced the water only feet from our two comrades.

Bob and George did not see the harpoon. At the sound of the explosion, they instinctively ducked. They heard the cable hit the water. Bob said that it was as if a giant sword had narrowly missed them. The harpooner had waited for an opening when the Zodiac had descended into a trough between the waves and the whales had risen up on a swell. He then fired directly over their heads.

The whale screamed and I heard its cry over the roar of the outboards as the explosion ripped the bonds off the flanges, springing them open and anchoring the gore besmeared projectile deep into the private recesses of its body. Bob and George disengaged and sped off to the side to avoid the violent cracking of the harpoon line as the struck whale struggled in vain to free itself from the painful barbs. The convulsions of the massive flukes beat the sea into bloody foam as a fountain of blood shot into the briny air. The Russian ship shuddered as the full weight of the whale snapped viciously on the receiving end of the cable. The accumulator springs in her hold struggled furiously to absorb the shock transmitted through that six inch nylon line, but it was not enough. A shower of dull red rust rained down from the side of the ship as the vibrations reverberated along her sleek but ugly hull.

The harpoon had violated a female whale, the exploding shrapnel driven deep within her vital organs, shredding muscle and shattering her bones. She rolled, and the bull, this awesome male Sperm whale, was by her side, staying with her as the remaining six members of the pod continued to run for their lives.

I heard a roar as the male rose up and dove. The mighty fluke slamming the water as he slid beneath the waves and turned around at the same time. In a glance, I could see that he was not fleeing with the rest, he was turning to fight. Two of the three boats of my flotilla had retreated. Only Fred and I remained in that area between the Russian whaler and the two remaining whales, one of which was mortally wounded.

But who would he fight? He had no chance against the whaler. Whale experts back on the mainland had warned us that if angered, the whales would attack our frail boats to vent their rage against humanity. We had been warned, and maybe the experts knew what they were talking about. But strangely, I did not feel even a twinge of fear. I knew the submerged and enraged bull was below us and my mind screamed at me to beware. At any moment we would be lifted forcefully out of the sea on top of sixty tons of irate muscle and blood. Then helpless in the sea, Fred and I would become victims of the snapping jaws and hammering fluke of this mad beast. The image of this flashed through my mind along with the image of a dozen laughing whalers enjoying a spectacle that even the most jaded of Roman circus fans had never witnessed.

My heart and instincts, however, triumphed over my mind and my body remained calm. I looked at Fred and he, like myself, felt no sense of panic, no sense of danger. We were, however, unconsciously holding our breath in anticipation.

There seemed to be a momentary calm all around us. In front of us, the dying female thrashed feebly. Behind us, the Russians had just loaded a second harpoon. The water all around us was flat, the chop flattened by the conflict of seconds before.

Suddenly the ocean exploded some twenty feet behind us. The sound of the burst-open sea drowned beneath the maddened bellow of a grief-stricken and desperate creature. High into the air he rose, unerringly aimed at the horrid blonde ape who had just slain his mate. And the ape, with a twisted smile clenching a cigarette, calmly lowered the cannon and with a look of complete detached boredom, pulled the trigger.

A screaming “No!” had barely gurgled from my throat before that sickening explosive whine heralded the delivery of that hellish missile. Within a microsecond, the cold steel had entered the massive head of the male, burying itself deep in the reservoir of spermacetti oil. Another microsecond and the cold metal was transformed into burning, hot, razor-sharp fragments that splintered themselves through that internal pool of murky oil. The concussion crippled the sonic skills of his being and must have imprinted at the same instant a visual image of the explosion deep within his mortally wounded brain.

A roar of anger evolved into an ear-splitting scream of unimaginable pain. The whale fell back into the sea as if struck by a giant belaying pin. Blood, opaque oil, chunks of blubber and red foam cascaded down his head and back. The lower jaw dropped and the big pink tongue thrust to the side. With a crash and a shower of spray, Leviathan struck the water and rolled in our direction. An onrushing swell of scarlet sea smashed into our Zodiac and splashed over our bodies. Strings of coagulated blood slithered down the black rubber pontoons like flayed earthworms. The whale rolled again, bringing that pain-wracked, bleeding bulk to within a dozen feet of Fred and me. Reason told me to flee. But I could not. I would not. Instead, in morbid fascination I watched as our drifting boat moved toward the dying whale as if it was a magnet attracting us. Both Fred and I felt helpless and the violence of the last few moments had traumatized us into a state of inaction. Even if Fred had film remaining, he would not have had the strength to hoist his camera to his shoulders. We were in the grip of a fascinated horror that we could not fully absorb. Our minds laboured to comprehend the insanity around us. We could not. We did not have the time, or even a point of reference. We could only sit, transfixed at the awesome sight of the death of a Titan. It is not meant that mortal man should witness the death of a god. Here was the crucifixion in all of its psychological horror, enacted before us, and the liquid that dripped upon us was the hottest and holiest of blood.

The whale rolled amidst a boiling cauldron of its own fluid. A scarlet stain leached forth in fiery tongues to inflame and colour the water. From deep-sea royal blue to obscene scarlet. This was not the Nile turning to blood by the power of God. This was the blasphemy of man insulting the ocean and her children.

Both whales were struggling and crying. The female was whimpering weakly as the harpoon cable sucked the life-force out of her being. Their suffering was intense and pitiful to behold.

The male suddenly regained strength and with a bellow, dove beneath the waves. The harpoon that had struck him was unattached, there being no time for the harpooner to have secured a line to it. He had only the time to load and fire. There was no cable to locate the whale. He was gone, leaving a trail of blood and bubbles to indicate where he lay beneath the surface, and that trail was heading for Fred and me.

The surface of the sea broke slowly this time. The prodigious behemothic head rose above the waters at an angle that brought it over our tiny craft. The water rolling in ripple-less cascades off that head poured into the sea around us. The whale rose higher into the air, the jaw emerged and dropped open. A row of ivory daggers set in soft pink flesh moved into position to grasp us. The mountain of black bleeding flesh moved slowly, almost hypnotically towards us.

With a shock, my eyes met the left eye of the whale like Odysseus facing the Cyclops. That one eye stared back, an eye the size of my fist, blackish brown and with a depth that astonished and gripped me. This was no brutish creature. This was no dumb animal. The eye that I saw reflected an intense intelligence. I read the pain and I read understanding. The whale knew what we were doing. This whale had discriminated. That message was beamed directly into my heart by a mere glance. Fear there never was, but apprehension vanished like a crest upon a wave. I felt love both from and for. I felt hope, not for himself but for his kind. I saw a selflessness of a spirit completely alien to our primate selves. This was a being with an intelligence that put us to shame, with an understanding that could only humble us. And the most shameful message of all passed over to me; forgiveness.

In an instant, my life was transformed and a purpose for my life was reverently established.

Contact lasted only a few seconds but it seemed like much longer. The whale became quiet and began to sink back into the cold embrace of the sea and death. As he slid slowly back, I could see the life fading from his eye. I followed that rapidly extinguishing sparkle of light as the cold briny waves doused the final spark and the soul of a majestic greatness departed, leaving only a mammoth corpse behind.

Many whales had died during my lifetime, all victims of the ruthlessness of my species. It had all been academic. This was different. This was a death witnessed and attended by my shipmates and me. Between that one unknown whale and myself, a bond had been established. I would honour this great being with my service. I would side with his species in opposition to my own.

That experience remains for me, to this day, my single greatest moment of revelation and the source of all my strength, courage, commitment and sadness. I was scarred and left with an accursed task. The experience robbed me of all sense of joy and wonder. Human happiness would never be completely possible for me. I had looked into the eye of God. I could never be the same again.

As if in a trance, I could dimly hear a voice. “Come on Paul, let’s get the hell out of here.” I shook my head and nodded to Fred. It took me a few seconds to understand that it was my responsibility to get us out.

Oblivious to the whalers, I somehow found the strength to pull my outboard into action. Leaving the carnage behind, Fred and I returned to the Phyllis Cormack.

