Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Jack R. Bialik – Lost In Time

Transcript

Jack R. Bialik – Lost In Time · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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Speaker 1: My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
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Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and
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Speaker 1: the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now and
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Speaker 1: we will explore these topics and so much more with
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Speaker 1: fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to
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Speaker 1: destination unlimited. What if ninety eight percent of human history
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Speaker 1: has vanished along with the wisdom we need most today?
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Speaker 1: My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Jack Arbiolic, says
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Speaker 1: it's time for us to rethink how much we really
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Speaker 1: know and how much is waiting to be rediscovered. Jack
1:00
Speaker 1: Biolick's life and career have spanned the globe and technological spectrum.
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Speaker 1: His worldview is shaped by living in many states at
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Speaker 1: an early age and traveling the world, giving him a
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Speaker 1: unique lens on how different cultures operate. His professional career
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Speaker 1: took him from working for the United States Air Force
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Speaker 1: to a long impactful career at Motorola and eventually to
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Speaker 1: contributions in White House technology initiatives and humanitarian efforts in Haiti.
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Speaker 1: As a global innovator and thought leader, Jack now dedicates
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Speaker 1: his time to exploring the cyclical nature of human knowledge,
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Speaker 1: how we gain it, how we lose it, and most importantly,
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Speaker 1: how we can do better at preserving it for future generations.
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Speaker 1: His website is Jrbiolic dot com and he joins me
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Speaker 1: this week to share his amazing book Lost in Time,
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Speaker 1: Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. Please join me in welcoming
1:59
Speaker 1: today Destination Unlimited, Jack Biolick.
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Speaker 2: Welcome Jack, Well, thank you, Victor. Happy to be here.
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Speaker 1: Jack. You've lived in nine different states by the age
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Speaker 1: of twenty five and visited many countries. Have these diverse
2:15
Speaker 1: experiences shaped your perspective on global cultures and systems?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Victor. I think what happened is as
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Speaker 2: you're growing up, you know, and you're moving from place
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Speaker 2: to place, that really gives your mind an expansive view
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Speaker 2: of things, and you know, an overview of things. You know,
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Speaker 2: you're not locked down to one particular way of thinking.
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Speaker 2: I think it helps, not that you necessarily need that,
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Speaker 2: but I think it helped me to get a bigger
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Speaker 2: view of the world around us, and you know, kind
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Speaker 2: of open open my mind up to new ideas and
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Speaker 2: thoughts and ways of thinking.
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Speaker 1: You share that only one point six percent of knowledge
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Speaker 1: of ancient knowledge is still retained that sounds almost unbelievable.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, you know you can do the math.
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Speaker 2: They estimate now, it depends on who you ask, but
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Speaker 2: of course it's estimated that humankind's been around three hundred
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Speaker 2: thousand years and we've got about five thousand years recorded,
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Speaker 2: so you know, we just have a small percentage. And
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Speaker 2: even of that five thousand years, we only have portions
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Speaker 2: of it, you know, so it's probably less than one
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Speaker 2: point six but yeah, it's very little.
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Speaker 1: What about some of the architectural discoveries of things that
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Speaker 1: are dating back beyond where we thought we were.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's many things that we've found that we've seen.
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Speaker 2: Of course, the biggest one in front of us. All right, now,
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Speaker 2: you know the pyramids, the Great Pyramids in Egypt. You know,
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Speaker 2: there's great mysteries surrounding those structures. How they made them,
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Speaker 2: how they put them together. My background, I have a
4:30
Speaker 2: background in project management and I just did some simple
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Speaker 2: mathematical kind of computations and those pyramids are just mind
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Speaker 2: boggling on how they can put them together. So here
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Speaker 2: I'll give you an example. So we have two point
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Speaker 2: three million three ton stones or larger that are placed there,
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Speaker 2: and one of the Pyramids, and if you do math,
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Speaker 2: you would have to lay one stone every two minutes,
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Speaker 2: twelve hours a day, three hundred and fifty nine days
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Speaker 2: a year. I took a few days out for rain
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Speaker 2: for twenty years, So basically for twenty years, you know,
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Speaker 2: every two point three minutes, you're laying a stone, and
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Speaker 2: it's got to be exactly even and you know, level
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Speaker 2: and perfectly put together. It's mind boggling. I mean, we
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Speaker 2: I don't even know that we could do that. So
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Speaker 2: we have architectural things in front of us that have
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Speaker 2: made us question, how did these people do this?
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Speaker 1: Absolutely? What inspired you to write lost in Time are
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Speaker 1: forgotten and vanishing knowledge? Was there a particular event or
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Speaker 1: realization that prompted this?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the way that really came about was
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Speaker 2: kind of an inspirational moment sitting there watching thing was
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Speaker 2: National Geographic or the History Channel, one of those, and
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Speaker 2: you know, they start talking about a vending machine in
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Speaker 2: ancient Rome, and that by itself doesn't really strike one,
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Speaker 2: except that if you realize, oh wait, they had a
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Speaker 2: vending machine in ten BC that dispensed holy water at temples.
