Creating a "Seed" of Civilization's Knowledge

I’ve been thinking of civilization (the technium) as a life form, as a self-replicating structure. I began to wonder what is the smallest seed into which you could reduce the "genes" of civilization, and have it unfold again, sufficient that it could also make another seed again. That is, what is the smallest seed of the technium that is viable? It must be a seed able to grow to reproduction age and express itself as a full-fledge civilization and have offspring itself -- another replicating seed.

This seed would most likely be a library full of knowledge and perhaps tools. Many libraries now contain a lot of what we know about our culture and technology, and even a little bit of how to recreate it, but this library would have to accurately capture all the essential knowledge of cultural self-reproduction. It is important to realize that this seed library is not the universal library of everything we know. Rather, it is a kernel that contains that which cannot be replicated and that which when expanded can recover what we know.

Seeds are good for many things. They are good for next season renewal, or in dormant mode for some species, for continuity over long gaps. They are also food (input) for other projects. We know that oak trees can be compressed into acorns, and whales compressed into a fertilized zygote, so I think civilization can be compressed into a library of sorts. The unpacking of this seed requires the right environment and time scale (in the whale's case it needs a mommy whale, and an oak needs a forest and soil) so the creature is not entirely compressed into the seed alone, but still it is handy enough.

Kevin Kelly, The Forever Book (February 22, 2006 at)

• civilization
• knowledge