I could not stay on deck. The two slain whales were being hauled in by the Vostok. Within the hour, they would be stripped of blubber, their flesh would be removed and even their bones would be rendered. As the whalers proudly boasted, nothing would be wasted; nothing, that is, except the whale itself.

I went below and stripped off my wet suit. I was exhausted and trembling with emotions that I did not comprehend. I wanted to sleep, my body begged for it, but the visions of the day ran over and over in my photographic memory like an endless series of instant replays. Closing my eyes, I could not wrestle the sight of blood and horror from my inner vision.

We had been at sea for sixty-three days, searching for the whaling fleet, any whaling fleet, Russian or Japanese, it didn’t matter. It made no difference if the whales were being slain by communist Soviet harpoons or capitalist Japanese harpoons. All that mattered was that the harpoons be stopped.

Today we had found them and although there was a small feeling of satisfaction at seeing six whales escape, there remained the frustration and the anger at our failure to stop the murder of two. By ourselves, I now realized that we did not have the power to stop it. However, after the confrontation today, we had a powerful weapon. That thirty-second film clip that Fred had captured would be our ticket to the hot media of television.

Armed with the tempting media bait of dramatic visual documentation, we could now gain access to the doors of human awareness through the avenue that only television could provide. For the first time, we had some hope of inciting public indignation against whaling.

Until that day, our efforts in the past had been stymied by the fact that whaling was not exactly an industry familiar to the general public. If the public thought about whaling at all, it was the image of Moby Dick that came to mind, along with brave whaling men in puny longboats locked in a heroic struggle against a monstrous giant beast. Thanks to our activities that day, the media began to present a different image of whaling from here on in.

Lying in my bunk, the full weight of the day’s events began to take on perspective. Today, the 27th of June, 1975, marked the first time in history that people had placed their bodies between the whales and their killers. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, it was the first time that humans had ever taken such a risk in defense of non-humans.

With that thought, I began to realize for the first time since the encounter, just how close to death we had just come. I could feel the cold clammy wetness under my arms. A slight trickle of perspiration slid frigidly down my spine. I shivered. I was glad to be alive. At the same time I felt ashamed for being so powerless in the face of the awesome technological might of the whalers.

As I lay in my bunk, the setting sun cast a probing golden ray through the porthole. The beam shifted like a prison searchlight about the darkening cabin as the boat rolled on the medium sized swells. I sat up. Through the port I could see the twinkle of hundreds of lights against the background of the fading orange dusky sky. The Vostok, with her ten stories of decks and her hundreds of crew, loomed out there like a corporate office structure. It was one gigantic mobile corporate killing machine. Black smoke, greasy with the stench of burnt whale flesh, billowed skyward. All around her, the hunter killers drifted or scurried about like rats. Against the imposing bulk of the mother ship, the catcher boats looked almost harmless. They were settling down for the night and like a mouse in the midst of a pit of vipers, the Phyllis Cormack and her thirteen crew members prepared to settle in with them. Tomorrow we would confront them again.

 

June 10, 1994. On Board the Whales Forever. The Netherlands.

It has been many years since that night. I sailed as First Officer again with Greenpeace in 1976, confronting the Soviet fleet north of Hawaii, watching as more whales died, frustrated at our limitations and our inability to physically stop the killing.

In 1976, I led the first Greenpeace campaign to protect Harp seals, returning to the ice to lead another campaign for the seals in 1977.

It was on the ice off Labrador that I parted ways with the group that I co-founded. As a sealer’s club descended towards the head of a seal pup, I ran forward, grabbed the sealer by the wrist, twisted the club from his grasp and threw it in the water. I then picked up the seal and took it to safety.

This was the official reason that I was called to task before the Board of Directors of Greenpeace. The real reason was that I had refused to let Patrick Moore, one of the vice-presidents, into a helicopter with Brigitte Bardot. Moore had threatened me that if I did not allow him to go visit the seals with Bardot, he would oust me from Greenpeace when he became president.

A few months later, I found myself taken to task by the Greenpeace Board of Directors, that now included lawyers, accountants and fund-raisers. They accused me of acting violently and told me that I had stolen property (the seal club) and destroyed property (the seal club). I was told that I would have to apologize to the sealer. This I would not do.

Moore would have what he wanted. I resigned from Greenpeace after the Directors voted me off the Board. Even my friends voted against me, but in doing so they had a valid reason.

Bob Hunter and I had always shared a love of science fiction. Along with RodMarining and David Garrick, we shared stories, old and new. Anderson, Asimov, Clarke, Herbert, Verne, Wells and others had all enticed and enraptured our imaginations from the time that we could read. One special favourite had been Asimov’s Foundation. Because of this book, Hunter had named Greenpeace a Foundation instead of a Society.

Briefly, the story of Asimov’s Foundation is based on a futuristic galactic empire. The empire is crumbling, and to prevent the galaxy of a million inhabited planets from falling into chaos, a mathematical psychologist named Hari Seldon works out a plan to shorten the period of chaos and to resurrect a new empire.

Seldon sets up a planet populated with physicists, chemists, biologists, nuclear engineers and other “hard” scientists. Over a period of hundreds of years, these people work to re-organize the galaxy.

Seldon’s mathematics, however, predicted that the Foundation would lose sight of its objectives and would be distracted by the power it was accumulating from the collapse of the former empire.

To counter this, he set up the Second Foundation, a much smaller organization of psychologists. The Foundation was kept ignorant of the existence of the Second Foundation. The purpose of the Second Foundation was to watch over and influence the Foundation.

The secrecy lasted until the time when the Second Foundation had to act to save the Foundation from its own ambitions. By saving the Foundation, the Second Foundation laid itself open to discovery by the people it was protecting. The knowledge that they were being controlled motivated the Foundation to attempt to destroy the Second Foundation.

With Greenpeace, I foresaw an organization that would grow and prosper. I could also see that it would evolve into a bureaucracy. It was inevitable that it would do so. What we had created in Vancouver among our small tribe would spread around the world. It was the first environmental organization with a firm founding in McLuhanism. It was the right organization at the right time.

Hunter, Marining, Garrick and I had discussed the need for a Second Foundation. My ouster from the Board was a perfect opportunity to set the wheels of the Second Foundation in motion. I also knew that according to the Asimov plan, Greenpeace would despise my every move and would seek to undermine the Second Foundation at every opportunity.

Instead, I quit the Greenpeace Foundation and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I vowed then that I would never allow Sea Shepherd to evolve into a bureaucracy and we would never compromise with or apologize to those who slaughter the whales, the dolphins, the seals and lay waste to the sea.

Since 1977, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society under my leadership has sunk eight whaling ships, including half of the Spanish fleet in 1980 and half the Icelandic fleet in 1986. We have saved thousands of whales and dolphins without causing or sustaining a single injury.

On the dock at IJmuiden, one of the protesters came up to me and shouted “What you did in Iceland and Norway is unforgivable, criminal and despicable.”

“So?” I answered.

“So you’re a terrorist.”

“So you say,” I answered.

“Ghandi would have denounced you for your violence.”

Calmly I said. “We didn’t sink those whalers for Ghandi, for you, or for any other human being. We sank them for the whales. We sank them because I looked into a whale’s eye and knew that we had to do something to stop the killing. Your opinions are not relevant and mean nothing to us. We did it for the whales.”

I knew in my heart that it was useless. How do you even begin to explain the passion that motivates our action? Unless it is felt, unless it is there, it is beyond understanding.

I compared these hecklers to some of my crew. My First Mate, Bj��Ursfj�� who served five months in a Norwegian prison for daring to oppose his own government. A former officer in the Norwegian Navy who requested political asylum in Australia because he could not morally serve a navy that protected illegal whaling operations.

I have Cheikh Sadibou Sarr, a native of Senegal who saved his hard-earned money for two years to purchase an air ticket to join my crew. He did so because his people believe that humanity will perish if the whales and dolphins are destroyed.