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Speaker 2: You'd put in a Roman coin and holy water would
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Speaker 2: come out, and they even had a more sophisticated version
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Speaker 2: where the holy water would come out and steam on
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Speaker 2: the face of an idol so that it would inspire
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Speaker 2: the worshipers there at the site to give more money.
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Speaker 2: Basically was the impetus behind that. But you know, just saying, well, wow,
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Speaker 2: they had a vending machine in ten BC, Well wait
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Speaker 2: a minute, what happened in the middle. What happened in
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Speaker 2: between ten BC and the sixteen hundreds, when that's really
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Speaker 2: when the most the modern types of vending machines appeared.
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Speaker 2: In the sixteen hundreds in England, they had in taverns
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Speaker 2: they would have a he called an honor box. You'd
7:43
Speaker 2: put a coin in and the lid would pop open
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Speaker 2: and you could take pipe tobacco out and put it
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Speaker 2: in your pipe. But you know what happened in between? Then?
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Speaker 2: Why did we forget what happened? And that was just
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Speaker 2: the moment of inspiration that got me to thinking and
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Speaker 2: looking further into the title of the book, Lost in
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Speaker 2: Time are Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. How can you write
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Speaker 2: a book about forgotten and vanishing knowledge? You know, if
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Speaker 2: it's forgotten, how can you write about it? Well? Here
8:18
Speaker 2: you go, this is this is the start of finding
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Speaker 2: that kind of information.
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Speaker 1: Your background is in electrical engineering and as you mentioned,
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Speaker 1: project management. How did your technical education and professional experiences
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Speaker 1: influence the themes and insights presented in your book?
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Speaker 2: As we as well look at some of these items
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Speaker 2: that that are discovered in the book, also started to
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Speaker 2: look into the future also, So part of the book
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Speaker 2: is about the past. Part of the book is about
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Speaker 2: the present and what we're doing with knowledge today. You know,
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Speaker 2: today we're saving our information on you know, thumb drives
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Speaker 2: or USB drives and SSD drives and so on. We've
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Speaker 2: got a tremendous amount of information packed into a small space.
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Speaker 2: If we look back in time, they had kind of
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Speaker 2: an opposite sort of thing going on, where we had
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Speaker 2: a stone tablet which you could put some information on.
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Speaker 2: Of course it's not very information dense, but that stone
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Speaker 2: tablet lasted for thousands of years. A you know, a
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Speaker 2: DVD or CD might last for thirty or forty years. Surprisingly,
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Speaker 2: the pits inside a DVD or CD, they'll oxidize and
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Speaker 2: it'll eventually become unreadable. But even our SSD and USB drives,
10:00
Speaker 2: how long are they going to last? How long does
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Speaker 2: your computer last five ten years, and you know you
10:06
Speaker 2: got to get a new one. So our information is
10:12
Speaker 2: getting more dense. The probability of losing that information and
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Speaker 2: great amounts of information are becoming more and more possible
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Speaker 2: and more and more probable with the way we're going.
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Speaker 1: I remember going to school back in the seventies and
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Speaker 1: the subways of New York and there was a sign
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Speaker 1: in the signage, the advertising signage in the subway, and
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Speaker 1: one said, what will you do when this computer takes
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Speaker 1: out your jo? It takes over your job? And somebody
10:47
Speaker 1: had scribbled with a crayon, pulled the plug? What happens
10:50
Speaker 1: when we pull the plug? Yeah?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well could that happen? I mean, could something happen
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Speaker 2: that might caused the problem that we might lose this information?
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Speaker 2: You know, back in the eighteen fifties, there was a
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Speaker 2: it's called a Carrington event. Carrington event. You know, you
11:16
Speaker 2: can look this up, you can google it. Carrington event
11:19
Speaker 2: was like a super sun spot, you know, an emp
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Speaker 2: electromagnetic pulse from the Sun that went out and hit
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Speaker 2: the Earth. And in the eighteen fifties, now we didn't
11:35
Speaker 2: have a lot of lines, you know, a lot of
11:40
Speaker 2: we didn't have power lines and all that sort of thing,
11:42
Speaker 2: But we did have telegraph lines, and that sun spot
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Speaker 2: sent this electromagnetic pulse to the Earth and it energized
11:54
Speaker 2: the power of the lines in the air on the poles,
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Speaker 2: and heard fires at the end of the in the
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Speaker 2: telegraph stations. So now that's a pretty rare event. We
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Speaker 2: only have records of it happening once. Could it happen again?
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Speaker 2: What would be the effects of it? You know, it
12:16
Speaker 2: could be quite extensive and leave us at, you know,
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Speaker 2: in quite a spot.