I also have Lisa Distefano, whose energies organized this summer’s assault against the whalers. For two years, she has worked without pay to halt whaling. In December 1992, she was with me when we located the pirate whaler Nybraena and sank it the day after Christmas.

I looked at the angry faces of the Greenpeacers who hate us with such passion, and I wished fervently that their passion could be directed towards the whalers. I wondered at their alienation and marveled that they can profess to be saviours of the Earth and then direct their energies towards denouncing Sea Shepherd and appeasing the whaling nations.

It is interesting also that Bob Hunter, Roberta Hunter, David Garrick, Rod Marining, Ron Precious and most of the original visionaries that made up the first of the Greenpeace crew are no longer with Greenpeace either. They are with us, as supporters or crew of Sea Shepherd campaigns. The exception is Dr. Patrick Moore, who sadly chose to cash in his credibility as a former Greenpeace president to become a green “Judas” working today as a public relations mercenary for the forest industry.

Together many of us feel like modern-day Dr. Frankensteins. We created a large green corporate monster, now running out of control and feeding frantically at the trough of public guilt. Greenpeace has become the world’s largest multinational “feel-good” corporation. People join to feel that they are a part of the solution and not part of the problem. So Greenpeace hangs banners, calls boycotts, knocks on doors, sends out mail and hauls in tons of cash, supporting an army of eco-bureaucrats and fueling a global public relations campaign which postures on the myth that Greenpeace is saving the world.

Meanwhile, low on cash but high on conviction, the original visionaries of Greenpeace carry on. We go by another, lesser-known name now, but the name “Sea Shepherd Conservation Society” is better known by the whalers of Norway and the Faeroes, the sealers of Canada and the Orkneys, the dolphin killers of Mexico and the shark poachers off Costa Rica. It is us that they must deal with out on the high seas.

And those who seized the Greenpeace banner from us — collect the money and posture action — they are not the army of green activists that we envisioned so many years before. The passion has been extinguished and the myth that has emerged from our vision has been turned into a profitable business.

But I do know them. In that summer of ‘94, I took advantage of our profile in Germany and the Netherlands to slam Greenpeace at every opportunity, accusing them of doing nothing as the whales died. Predictably, under the onslaught of criticism from their own members, Greenpeace mobilized a last-minute campaign to Norway. It was not difficult for them. They had two ships in the Netherlands and they headed to Southern Norway as we headed to the North.

They hung their banners, boarded a whaling boat, cut a harpoon line and were arrested. They actually went further than anything they had done in recent years, although I wondered how they can continue to damn Sea Shepherd for damaging property when they damaged a harpoon. In damaging the harpoon, they indeed earned some respect from us.

There are many who lament that it is a sad thing that different groups cannot work together. Sad though it might be, it is a fact. The objectives of an organization with highly paid executives is far different from an organization of volunteers. However, the positive side of this conflict among environmental, conservation and animal welfare groups is that competition actually motivates more action as the groups seek to outdo each other. This is good for the overall cause.

The strength of an eco-system lies in diversity, as the strength of any movement also lies in diversity. I remember Greenpeace when it had only a dozen members. My own lifetime Greenpeace membership number is 007. Today Greenpeace is a transnational corporation with millions of members and a few hundred million dollars — such is the inevitability of human charitable institutions; they become more important in themselves than their original objectives.

Ousted though they may be, cast into disfavour and reviled by the eco-executives today, the original visionaries who established Greenpeace the movement continue to work behind the scenes utilizing subtle and sometimes overt manipulations to use Greenpeace the organization as part of the means to protect the Earth.

Within Greenpeace, there are many who are sympathetic to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and from them, we receive valuable information. Greenpeace, with its formidable budget for research, can be tapped for data that can serve more action oriented groups.

After all is said and done, despite the animosity, the petty politics, and the apparent disharmony, the fact remains that I do not wish to see the destruction of Greenpeace. On the contrary, I take great pride in my part in the creation of this legendary movement. My role is to simply kick the monster in the ass now and then to remind its members of where they came from.

 

Captain Paul Watson
Founder, Sea Shepherd International

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Read more about the  Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Read Captain Watson’s BIO

Read Paul Watson’s essay The Aquatic Ape

Read Paul Watson’s Mellennium Message

I have written elsewhere about my belief that humans could form the thinking cells for GAIA. Think a moment of how our brain functions — the neurons of our human brain focus entirely on the needs of the whole body, and in turn discover the whole body takes care of them.  They have no concerns and give no attention to maintaining their own temperature, to acquiring their own nutrition, to oxygenating themselves, or even in protecting themselves from bacteria or virus.

The neurons place their trust in survival of the whole.  By making decisions which keep the body healthy and safe, they  insure the body is capable of meeting all the needs of the neurons.  By serving the whole the neurons find themselves served.

I have taught that humanity is evolving. We evolved from the animals. Animals are space-binders. Their lives are dominated by adversity. Early humans lives were dominated by adversity. Humans who commit to adversity could be called Adversans. I explained to escape the Adversary world, humans invented Captitalism and the Great Market. This is a Neutral mechanism. Humans who commit to Capitalism and the Market could be called Neutrans. I have explained that if humanity is to have a future that we must give up the hurting of Adversity — give up the ignoring of Neutrality, and embrace the helping of Synergy. Humans who commit to Synergy could be called Synergans.

Now imagine that the Earth including all of life is a single organism — GAIA.  Further imagine the entire humans species  —  all of humanity — organized in a single organizational tensegrity. This evolved form of humanity could be called Synerganity.  Synerganity then could be the brain of GAIA.  Each human being functioning as a neuron within GAIA’s brain.

Synerganity could care for GAIA — care for all of life on and of the Earth—You, Me, Others, Plants, Animals, Natural Resources, and the very Planet itself.  We humans could function as neurons.  We could care for the whole and discover ourselves to be cared for as a part of  that whole—GAIA.  If Synerganity makes the choices that protect GAIA, then those decisions will meet the needs of all of life including us humans,  just as now our brains make decisions that meet the needs of all the forty trillion cells contained in our bodies.

We Earth Neurons

Daniel Dennett

Some years ago a friend of mine in the Peace Corps told me about his efforts on behalf of a tribe of gentle Indians deep in the Brazilian forest. I asked him if he had been required to tell them about the conflict between the USA and the USSR. Not at all, he replied. There would be no point in it. They had not only never heard of either America or the Soviet Union, they had never even heard of Brazil! Who would have guessed that it is still possible to be a human being living in, and subject to the laws of, a nation without the slightest knowledge of that fact? If we find this astonishing, it is because we human beings, unlike all other species on the planet, are knowers. We are the ones–the only ones–who have figured out what we are, and where we are, in this great universe. And we are even beginning to figure out how we got here.

These quite recent discoveries are unnerving, to say the least. What you are–what each of us is–is an assemblage of roughly a trillion cells, of thousands of different sorts. Most of these cells are “daughters” of the egg and sperm cell whose union started you (there are also millions of hitchhikers from thousands of different lineages stowed away in your body), but each cell is a mindless mechanism, a largely autonomous micro-robot, no more conscious than a bacterium, and not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

Each trillion-robot team is gathered together in a breathtakingly efficient regime that has no dictator but manages to keep itself organized to repel outsiders, banish the weak, enforce iron rules of discipline–and serve as the headquarters of one conscious self, one mind. These communities of cells are fascistic in the extreme, but your interests and values have almost nothing to do with the limited goals of the cells that compose you–fortunately. Some people are gentle and generous, others are ruthless; some are pornographers and others devote their lives to the service of God, and it has been tempting over the ages to imagine that these striking differences must be due to the special features of some extra thing (a soul) installed somehow in the bodily headquarters, but what we now have figured out is that there is no such extra ingredient; we are each made of mindless robots and nothing else, no non-physical, non-robotic ingredients at all. The differences between people are all due to the way their particular robotic teams are put together, over a lifetime of growth and experience. The difference between speaking French and speaking Chinese is a difference in the organization of the working parts, and so are all the other differences of personality–and knowledge.

Four and a half billion years ago, the earth was formed, and it was utterly without life. And so it stayed for perhaps as long as a billion years. For another billion years, the planet’s oceans teemed with life, but it was all blind and deaf. Simple cells multiplied, engulfing each other, exploiting each other in a thousand ways, but oblivious to the world beyond their membranes. Then much larger, more complex cells evolved–eukaryotes–still clueless and robotic, but with enough internal machinery to begin to specialize. So it continued for more than two billion more years, the time it took for the algorithms of evolution to hit upon good ways of banding these workers together into multi-cellular organisms composed of millions, billions and, (eventually) trillions of cells, each doing its particular mechanical routine, but now yoked into specialized service, as part of an eye or an ear or a lung or a kidney. These organisms (not the individual team members composing them) had become long-distance knowers, able to spy supper trying to appear inconspicuous in the middle distance, able to hear danger threatening from afar. But still, even these whole organisms knew not what they were. Their instincts guaranteed that they tried to mate with the right sorts, and flock with the right sorts, but just as those Brazilians didn’t know they were Brazilians, no buffalo has ever known it’s a buffalo.

In just one species, our species, a new trick evolved: language. It has provided us a broad highway of knowledge-sharing, on every topic. Conversation unites us, in spite of our different languages. We can all know quite a lot about what it is like to be a Vietnamese fisherman or a Bulgarian taxi driver, an eighty-year-old nun or a five-year-old boy blind from birth, a chess master or a prostitute. No matter how different from one another we people are, scattered around the globe, we can explore our differences and communicate about them. No matter how similar to one another buffalos are, standing shoulder to shoulder in a herd, they cannot know much of anything about their similarities, let alone their differences, because they can’t compare notes. They can have similar experiences, side by side, but they really can’t share experiences the way we do.

Even in our species, it has taken thousands of years of communication for us to begin to find the keys to our own identities. It has been only a few hundred years that we’ve known that we are mammals, and only a few decades that we’ve understood in considerable detail how we have evolved, along with all other living things, from those simple beginnings. We are outnumbered on this planet by our distant cousins, the ants, and outweighed by yet more distant relatives we share with the ants, the bacteria, but though we are in the minority, our capacity for long-distance knowledge gives us powers that dwarf the powers of all the rest of the life on the planet. Now, for the first time in its billions of years of history, our planet is protected by far-seeing sentinels, able to anticipate danger from the distant future–a comet on a collision course, or global warming–and devise schemes for doing something about it. The planet has finally grown its own nervous system: us.

We may not be up to the job. We may destroy the planet instead of saving it, largely because we are such free-thinking, creative, unruly explorers and adventurers, so unlike the trillions of slavish workers that compose us. Brains are for anticipating the future, so that timely steps can be taken in better directions, but even the smartest of beasts have very limited time horizons, and little if any ability to imagine alternative worlds. We human beings, in contrast, have discovered the mixed blessing of being able to think even about our own deaths and beyond, and a huge portion of our energy expenditure over the last ten thousand years or so has been devoted to assuaging the concerns provoked by this unsettling new vista. If you burn more calories than you take in, you soon die. If you find some tricks that provide you a surplus of calories, what might you spend them on? You might devote person-centuries of labor to building temples and tombs and sacrificial pyres on which you destroy some of your most precious possessions–and even some of your very own children. Why would you want to do that? These strange and awful expenditures give us clues about some of the hidden costs of our heightened powers of imagination. We did not come by our knowledge painlessly.

Now what will we do with our knowledge? The birth-pangs of our discoveries have not subsided. Many are afraid that learning too much about what we are–trading in mystery for mechanisms–will impoverish our vision of human possibility. This fear is ill-considered. Look around at those who are eagerly participating in this quest for further knowledge and embracing the new discoveries; they are manifestly not bereft of optimism, moral conviction, engagement in life, commitment to society. In fact, if you want to find anxiety, despair, anomie today, look among the undereducated young people scavenging their dimly understood heritages (or popular culture) for a comfortable identity. Among intellectuals, look to the fashionable tribe of postmodernists, who would like to suppose that modern science is just another in a long line of myths, its institutions and expensive apparatus just the rituals and accouterments of yet another religion. That intelligent people can take this seriously is a testimony to the power that fearful thinking still has, in spite of our advances in self-consciousness. The postmodernists are right, of course, that science is just one of the things we might want to spend our extra calories on. The fact that science has been the major source of the efficiencies that created those extra calories does not entitle it to any particular share of the wealth it has created. But it still ought to be obvious that the methods and rules of science–not just its microscopes and telescopes and computers–are the new sense organs of our species, enabling us to answer questions, solve mysteries, and anticipate the future in ways no earlier human institutions can approach. The more we learn about what we are, the more options we will discern about what to try to become. We Americans have long honored the “self-made man” but now that we are actually learning enough to be able to re-make ourselves into something new, many flinch. Many people would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed, trusting in tradition, than look around to see what’s about to happen. Yes, it is unnerving; yes, it can be scary. After all, there are many entirely new mistakes we are now empowered to make. But it’s the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species–and much more exciting, as well as safer, if we open our eyes.

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This essay was originally published as an academic paper on August 15, 1999. It was reposted on KurzweilAI.net  on September 18, 2001.

More about Daniel Dennett

Sea Captain Paul Watson writes: “With a shock, my eyes met the left eye of the whale like Odysseus facing the Cyclops. That one eye stared back, an eye the size of my fist, blackish brown and with a depth that astonished and gripped me. This was no brutish creature. This was no dumb animal. The eye that I saw reflected an intense intelligence. I read the pain and I read understanding. The whale knew what we were doing. This whale had discriminated. That message was beamed directly into my heart by a mere glance. Fear there never was, but apprehension vanished like a crest upon a wave. I felt love both from and for. I felt hope, not for himself but for his kind. I saw a selflessness of a spirit completely alien to our primate selves. This was a being with an intelligence that put us to shame, with an understanding that could only humble us. And the most shameful message of all passed over to me; forgiveness.

In an instant, my life was transformed and a purpose for my life was reverently established.”

My Millennium Message

As we prepare for the challenges and mysteries that the new millennium will reveal, we must take stock of where we have come from, where we are now, and where we are heading.

We are closing the door on the most violent yet most technologically inventive, most educated yet most environmentally destructive century in the history of our species. The good news is that we survived it. The bad news is that we may not survive another.

We set foot on the threshold of the new millennium with the message of the Y2K bug reminding us that technology can ambush us if we come to rely upon science exclusively to solve all of our problems.

We must never forget that the one virtue that we can always depend on is that part of us that is rooted in the world of nature, in wilderness and wildness, intuition and emotion.  We must never sacrifice this warm embrace of the earth to the cold rationality and mechanical dictates of technology and economy.

Our challenge in the 21st Century is to find imaginative solutions to the most ominous threats ever to face this planet and our species. How do we come to grips with escalating human population growth and its effects: the escalating destruction of biodiversity, the obliteration of eco-systems and the rising rate of species extinctions?

We are faced with horrendously difficult problems without easy answers. It is so tempting to simply ignore the issues and retreat into the world of self-gratification and selfishness.  If not outright denial, we can appease our consciousness with the belief that technology will be the remedy to all the planet’s ills – forgetting that it is technology that has caused most of the problems.

At Sea Shepherd, we see the massive ships dragging, trawling, drift-netting, long-lining, seining and strip-mining the oceans, diminishing the fish and decimating habitats.  We see the whales desperately trying to avoid the sonar and merciless exploding harpoons, the eyes of innocent seal pups reflecting the descending club, and the panic of dolphins drowning in the lethal bondage of plastic nets.

Our opposition has all the technological and financial strength. They have the power of a manipulated media at their disposal, a media that dictates reality and controls perception. It is the tragedy of the commons that exploiting nature has the incentive of wealth and power whereas the defense of nature yields few material rewards.