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Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not an astrophysicist, but if I'm not mistaken,
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Speaker 1: the past few months, we've seen some not a Carrington event,
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Speaker 1: but tremendous solar activity.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they've had some pretty strong ones, and of course
12:37
Speaker 2: tho's cause a lot of the lights and northern lights.
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Speaker 2: But you know, could something like that happen? Of course,
12:46
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's possible. It's possible that it could happen.
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Speaker 1: Your book delves into the cyclical nature of knowledge, loss
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Speaker 1: and rediscovery throughout history. Can you give us some examples?
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Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so there are many examples, and I'll give
13:05
Speaker 2: you a couple of these here, a couple little secrets
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Speaker 2: that are hidden in the book. So, you know, we
13:14
Speaker 2: think about cataract surgery. I don't know if everybody's familiar
13:18
Speaker 2: with cataract surgery. It's where the lens of the eye
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Speaker 2: becomes cloudy. Typically that happens with age as you get older.
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Speaker 2: And a modern cataract surgery started in the seventeen hundreds
13:36
Speaker 2: was done. They would basically tie you down to a
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Speaker 2: chair and do this surgery on your eye. Now, the
13:45
Speaker 2: reason they had to tie you down to a chair
13:48
Speaker 2: is the cornea of your eye is the most densely
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Speaker 2: packed part of your body with nerve endings. I mean,
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Speaker 2: you know, if you get an eyelash in your eye,
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Speaker 2: it drives you nuts until you get it out of there,
14:05
Speaker 2: you know, So it's very sensitive. So they'd have to
14:09
Speaker 2: tie you down in this chair to get to get
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Speaker 2: the cataract and they would remove that lens of your
14:19
Speaker 2: eye and move it out of the way. Well, it
14:22
Speaker 2: turns out that they did cataract surgery an eight hundred BC.
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Speaker 2: A physician in ancient India called Shashruda. He did something
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Speaker 2: called a couching procedure where they would remove the cataract
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Speaker 2: in your eye and that surgery was even done earlier
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Speaker 2: than that was done by the ancient Egyptians and twenty
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Speaker 2: four hundred BC and the Babylonians and twenty two fifty BC.
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Speaker 2: They have papyrus scrolls. There's the Ebers papyrus scroll that
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Speaker 2: show was them actually doing this surgery on an Egyptian.
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Speaker 2: So it's this cyclical nature. I talked a little bit about,
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Speaker 2: you know, just the vending machine, but here we are
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Speaker 2: talking about medical you know, procedure that was done, you know,
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Speaker 2: and then they lost how it was done, and then
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Speaker 2: we did it again, and we're doing it today. So
15:25
Speaker 2: many people believe that's a common there's a recent kind
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Speaker 2: of a procedure, but this procedure has been done multiple
15:35
Speaker 2: times over the past. And these are just a couple
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Speaker 2: of examples if you like.
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Speaker 1: Another one one of my favorites is the Baghdad battery.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the Bagdad battery. That's a good one, where they
15:50
Speaker 2: found twelve of these batteries in Baghdad, and these are
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Speaker 2: they only can generate about one vault, a little over
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Speaker 2: a vault, but they found twelve of these and they're
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Speaker 2: two thousand years old. So I mean, the big question
16:13
Speaker 2: is what did they use them for. We have many
16:16
Speaker 2: of these things that we've found that we don't understand
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Speaker 2: and don't know what they used for use them for.
16:23
Speaker 2: But yeah, that bagdad battery is very interesting. What are
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Speaker 2: they doing with batteries? You know, maybe they had light bulbs,
16:34
Speaker 2: or maybe they were using them for some other purpose and.
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Speaker 1: You have to take them to a special place to
16:40
Speaker 1: recycle them, right.
16:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I guess we found the I guess we
16:46
Speaker 2: found the dumb Absolutely.
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Speaker 1: We talked about the impermanence of digital information. How does
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Speaker 1: that compare to the preservation methods of ancient societies?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, over time, things have just progressed,
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Speaker 2: and I think it's just the way, you know, our
17:09
Speaker 2: culture has kind of addressed knowledge because they don't really
17:13
Speaker 2: think about it. We don't really think about how we're
17:16
Speaker 2: going to save something for a long time. It just
17:19
Speaker 2: sort of happens, you know, with the invention of DVD
17:25
Speaker 2: drive or CD drive or even further back, the invention
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Speaker 2: of the book. Yeah, that was that was a way
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Speaker 2: to save your knowledge. But was that why it came up?
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Speaker 2: I mean it was also a way to disseminate information
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Speaker 2: and to share that with with others in the world
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Speaker 2: at that time. But knowledge travels on language, so without
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Speaker 2: some sort of language, we lose the knowledge and the information.
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Speaker 2: One of my favorite things is the Voyntage Manuscript. The
18:16
Speaker 2: Voyage Manuscript is housed today at the Bernaki Museum in
18:23
Speaker 2: at Yale University, and that document has been analyzed by
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Speaker 2: scholars and linguists and they've been able to determine that
18:37
Speaker 2: the language in that document is real. I mean, it's
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Speaker 2: not something that someone dreamed up, you know, like Star
18:46
Speaker 2: Wars language or you know, something like that. So they
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Speaker 2: have this document and it's dated to the fourteen hundreds,
18:57
Speaker 2: was dated by the University of Arizona twenty eleven radiocarbon dated.
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Speaker 2: But the interesting thing about this document is no one
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Speaker 2: can decode it. And there's been many people, cryptologists and
19:15
Speaker 2: scholars that have taken a look at it to try
19:17
Speaker 2: to figure out what it's saying. But we've lost the
19:24
Speaker 2: continuity of the language. And so this is a fantastic
19:31
Speaker 2: example and I recommend you go out and take a
19:35
Speaker 2: look at it. It's very amazing kind of a book.
19:39
Speaker 2: There's I don't know how many pages are as many
19:41
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of pages in it, but it's
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Speaker 2: very very amazing in what's in there.
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Speaker 1: I've seen documentary is about the Vointage manuscript, and some
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Speaker 1: of the art work in there is incredible.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's very surprising. It's almost otherworldly, say, I
20:04
Speaker 2: don't know, very unique kind of pictures of plants and people.
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Speaker 2: Some of the plants don't really ring a bell with
20:15
Speaker 2: ones that we're familiar with. So there's really a big
20:19
Speaker 2: question about where that document comes from. They've they've been
20:23
Speaker 2: able to determine. There were five different people that wrote
20:26
Speaker 2: the book, and yeah, the language fits the laws of
20:35
Speaker 2: a real language, so it's it's interesting.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. So what steps can individuals and organizations take to
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Speaker 1: ensure the preservation of our collective memory for future generations?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I think the number one thing, and part
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Speaker 2: of the point of this book is to just be aware.
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Speaker 2: You know, awareness is a catalyst for change. So if
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Speaker 2: we want to change so that our knowledge will live on,
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Speaker 2: live on for our children and for our next generations
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Speaker 2: to come, we kind of have to wake up and
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Speaker 2: think about what we can do to make smart decisions
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Speaker 2: for the next generations so that they have, you know,
21:29
Speaker 2: a better future, a brighter future than what we even.
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Speaker 1: Have absolutely, and a lot of the challenges that we're
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Speaker 1: seeing today is the defunding of institutions that maintain that knowledge.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well this has been this has been a age
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Speaker 2: old problem many in history. These were emperors. Emperor Quinn
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Speaker 2: Shee in the year two hundred BC decided he didn't
22:08
Speaker 2: want anyone to have books, so he burned all the libraries,
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Speaker 2: you know, and except his, he kept his, but he
22:21
Speaker 2: burned everybody else's. And then if you were found with
22:25
Speaker 2: a book, you had your face tattooed and you were
22:29
Speaker 2: sent out to work on the Wall of China. So
22:35
Speaker 2: you know, and there's many examples of book burnings over
22:40
Speaker 2: the years, you know, for for various political reasons and
22:44
Speaker 2: other other reasons as well. So you know, I don't
22:49
Speaker 2: know what the solution is to that, but I think
22:52
Speaker 2: the solution is we just keep copies, you know, make
22:55
Speaker 2: sure there's copies in multiple places so we don't lose
22:58
Speaker 2: the lose the knowledge.
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Speaker 1: Do you think privatization would be helpful?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? Possibly, I think if I think if they do
23:10
Speaker 2: a good job, they really think it through. You know,
23:12
Speaker 2: there is an organization called the long Now Foundation. That
23:19
Speaker 2: organization measures things in tens of thousands of years, and
23:26
Speaker 2: so if you look on their website today would be
23:29
Speaker 2: you know, zero two zero two five would be the year.
23:38
Speaker 2: And they are trying to promote the long term and
23:43
Speaker 2: the long thinking. They're building a clock in Texas that
23:47
Speaker 2: will run for ten thousand years. So just trying to
23:52
Speaker 2: get people to think, you know, start thinking about things.
23:56
Speaker 2: Don't think about things in you know, just one hundred
23:58
Speaker 2: years or just fifty years, think about it in a
24:01
Speaker 2: thousand years or ten thousand years.
24:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely. My guest is Jack Biollick. His book is called
24:07
Speaker 1: Lost in Time, Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. Jack, please
24:11
Speaker 1: share with our listeners where they can get your book
24:13
Speaker 1: and find out more about you and your work.
24:15
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well there's a couple of plays of course, Amazon, Amazon,
24:20
Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble. Book is available on hardback, paperback and ebook,
24:28
Speaker 2: and you can go to my website and find it
24:31
Speaker 2: as well. That's Lost in Time dot world is the website.