Fortunately, the one great advantage that we have over those who destroy for profit is that we see a larger picture.  We are not restricted to viewing the world through the prism of economics.  We understand that we have the responsibility to defend the majority of humanity – all those people who will be born in a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand years – from the relatively tiny minority of people in the present whose greed is robbing the future.

And it is not just humanity that we are responsible for.  As the most powerful species on the planet, we must protect those myriad millions of other species from… well, ourselves.

And the most wonderful thing of all is that we can actually do it. All we have to do is to surrender our fears to the guidance of our heart and spirit and become activists. This means placing our talents, skills, experience, and virtues into the service of creating a better tomorrow. Over the last quarter century I have stood at the helm of an organization that has saved lives, protected habitats, and motivated thousands of people to become activists. We have created positive change and we have witnessed positive change. In the last quarter century we have seen the emergence of a conservation ethic and we have experienced the development of the environmental movement.

In 1960, hardly anyone knew what the word “ecology” meant.  Since then we have seen the contributions of many individuals and organizations that have championed endangered species and threatened habitats.

Your very own Sea Shepherd International has shut down pirate whaling operations, halted drift netters on the high seas, stopped draggers from exterminating fish, and saved the lives of sea-turtles and seals.

What we have been doing for a quarter of a century is creating a legacy to hand down to our children tomorrow, building a strategy to make a continuing difference, and building the strength to persevere against the forces of destruction, never forgetting that it is the passion and compassion of individuals that forges a movement, and it is the imaginative vision of individuals that creates solutions.

Our society is an organization of passionate people, motivated by our compassion for the earth, her oceans, and her living community of species. It is from this gentle membership that Sea Shepherd International is given our strength, our ideas, and our guidance in taking our fight to the high seas – to the killing fields with the objective of intervening with the gift of life and hope.

Into the new millennium we sail and we have no shortage of enemies.  But as that great pirate and hero Captain John Paul Jones once said – ” give me a fair ship that I may sail her into harm’s way.”  That is where we will continue to go – into harm’s way, with a mission to protect and conserve the living treasures of our oceans.

Over the years, it is you who have made it possible for our ships to go forth. Only with your support will we continue.  In return for your support, we will never compromise our objectives, nor will we ever fear to go where we are needed – though all the forces of technological hell be arrayed to bar the way.  For the whales, the turtles, the dolphins, the sea-birds, the seals, the fish and all those fabulous and beautiful creatures of the deep blue sea who are our clients, we, your activist crewmembers, offer you our most sincere appreciation for your support

Best wishes,


Captain Paul Watson
Founder, Sea Shepherd International

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Read more about the  Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Read Paul Watson’s essay The Aquatic Ape

Yesterday, I discussed Synergic Trusting and Synergic Trusts. That essay was a preamble to this morning’s article.

What about the TrustMark ?

Timothy Wilken, MD

Creative Commons is a new web service that is focused on expanding the intellectual commons. From the description on their website:

“Creativity and innovation rely on a rich heritage of prior intellectual endeavor. We stand on the shoulders of giants by revisiting, reusing, and transforming the ideas and works of our peers and predecessors. Digital communications promise a new explosion of this kind of collaborative creative activity. But, at the same time, expanding intellectual property protection leaves fewer and fewer creative works in the “public domain”–the body of creative material unfettered by law and, to quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “free as the air to common use.”

“Until 1976, creative works were not protected by U.S. copyright law unless their authors took the trouble to publish a copyright notice along with them. Works not affixed with a notice passed into the public domain. Following legislative changes in 1976 and 1988, creative works are now automatically copyrighted. We believe that many people would not choose this “copyright by default” if they had an easy mechanism for turning their work over to the public or exercising some but not all of their legal rights. It is Creative Commons’ goal to help create such a mechanism.”

As a step towards the creation of such a mechanism they suggest the following categories of non-copyrighted intellectual property. 

Option 1: The Public Domain Option

The public domain is the set of information and creative works in which no private party holds any exclusive right or privilege and which is “free as the air to common use,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once put it. If you choose to dedicate your work to the public domain, you will give up all of your rights in that work, permanently, and thereby free the work for infinite reuses. Anyone can distribute, copy, modify, or build upon any work in the public domain at any time, without anyone’s permission. Read more about the importance of a vibrant public domain.

Option 2: The Creative Commons Custom Licensing Option

If you prefer to make your work available to the public subject to certain conditions, and to retain ownership of your copyright, you could instead choose to create a Creative Commons Customs License.

The contributor application will help you build the combination of generous license terms that reflects your priorities. We have the following license terms in mind, but if you are a copyright holder interested in cultivating the Creative Commons, we want your feedback about whether these terms suit your preferences.

Attribution. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative Works. Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.

Non-Public. Permit others to make private copies of the work and derivative works, but not to distribute or publicly to display or perform them.

Copyleft. Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

While these options seem good for Humanity as Community, they don’t seem to do much for Humanity as Individual. As a synergic scientist studying the process of “working together”, I am always concerned to see that all parties to a relationship benefit—that all parties to a relationship win. This was why I created the TrustMark.

What are TrustMarked files?

Trust is not a new word for humanity. It was coined long ago when the world was dominated by the adversary way. Trust meant that I could rely on you not to hurt me. It was safe to assume that you were not my enemy.

Synergic trust means means more. It means that while I can rely on you not to hurt me, I can further rely on you to help me. It is not only safe to assume that you are not my enemy, but I can count on you as a friend.

Friends, you are welcome to download files from The Time-binding Trust without obligation. However to protect the integrity of these files, we ask that you not alter their contents in any way nor remove this TrustMark label. There are no other conditions or restrictions. You are encouraged to copy the files freely and distribute them to whomever you choose.

If you discover that the files of The Time-binding Trust are of value to you, and you wish to support the Trust, you may choose to help us directly with your actions or if more convenient for you by making support payments. If your use of The Time-binding Trust provides you with continuing value, you are welcome to give the Trust continuing support. The amount, frequency, and timing of all gifts of support are entirely at the discretion of the giver.

We trust ourselves to have created a valuable service that will help you. We trust you to recognize that value and choose to help and support us.
We believe that helping others leads to others helping us.

We believe in Co-Operation. Co-Operation is operating together so that we all win.

You help.
Others help.
You help others.
Others help you.
You help others help you.
Others help you help others.
You help others help you help others.
Others help you help others help you.

The TrustMark removes all barriers to the dissemination of knowing. I think this is what is missing from the Creative Commons contributor concept. The implication is that either Humanity as Community wins by individuals donating their ideas to the commons, or that Humanity as Individuals win by asserting their property rights with use of copyright.

The TrustMark is a synergic solution. It seeks a mutual win.

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However, I am pleased to see the existence of Creative Commons. I think it is time for humanity to rethink our concept of property. We need to adjust our definition of Property to one that is compatible with synergic science.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Action and Leverage

Synergic Economics accepts that wealth produced from human action and from human leverage is property. Therefore, wealth created by human action and leverage is owned by the individual(s) acting and the individual(s) leveraging.

The animal has action, but only we humans have leverage. While our human action can be applied directly to solving problems and meeting our needs, the labor of our backs does not take advantage of our Time-binding power. We humans owe our great success not to our muscular strength, but to the intelligence we can use to guide that strength, and the leverage we gain by using tools. Remember, we humans are the tool makers and tool users.

If I am a skilled tool user, I can use my skilled action to serve myself and others. If I am a skilled tool maker, I can leverage my action and the action of others to serve myself and others.

Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries are therefore property. Synergic Economics recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property—Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries, and technology designs can be used to develop secondary property — technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action. Therefore, synergic science recognizes property rights based on two forms of human behavior — Action and Leverage.

plunder

plunder—def—> Property or Trust acquired with force or fraud—all adversarily acquired Property or Trust. Stolen property is plunder. Exploited Trust is plunder. This includes Trust that is used or controlled in violation of the Synergic Trust Responsibility. Synergic Trust that is used without helping others is plunder. Synergic Trust that is used to hurt others is plunder. Causing damage to the Life, Earth, or Time Trusts is plunder. And, using Time Trust to hurt others is also plunder.