24:37
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with more of Jack after these words.
24:40
Speaker 1: On the Own Times Radio Network.
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25:15
Speaker 1: Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week is Jack Biollick,
25:19
Speaker 1: his book Lost in Time Are Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge? Jack,
25:25
Speaker 1: is it possible that we've already rediscovered ideas that existed
25:29
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago without realizing it.
25:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a good one. You know, we find
25:39
Speaker 2: things all the time. It's how history changes, you know,
25:47
Speaker 2: we find older and older artifacts we find. Of course,
25:52
Speaker 2: there's the go Beckley tuppy that was found in Turkey
25:59
Speaker 2: with bring the changes are understanding of the past and
26:05
Speaker 2: what's been done. I think there's been recent findings in
26:14
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say in Peru. Yeah, in Peru they found
26:19
Speaker 2: skulls that have been had They had cranial surgery on
26:27
Speaker 2: the skulls and the surgery started in the four hundreds
26:32
Speaker 2: and went through to the fourteen hundreds, and when the
26:36
Speaker 2: skulls were operated on back in the year four hundred,
26:41
Speaker 2: they found they were about forty effective, and as they
26:46
Speaker 2: approached the end of when they were doing these surgeries,
26:50
Speaker 2: they found they were ninety percent effective. So there's always
26:56
Speaker 2: some information popping out. Oh, you may wonder, why, how
26:59
Speaker 2: can you say it was forty percent or ninety percent?
27:02
Speaker 2: While these skulls, they could see if the person lived,
27:07
Speaker 2: the bone would grow back over the repaired part of
27:12
Speaker 2: their cranium back over. They used a gold kind of
27:18
Speaker 2: a plate that they would put in there, and if
27:21
Speaker 2: they lived, the bone would grow back over it. And
27:24
Speaker 2: if the person didn't live, then of course it didn't
27:26
Speaker 2: grow back. So they have a really good understanding of
27:30
Speaker 2: how effective they were. But there's new findings every year.
27:35
Speaker 2: Something comes up.
27:38
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating that they actually accepted everyone's insurance back
27:42
Speaker 1: in those days. So that was a that was really
27:45
Speaker 1: the great discovery, is that the insurance industry was a
27:48
Speaker 1: little a little more acceptable back when, way back when.
27:52
Speaker 1: How do you propose that we balance the rapid advancement
27:56
Speaker 1: of technology with the need to maintain accessible and enduring records.
28:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is the challenge for us. How
28:07
Speaker 2: can we do that? I think it has to be
28:10
Speaker 2: a bigger picture. People have to have the big view
28:16
Speaker 2: of the world, the world around us and what we're
28:21
Speaker 2: doing instead of just doing it to be cheap or
28:25
Speaker 2: the most inexpensive way to do something, or you know,
28:31
Speaker 2: just for that commercial need. How about we do something
28:36
Speaker 2: that's for the good of all of humankind. You know,
28:42
Speaker 2: let's have that as one of our design criteria that
28:46
Speaker 2: we use in our production values. Wouldn't that be novel?
28:51
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Do you see artificial intelligence as a boon or
28:56
Speaker 1: a threat to knowledge?
28:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a great one, because think about it.
29:03
Speaker 2: I can remember when the calculator came out, how everybody
29:09
Speaker 2: was up in arms. Well, you know, the world's going
29:12
Speaker 2: to end. We're not going to be able to calculate anymore,
29:14
Speaker 2: and no we will remember how to add, subtract, and
29:18
Speaker 2: multiply and divide. But that isn't what happened. We just
29:23
Speaker 2: were able to do more and do more calculations. Even
29:27
Speaker 2: further back, when the book came out or printed material
29:34
Speaker 2: came out, a lot of the scholars of that time,
29:38
Speaker 2: the philosophers of the time, thought that was the end
29:41
Speaker 2: of mankind because we wouldn't have to remember anything. It
29:45
Speaker 2: would be in a book or written down, but that
29:48
Speaker 2: isn't at all what happened. So I think AI is
29:54
Speaker 2: just another step. You know, the Internet was a step.
29:57
Speaker 2: AI is another step. I think it's going to help us,
30:01
Speaker 2: you know, And my hope is that it can actually
30:05
Speaker 2: help us figure out how to keep our knowledge. Not
30:09
Speaker 2: that it will necessarily keep it, but it could help
30:13
Speaker 2: us figure out how to keep it for ages, for
30:18
Speaker 2: years beyond, you know, when the information was created.
30:23
Speaker 1: Your career spans from working with the United States Air
30:26
Speaker 1: Force to a twenty five year tenure at Motorola's cell
30:30
Speaker 1: phone business. How have these roles influenced your understanding of
30:34
Speaker 1: knowledge management and preservation.
30:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it's given me the view of technology. Really,
30:45
Speaker 2: my whole career has been around technology understanding that I've
30:50
Speaker 2: done project roles, multi million dollar projects for banks and
30:57
Speaker 2: communications communications systems for organizations, and it really has given
31:06
Speaker 2: me pause to sit and think. As I went through
31:11
Speaker 2: writing this book. This book took ten years to put together,
31:17
Speaker 2: I think that gave me the background to really think
31:21
Speaker 2: about the future, you know, being embedded in technology, where
31:27
Speaker 2: I think the tendency is to think, hey, technology is great,
31:31
Speaker 2: more technology is better. Well, it is, but within context,
31:38
Speaker 2: as long as it can help us live longer, you know,
31:42
Speaker 2: think better, keep our knowledge longer, I think it is good.
31:46
Speaker 2: So we just need to keep that in mind.
31:50
Speaker 1: Part of my career I spent forty six years in
31:53
Speaker 1: the welding and industrial technology industry, and in the last
31:58
Speaker 1: few years before my retirement, I was working with robotic
32:01
Speaker 1: systems for welding. And one of the things about robots
32:04
Speaker 1: is they will do what you program them to do.
32:07
Speaker 1: They won't think for you, but they'll do the thinking
32:09
Speaker 1: that you embedded into them, imbued into them. And so consequently,
32:14
Speaker 1: the idea was that the gentleman who was the operator
32:17
Speaker 1: could load the parts, take the program, and then initiate
32:21
Speaker 1: the program, and that the robotic arm would go to
32:23
Speaker 1: the places assigned do the wels the same way. Every time.
32:27
Speaker 1: There were sensors to make sure that if anything was
32:29
Speaker 1: out of shape or out of alignment, that they would
32:32
Speaker 1: correct the path and do the work. And people would say, well,
32:35
Speaker 1: those robots are taking over people's jobs and actuality, those
32:39
Speaker 1: robots were actually enhancing the jobs because you still needed
32:42
Speaker 1: operators to load them to make sure they were operating properly,
32:44
Speaker 1: to unload them and reload them. What do you think
32:47
Speaker 1: about robotics.
32:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's a great point, Victor, because in
32:53
Speaker 2: many of these cases, what's happened is people's jobs may
32:58
Speaker 2: have been replaced in some form, but then they go
33:02
Speaker 2: on to do something else, you know, a bigger, a
33:07
Speaker 2: bigger kind of a job. Now, your question was about robotics,
33:13
Speaker 2: and you know, in terms of of assembly lines, you
33:23
Speaker 2: know there there have been I'm going to go back
33:25
Speaker 2: to Emperor Quinn in twenty ten BC, you know, the
33:32
Speaker 2: I'll talk a little bit about the terra Cotta army.
33:35
Speaker 2: You know, Emperor Quinn he built a mausoleum in two
33:40
Speaker 2: hundred and ten BC. He was the first emperor of China.
33:45
Speaker 4: And.
33:47
Speaker 2: He built this mausoleum with seven thousand statues. Actually it's
33:53
Speaker 2: over seven hundred thousand statues of warriors, of chariots, horses, musicians,
34:00
Speaker 2: and imperial court figures to keep guard at his mausoleum.
34:06
Speaker 2: And it covers an area of two point one million
34:11
Speaker 2: square meters or five hundred and thirty eight acres. Five
34:16
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty eight acres of these figures. The interesting
34:21
Speaker 2: thing about these figures is they were built in a
34:26
Speaker 2: assembly line sort of fashion, not exactly assembly line like
34:31
Speaker 2: we would think of it today, And they didn't have robotics,
34:35
Speaker 2: but they did a huge kind of an assembly line
34:40
Speaker 2: to put that together. So in past years, maybe they
34:45
Speaker 2: didn't have the machinery to do it, but they certainly
34:49
Speaker 2: had the idea, you know, the base idea of putting
34:53
Speaker 2: those things together.
34:55
Speaker 1: Why do you think we humans are so bad at
34:58
Speaker 1: holding onto wisdom even in the digital age?
35:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll go back to.
35:10
Speaker 1: Know what we're aware of.
35:13
Speaker 2: You know, if we're thinking about just the we tend
35:19
Speaker 2: to think just in a very linear way, but not
35:23
Speaker 2: very far into the future. We just have to have
35:26
Speaker 2: a wider purview of what it is we're doing and
35:31
Speaker 2: think about things for the long term.
35:35
Speaker 1: You were involved in the White House's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.
35:40
Speaker 1: How did this experience shape your views on digital infrastructure
35:44
Speaker 1: and its role in knowledge dissemination.