Any individual who steals property with force or fraud is accorded no property rights. Plunder cannot be sold, traded, rented, leased, licensed, gifted, or donated to anyone. Possession of plunder even when obtained innocently does not entitle the possessor to property rights. It should be returned to its rightful owner, if that is not possible then the rescued Property should be placed in the Custody of the appropriate Guardian Trustees.

We can now update our definition of Synergic Wealth.

Synergic Wealth —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally—that which satisfies human needs of self and other—that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

Synergic Wealth is then 1) Life itself including the Life Trust 2) Human Action—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) Human Leverage—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the Time Trust, and 5) the Earth Trust.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Mixing Property and Trust

There is often an area of overlap with Synergic Trusts and Property being mixed. For example, animals trained as security agents would be a blend of Life Trust (the animal) + Property (the training and care). Also Synergic Trusts often require property to make them valuable. As example, Earth Trust (crude oil under the ground) has no value until property (oil well technology — finding, drilling, pumping, transporting) is added.

Andrew J. Galambos, Freedom100: Capitalism—The Liberal Revolution, Free Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles, Privately Published 1961

Alfred Korzybski, The Manhood of Humanity, E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1921

Redefining the Future — Expanding our definitions 

Continuing from yesterday’s discussion of Synergic Trusting and Synergic Trusts. We can now recall my earlier definitions of synergic wealth:

 SYNERGIC WEALTH —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally — that which satisfies human needs of self and other — that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

SYNERGIC WEALTH is then 1) LIFE itself including the LIFE TRUST 2) HUMAN ACTION—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) HUMAN LEVERAGE—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the TIME TRUST, and 5) the EARTH TRUST.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the Protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Korzybski’s Indexing

Now that we have carefully defined Wealth, we can utilize a derivative of Korzybski’s Indexing^TT to identify what form of wealth we are talking about.

Property^P is designated with superscript P. Life Trust^LT is designated with a superscript LT. Earth Trust^ET is designated with a superscript ET. Time-binding Trust^TT is designated with a superscript TT. And plunder_p is designated with a subscript _p.

Some examples would be: my computer^P, the American eagle^LT,the Earth^ET, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT, and the thief was arrested in possession of several cellular phones_p.

Synergic Trustees

Recall, I said earlier that all humans are synergic trustees.

We are Earth Trustees for the land and natural resources we granted use of for our personal needs. We must conserve and protect those Earth resources that we are entrusted with. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Earth Trust.

We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. As parents we are the Life Trustees for our children until they are adults. We must not harm ourselves or our children. We must live in ways to help ourselves and our children. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Life Trust.

We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable.

In synergic culture, all humans are granted access to the Time-binding Trust at birth. Every human may make full use of the knowing contained in the Time-binding Trust as long as that use does not hurt others.

Personal or educational use of the Time-binding Trust is encouraged without limit or restriction. Knowledge cannot be consumed. Using the Time-binding Trust does not in any way diminish it.

Every human who gains economically from their use of the Time-binding Trust is required to acknowledge and give credit to the innovators and creators of the knowledge they are using.

They are further encouraged to help others to the extent they are capable — helping is a basic synergic value. Who they choose to help and to what extent they help is entirely voluntary — entirely their own personal choice. And, while synergic culture encourages its members to help others, there is no coercive obligation to do so.

Furthermore, economic gain from use of the Time-binding Trust creates no economic obligation to the Time-binding Trust or anyone else.

Intellectual Property

New ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as new art, music, and writing are not a part of the Time-binding Trust. This is intellectual property. Or, what Galambos called Primary Property. All property has an owner. We cannot use property without the explicit permission of the owner. Recall our earlier definition: 

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as art, music, and writing are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

In today’s world there is much interest in intellectual property. Property in ideas are protected to some extent under patent and copyright statutes. Patent & Intellectual Property Lawyers Laurence R. Hefter and Robert D. Litowitz explain: 

“In today’s world a patent is a contract between society as a whole and an individual inventor. Under the terms of this social contract, the inventor is given the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, and selling a patented invention for a fixed period of time in return for the inventor’s disclosing the details of the invention to the public. Thus, patent systems encourage the disclosure of information to the public by rewarding an inventor for his or her endeavors.

“Although the word “patent” finds its origins from documents issued by the sovereign of England in the Middle Ages for granting a privilege, today the word is linked synonymously with this exclusive right granted to inventors. The World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights provides the international standard for duration of patent exclusivity, which is 20 years from the date of filing. All World Trade Organization members will be obligated to meet this standard. Under all patent systems, once this period has expired, people are free to use the invention as they wish.

“Any invention, either a product or a process for creating a product, “provided that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are capable of industrial application.” In other words, to be patentable, an invention must be novel, useful, and nonobvious. A prerequisite to patentability is that the invention must be capable of some practical application.

“A copyright is an exclusive right to reproduce an original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, to prepare derivative works based upon the original work, and to perform or display the work in the case of musical, dramatic, choreographic, and sculptural works. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied. Rather, copyright protection is limited to an author s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium.

“Copyright protection automatically subsists in all works of authorship from the moment of creation. The World Trade Organization Agreement provides a minimum standard for duration of copyright protection. In the case of a person, the term is the life of the author plus 50 years.

“The exclusive rights granted to the copyright owner do not include the right to prevent others from making fair use of the owner s work. Such fair use may include use of the work for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching or education, and scholarship or research.

“To secure copyright protection, the work in question must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Works of authorship that fall within this definition may include:

Literary works (including computer programs);

Musical works and accompanying lyrics;

Dramatic works and dialogue;

Pantomimes and choreographic works;

Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;

Motion pictures and other audiovisual works; and

Sound recordings.

“It is important to note that the laws of many countries do not limit the type or form of work because authors are continuing to invent new ways of expressing themselves.

Property clearly plays an important role in our present Neutral political-economic system. Property will play an important role in a Synergic political economic system as well. Those those desiring to use Intellectual Property will need to come to terms with the owner of the property. I expect most owners would want their property used as widely as possible, happy to receive a use fee or Lever Royalty. The terms and amount of the royalty would be negotiated and determined by the owner and those desiring to use the Intellectual Property. Elsewhere in my paper entitled the Organizational Tensegrity, I discuss synergic mechanisms for determining and paying Lever Royalites for the use of Intellectual Property.  

Intellectual Property Rights

Recall as Hefter and Litowitz explained, in today’s world:

“Authors which incudes scientists, writers, artists, and musicians can copyright their works. However, copyright protection is limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.”

Galambos’s definition of property provided much greater rights to both Inventors and Authors. Under Moral Capitalism the right to control one’s property was an absolute with the only limitation being that you could not hurt others with your property. This right of course extended to intellectual property since after life itself, primary property was the most important form of property.

And, Intellectual Property rights were not limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Intellectual Property rights did extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.

Galambos recognized that independent discoveries and independent inventions did and do occur. So individuals with strong evidence of independent discovery or independent invention were fully entitled to property rights.

As a synergic scientist, I am in agreement with Galambos’ call for a greater degree of intellectual property rights, and I accept the occurrence of genuine independent discoveries and inventions, and the need for a mechanism of justice to abitrate property disputes. 

Duration of Property Rights

Again, Hefter and Litowitz decribe our present world: 

“Current international statutes degree that the inventor of a new tool can file for a patent granting exclusive right of ownership for a period of 20 years from date of filing.

“The duration of copyright protection in the case of a person is for the duration of the life of the author plus 50 years.”

In Moral Capitalism, the duration of property rights were not to be limited.

According to the precepts of Moral Capitalism, Isaac Newton as the recognized innovator of the Laws of Motion would have intellectual property rights throughout his life, and these would not terminate even upon his death. Galambos invented the concept of a “Natural Estate”, the intellectual property rights of an innovator persisted even after death. A Moral Corporation was to be charged with the authority and responsibility for managing the intellectual property rights of the deceased innovator within his “Natural Estate”.