35:47
Speaker 2: Well, digital infrastructure, of course is important, you know, being
35:54
Speaker 2: able to share information with others is critical in our expansion,
36:03
Speaker 2: and I think, I think what is going to happen
36:06
Speaker 2: in the future is the more information that we have
36:11
Speaker 2: that's spread out wider, the more likely it is that
36:16
Speaker 2: it'll last through whatever, you know, whatever we go through
36:24
Speaker 2: as a as a human race. I know there's been
36:29
Speaker 2: many places where we've put time capsules in the ground
36:37
Speaker 2: and in the hopes that these time capsules will be
36:42
Speaker 2: there in the future. For example, Oglethorpe University has a
36:50
Speaker 2: crypt of Civilization that they put in place in nineteen
36:54
Speaker 2: thirty five. Their hope is that that's going to be
36:58
Speaker 2: opened in the year eighty one thirteen. But we have
37:06
Speaker 2: plenty of examples of time capsules that have been lost.
37:12
Speaker 2: There's one rather famous one. George Washington buried one at
37:17
Speaker 2: the White House in seventeen ninety three and it's never
37:22
Speaker 2: been found. They've looked for it through different refurbishments and
37:27
Speaker 2: changes at the White House. That time capsules still lost
37:31
Speaker 2: to today. You know that we got to think about,
37:39
Speaker 2: you know, not just I don't think a time capsule
37:42
Speaker 2: is the answer. I think we have to spread the
37:44
Speaker 2: information and I think our infrastructure can help with that.
37:48
Speaker 1: They couldn't even find it under the East Wing.
37:52
Speaker 2: I don't know. I hope they took their time and
37:55
Speaker 2: looked for it.
37:58
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of humanitarian work, and that work
38:00
Speaker 1: includes installing water purification systems in Haiti. How did these
38:05
Speaker 1: efforts inform your perspective on the importance of preserving practical
38:09
Speaker 1: knowledge for societal well being.
38:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had the opportunity to go to the
38:16
Speaker 2: seventh poorest country in the world, and you know, you
38:23
Speaker 2: see how they live their life simply, which is, you know,
38:28
Speaker 2: that's good, nothing wrong with that, But you see how
38:33
Speaker 2: their life could be so much better if they utilize
38:39
Speaker 2: the same knowledge and wisdom that we have. You know
38:43
Speaker 2: that That's the other part of this I haven't really
38:45
Speaker 2: talked about yet, which is the proper application of knowledge,
38:51
Speaker 2: which is wisdom is an important aspect to the knowledge
38:57
Speaker 2: we have preserved. So we have to be mindful of
39:03
Speaker 2: how we use this knowledge so that it's used in
39:06
Speaker 2: a way that is helpful and not you know, negative purposes.
39:12
Speaker 1: Absolutely. What do you see as the biggest challenges we
39:16
Speaker 1: face in preserving knowledge in the twenty first century?
39:23
Speaker 2: I think, in my opinion, I think it I just
39:27
Speaker 2: touched on it being wise, thinking about what we're doing
39:33
Speaker 2: using the knowledge we have for wise applications. You know,
39:40
Speaker 2: I just had a just listening to a family member
39:44
Speaker 2: tell a story about an elderly person getting scammed out
39:50
Speaker 2: of twenty five thousand dollars. You know, here's an example
39:55
Speaker 2: of someone that is using knowledge in a way that
40:02
Speaker 2: is not wise. You know, it is a wise way
40:08
Speaker 2: of using the knowledge. So I think the challenge, and
40:12
Speaker 2: you know, as we get more and more knowledge, we
40:18
Speaker 2: have to also have more and more wisdom about how
40:22
Speaker 2: to use that. So as AI comes down to the
40:26
Speaker 2: under the forefront, here are we going to be wise
40:30
Speaker 2: about it? You know, we have to be wise about it,
40:32
Speaker 2: otherwise we could have negative consequences.
40:37
Speaker 1: And also adapt an understanding of how not everyone will
40:43
Speaker 1: be technologically savvy and being good neighbors and good humans
40:48
Speaker 1: and sharing that with them. Yeah, yeah, for sure in
40:54
Speaker 1: everything that we do. Yeah.
40:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
40:57
Speaker 1: My guest is Jack Biolick. His book is called Lost
41:00
Speaker 1: in Time, Are Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. We'll be back
41:03
Speaker 1: with more after these words on the Own Times Radio network.
41:08
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41:13
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41:17
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41:21
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41:38
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42:10
Speaker 1: Back on destination Unlimited. My guest this week is Jack Biollick,
42:14
Speaker 1: his book Lost in Time, Are Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. Jack,
42:20
Speaker 1: can you discuss any innovative solutions or technologies that are
42:24
Speaker 1: currently being developed to address the issue of knowledge preservation.
42:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we already touched on it briefly. There the
42:34
Speaker 2: Long Now Foundation. They are taking many steps. They're working
42:41
Speaker 2: in different areas to try to bring to the forefront
42:49
Speaker 2: new thoughts, new ways of thinking about things. There's also
42:57
Speaker 2: a branch of knowledge that has been seeing quite a bit.