This Moral Corporation, representing the “Natural Estate”, would license the intellectual property of the deceased innovator to present humanity for moral (non-coercive) use. In our example, Newton’s intellectual property (The Laws of Motion) would earn revenue shares as a monetary payment of gratitude.

Since the Industrial Revolution is based in large part on the secondary property derived from Isaac Newton’s primary property (the Laws of Motion), one could easily imagine that the size of Isaac Newton’s “Natural Estate” would result in the creation of an enormously wealthy and powerful Moral Corporation.

With the large amount of intellectual property in the history of humanity there would be need for many Natural Estates. The largest Natural Estates would be those of the most important innovators in human history — Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Rudolf Diesel, George Eastman, Albert Einstein, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Michael Faraday, Galileo Galilei, etc., etc., etc..

Galambos envisioned that the Natural Estate industry would become the dominant industry in a proprietary future dominated by Moral Capitalism. He saw the Natural Estate mechanism as a complete replacement for government. After all in a world where everything is property and where there is no such thing as a small interference with property, protecting property is the only rule. Moral Capitalism results in a completely proprietary world.

Unfortunately, the Natural Estate mechanism while a clever idea does not work, and in fact can not work. 

The Nature of Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property is slippery, hard to keep track of. When I learn something, I often place the fact in my mind without a proprietary footnote. This is true for all humans. There is presently no way to record or print out a copy of the human mind. And, if I am reading many different authors, talking with many different people, surfing the internet, listening to the radio, watching televison, there are enormous numbers of different ideas and thoughts that I am exposed daily, let alone in a lifetime of living and thinking. Is this my original idea ? Sometimes I don’t even know for sure myself.

And, my mind was already full of all the knowing that I have learned and mastered from the past. If I think in English, then the very structure of the languange I use to order my thoughts would belong to whoever invented the English language. And since language is build overtime often one word or phrase at a time, we are probably not talking about one innovator, but maybe hundreds, or thousands, or millions. And then, there is the language of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, art and music. Most of what I know I learned from the dead. If that is property how do we sort it all out.

And, some of what I learned is from people who are still living. That is other people’s intellectual property, but at least they are still alive to represent themselves and their property rights.

Objectifying a living individual’s knowing is difficult, but doable. I can write down my ideas. I can tell my ideas to others. I can make written, digital, audio and video recordings. I can be interviewed, questioned. Asked to explain how I created the idea, and what was my train of thought.

However, all ability to objectify my knowing ends with my death.

It would create a world full of humans looking back at the past with endless struggles between “Natural Estates” arguing over who owns what. And, how do you settle these property disputes, when all the principles are dead ? 

Creating human organizations to the manage the intellectual property of the dead is fraught with enormous difficulties. Do the executors of Albert Einstein’s Natural Estate even understand his intellectual property.

Worse yet, who has the right to select those living humans to manage Natural Estates. It is first come, first served. I could announce tomorrow that I am the executor of Archimedes’ Natural Estate and that everyone who uses leverage in anyway owes Archimedes a revenue share. Imagine the revenue that could produce. And, of course I could pay myself quite well as Archimedes’ executor. Who decides ? Who arbitrates ? Certainly, Archimedes wouldn’t care.

And, why not just announce myself as the executor of the Natural Estate for the Inventor of the wheel or for the inventor of  language. Wheels are everywhere from ox carts to 767s, who wouldn’t pay royalties on the wheel. And, language there is no one who is called human that doesn’t use languge.  Everyone who talks must pay my company a royalty. 

Death and Inheritance

The dead have no needs including no need of wealth.

WEALTH —def—> That which promotes human well being — that which satisfies human needs — that which promotes both human survival and human meaning.

The dead have no actions nor do they lever others action. The dead cannot control Property or Trust, and therefore have no Property rights nor Trust privileges.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control doesn’t hurt others.

At the time of death, all primary property of the deceased passes into the Time-binding Trust. This includes all known ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs.

When a creator of scientific knowledge dies their Primary Property passes into the Time-binding Trust. Those desiring to use Time-binding Trust like Haskell’s Periodic Coordinate System^TT, Galambos’ Automatic Remoteness Dilution^TT, or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT can do so as long as their use of these Trusts with synergic responsibilty — they do not hurt anyone with the leverage gained by using the trust, and they acknowledge and give credit to the innovator of that knowledge. No revenue share is paid for use of a Time-binding Trust.

Synergic Associate Daan Joubert asks: “Suppose an innovator dies suddenly. What happens to the immediate family and the dependents that are supported from the income stream provided by the licensing of the innovator’s intellectual property.  – wife or husband, and minor children ?”

In a truely synergic culture. The basic life support for all humans individuals is provided by Humanity as Community using Wealth from the Earth, Life, and Time-binding Trusts. I will describe this completely in a later paper.

 

And, of course this is the proper roll of insurance. To provide for immediate family in the event of unexpected death.

But, during the bridge period, perhaps there could be some time period when existing contracts for use of the innovator’s intellectual property would continue. How long? The life of the spouse? Until minor children reach some age of adulthood. In today’s world perhaps that should be after college. (age 21) ?

Daan Joubert asks: “And, what about the situation where the work of the innovator was in progress at the time of the innovator’s death, suppose his/her innovations were not finished. Shouldn’t it be possible to appoint a curator of the ideas with a protected period of say 10 years, to complete the work as envisioned by the innovator?”

I think this is a valid concern, but I think the mechanisms as described would handle this OK. When the Innovator died, all his intellectual property becomes Time-binding Trust. It is now available to anyone to use with synergic responsibility. This would include those qualified to act as a curator of the ideas. Also it is possible that those most qualified to continue the innovator’s work were not even known by him. So, the release of the deceased innovators intellectual property to the Time-binding Trust opens up an opportunity for new minds to access and extend the work.

However with that said, if the innovation has not yet been disclosed to the public, or only partially disclosed to the public, then the innovation is still  private. There is no mechanism for private (not know by the public) intellectual property to enter the Time-binding Trust until it is made public by the act of disclosure. If the innovator was working with an associate, or team of associates, they could continue, finish the innovation and then go public.

Also, it is important to note any individual(s) who continue working on the innovation, making improvements to that  innovation are creating new intellectual property of their own with intellectual property rights.

So innovations should not be stranded by the sudden death of an innovator.

If you want to use the intellectual property of a living innovator. You have to ask permission and make an agreement for that use. The living innovator has property rights.  As an owner he/she may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Secondary property can be inherited — this includes artifacts of any kind or size — houses, buildings material possessions and physical products — technology artifacts or tools.

Land can not be owned. If you inherited a house or building you would be responsible to make the lease payments to the Earth Trust for the site upon which the house or building stand.

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Read more about a Synergic Future

Synergic Trusting and Synergic Trusts — Two Different Things

Timothy Wilken, MD

Trusting is not a new behavior for humanity. It was invented long ago when the world was dominated by the adversary way. Trusting meant that I could rely on you not to hurt me. Trusting meant it was safe to assume that you were not my enemy.

Synergic trusting means means more. It means that while I can rely on you not to hurt me, I can further rely on you to help me. It is not only safe to assume that you are not my enemy, but I can count on you as a friend.

Synergic trusting is a behavior that is required for a time-binding class of life.

What is meant by Time-binding?

The most unique fact about humans, from a scientific perspective, is our ability to understand and to transfer our understanding to each other. This unique ability is what distinguishes us from all other forms of life. Alfred Korzybski coined the term Time-Binding as the human ability to understand and to transfer that understanding to other humans.

Time-binding is that unique human ability to pass that ‘knowing’ from one generation to the next generation. Both animal and human offspring begin their lives in nearly total ignorance. The differences that exist between them are small, but what advantage in knowing that does exist belongs clearly to the animal.

While the animal seems to begin life with a greater store of inherited knowing, it possesses little ability to learn from its parents. The animal is condemned to rediscover over and over, every generation must discover anew the knowings of its parents. The wise old owl may know a great deal, but he has no way to pass what he knows to his offspring and they have no way to receive it.

We humans are very different in that respect. We can and do pass our knowing from one generation to the next. As Alfred Korzybski explained:

“Human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them—I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the inheritor of the bygone ages and the trusteeof posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define humanity, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the Time-binding class of life.” ¹

What do I mean by a Synergic Trust?

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is “wealth”. I define Synergic Trust as wealth that comes to us as a gift. Synergic Trust can be divided into three categories.

1) The Life Trust –which is life itself, and the plants and animals which are gifts from God, and Nature. And, our human bodies which are a gift from God, Nature, and our Parents.

2) The Earth Trust–the sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, the earth itself all of which come to us freely. This wealth is provided to us by God and Nature.

And, 3) The Time-binding Trust — the accumulated “knowing” from the time-binding of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology. It is the Time- binding Trust that forms the basis of all human progress.

We humans are beneficiaries then of three major trusts–the Life Trust, the Earth Trust and the Time-binding Trust.

Trusts are not Property

We, humans can not and do not own these trusts. They are not derived from our lives. They are not the product of our mind or labor. We have not paid for them. There is no moral or rational basis for us to claim ownership. They are not property.

Therefore, if we wish the privilege to use and control these trusts, we must act as trustees, and act responsibly for the benefit of all humanity. As responsible trustees, we must preserve and protect these trusts. We must act as conservationists.

“Conservation is the sustainable use of natural resources–soils, water, plants, animals, and minerals. The natural resources of any area constitute its basic capital, and wasteful use of those resources constitutes an economic loss. From the aesthetic viewpoint, conservation also includes the maintenance of national parks, wilderness areas, historic sites, and wildlife.

“Natural resources are of two main types, renewable and nonrenewable. Renewable resources include wildlife and natural vegetation of all kinds. The soil itself can be considered a renewable resource, although severe damage is difficult to repair because of the slow rate of soil-forming processes. The natural drainage of waters from the watershed of a region can be maintained indefinitely by careful management of vegetation and soils, and the quality of water can be controlled through pollution control.

“Nonrenewable resources are those that cannot be replaced or that can be replaced only over extremely long periods of time. Such resources include the fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and the metallic and other ores.” ²

The Life and Earth Trusts are perishable. They must be protected for our children, and for all future children.

The Time-binding Trust is less susceptible to damage by the user. Using knowledge or technology designs does not diminish their future value, but they must be used responsibly. We must not hurt others with any trusts that we control.In fact, we should help others to whatever the extent we are capable.

All humans are trustees. We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable. For while Time-binding grants us humans the power to understand, it does not insure that we will use our understanding wisely.

Much of our knowledge is embedded in our tools. Human knowledge grows continuously and without limit. As we incorporate evermore powerful knowledge into artifacts, we create evermore powerful tools.

When we use tools to hurt others, they are called weapons.

If we incorporate evermore powerful knowledge into the tools we use to hurt others, we will create evermore powerful weapons. This pathway leads inevitably to the destruction of all humanity.

We humans have a choice. We can choose humility with our gift of Time- binding. We can choose responsibility as the moral requirement for using our power of understanding. We can choose to join together and protect our Synergic Trusts. Only this pathway will guarantee us a future.

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²Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopedia. Microsoft Corporation, 1963-96

In today’s article, computer scientist David Reed argues that by cooperating we can find more room in the electromagnetic spectrum for all our communication needs. This paper was orginally published under the title: “Why spectrum is not property – the case for an entirely new regime of wireless communications policy”.

When Less is More

David P. Reed

What we now know about the physics and architecture of RF communications contradicts the “property” model of spectrum.

Yet the entire tradition and practice of managing wireless communications technologies in the broadcast, communications, and telephony industries is firmly based on a legal “metaphor” that equates spectrum allocations with rights in physical property, such as land use rights. Since uncoordinated use of spectrum can lead to problems of interference, coordination of spectrum usage is known to be necessary. The “metaphor” of property rights has been used to structure that coordination by subdividing available capacity among users so that interference is avoided.  This subdivision assumes that the available capacity that can be used with a given technology is fixed, so that the goal is to apportion the fixed capacity among the uses with the goal of optimizing overall societal benefit.

The Problem

One example should suffice to show that this metaphor no longer works.  In a nutshell, the problem is this. We now know that we can arrange for the capacity of a fixed amount of spectrum in a fixed volume of space to increase as the number of users increases.

Here’s the example. Two independent research projects, Tim Shepard of MIT, and Gupta and Kumar of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign have shown that the capacity of “spectrum” can be managed so that it increases with the number of users. The key idea is to organize the spectrum users into a cooperative network rather than an uncoordinated set of point-to-point channels. As the number of users N increases, the capacity can grow as N1/2 (the square root of N) in the architectures they suggest. Thus, the more users that make up the network, the more capacity the network can carry.

Further, I have good technical reasons to believe that future cooperative wireless network architectures can achieve a capacity that scales proportional to N.  If that does turn out to be true, then adding each new user creates sufficient capacity to support that additional user.  There’s no strong proof that O(N) is the limit among all possible architectures.

In addition, the flexibility (quantified by the set of options created within a particular wireless network architecture – its “optionality”) can grow more steeply than N – e.g. N2 for Metcalfe’s Law that quantifies the growth of pairwise transaction options, and 2N according to my own (Reed’s) law that describes the growth of options in group-forming networks. For many applications, flexibility of this sort is as important as capacity in defining the economic value for users, i.e. utility.

What a new regime must do

Since each of these scaling laws show that cooperative wireless networks can create more utility as the number of network users increase, then “spectrum” capacity for communications does not behave like any ordinary kind of property. We create markets to manage real property and other goods because that is an effective way to avoid “The tragedy of the commons” so well-described by Garrett Hardin in his essay by the same name.

But when the commons’ capacity can increase with the number of users, we clearly need a different regime to allocate that capacity among users.

Such a regime must encourage cooperation among users, because non-cooperation can prevent the creation of additional capacity.

We don’t know today what the “best” cooperative architecture will be. Surely Shepard’s design is only the first among many that will be discovered by researchers and innovators.

So any new regime must also encourage innovation in new architectures, and foster creative competition among various architectures to search for the most effective combination of architectures and policy.

So what should we do?

I think now is the time to look backwards to the early days of the Internet for inspiration. When the Internet Protocol (now called IPv4) was created, we did not know what the best technology would be for building networks. Today we are using technology that was never contemplated in the late 1970’s to transport Internet messages, and yet that protocol continues to be the core of the Internet. The key idea in creating IPv4 was decoupling the users of the Internet from the properties of the technologies inside the many transport networks that make up the Internet.

We need a regime that allows RF networks to interoperate and cooperate in use of “spectrum” in an open and experimental way, just as the Internet did.

The design of this regime, which spans physics, architecture, economics, and policy, is a worthy goal. It is more than a “research project” and more than a “spectrum allocation policy”, because it needs to consider all four areas at the same time.

While the active work on such areas as “space-division multiplexing”, OFDMA, “mobile ad hoc networks” and “software defined radio” contribute to the technology that may enable a more interesting future, these technologies by themselves are not sufficient, and are not even strictly necessary. In the early Internet, for example, the power did not derive from the invention of optical fiber or the Ethernet – instead it derived from an architecture that could absorb unanticipated innovation into its fabric without a speedbump. The Internet architecture was fundamentally a “cooperative” network, which created huge incentives for cooperation among it many builders and users. We needed the Internet architecture to create a space in which the last 25 years of innovation could create a new communications regime that is quite different from the regime that grew up under the primary control of the telephone company.

A call to action

We need to see the “spectrum” in a new way today. There is an opportunity for much better spectrum use that is based on cooperative networking rather than a property model. Without a doubt, the opportunity is huge. It’s time to get started.

Copyright © 2001 David P. Reed 

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