43:04
Speaker 2: It's okay, there's a there's a new branch of knowledge
43:10
Speaker 2: management that's kind of been coming to the forefront. It's
43:14
Speaker 2: called knowledge management, uh, And there are several books out
43:20
Speaker 2: on this topic of how to manage our knowledge. So
43:24
Speaker 2: I think is if we see a kind of an
43:28
Speaker 2: uptick in how you know we manage our knowledge, I
43:36
Speaker 2: think that will be a great help because we have
43:39
Speaker 2: so much data, so much information. Uh. In my in
43:44
Speaker 2: my book, I talk about that, the talk about the
43:47
Speaker 2: digital dark Age. I talk about how our our knowledge
43:54
Speaker 2: information has just been expanding on an exponential rate, how
44:01
Speaker 2: much information. I took a look at the number of
44:04
Speaker 2: patents being applied for If you take a look at
44:08
Speaker 2: the graph of the number of patents, it's tremendous. It's
44:15
Speaker 2: an explosive growth. So we really have to figure out
44:20
Speaker 2: a way to save that knowledge.
44:23
Speaker 1: In a way and be able to.
44:25
Speaker 2: Ferret through it to find where's the nuggets of information
44:31
Speaker 2: we need to save? Do we need to save everything?
44:33
Speaker 1: You know?
44:34
Speaker 2: So?
44:35
Speaker 1: I remember a song lyric from the late nineteen sixties
44:39
Speaker 1: that said knowledge is a deadly friend. When no one
44:43
Speaker 1: sets the rules, the fate of all mankind, I fear
44:46
Speaker 1: is in the hands of fools, is it?
44:51
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's great. Didn't know about that?
44:56
Speaker 1: A song by King Crimson.
44:58
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, wow, I used to listen to them. Uh uh,
45:06
Speaker 2: I probably heard that song. Maybe maybe that was a
45:11
Speaker 2: subliminal suggestion to me.
45:14
Speaker 1: I think the song was called epitaph.
45:16
Speaker 2: Ah okay, very good, good, good memory on that one.
45:23
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, I think you know, we we often
45:29
Speaker 2: will take a negative view towards some of these things.
45:33
Speaker 2: You know, we're doomed or you know, this is this
45:37
Speaker 2: is the end of it all, but in reality that
45:40
Speaker 2: that rarely happened that you know that that isn't the case.
45:44
Speaker 2: We we figure out a way, we get around it.
45:47
Speaker 2: You know, things things get better. We're smart, so uh,
45:54
Speaker 2: you know, we'll we'll see our way through it. But
45:58
Speaker 2: there's often an easy way or a hard way. It's
46:05
Speaker 2: a lot better if we take the easy way and
46:08
Speaker 2: make the decisions for ourselves that are the wise ones.
46:14
Speaker 1: How do cultural differences impact the way societies value and
46:18
Speaker 1: preserve knowledge.
46:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if we take a look at the different
46:27
Speaker 2: cultures around the world, you know, if we have a
46:34
Speaker 2: culture that, you know, say, take a look at the
46:38
Speaker 2: Indian culture. They used a technique of passing down knowledge
46:46
Speaker 2: through stories, through the spoken word, And is that better
46:53
Speaker 2: or worse? I don't. I don't think there's a thing
47:02
Speaker 2: we can say about that that is negative. Spoken word
47:08
Speaker 2: is good, that can work as long as the people
47:13
Speaker 2: don't disappear for whatever reason, as long as they're around.
47:20
Speaker 2: I think there's other cultures in the South Africa that
47:26
Speaker 2: sort of area where there's a lot of storytelling that's done.
47:31
Speaker 2: The written word is fine too, but again that can
47:37
Speaker 2: get lost. So there's different techniques. I've seen where they
47:43
Speaker 2: used beads to store information and knowledge. I think that
47:49
Speaker 2: was in South America. They've found beads where they use
47:54
Speaker 2: them for counting and for embedding information and to be
48:01
Speaker 2: different cultures do have different ways of saving the information.
48:07
Speaker 1: How many individuals our listeners out there contribute to the
48:11
Speaker 1: preservation of knowledge in their daily lives.
48:17
Speaker 2: Well, we all do. Every single one of us, you know,
48:23
Speaker 2: contributes in some way to the knowledge and the knowledge
48:28
Speaker 2: base that we have. No matter what you do, you're
48:35
Speaker 2: part of the big picture. You interact with other people,
48:40
Speaker 2: or you yourself are a person who stores and saves information,
48:46
Speaker 2: or you store and save information for other people. So
48:51
Speaker 2: we all have a role to play and we all
48:54
Speaker 2: are important in doing the right things.
48:58
Speaker 1: So years from now, what do you think that the
49:02
Speaker 1: civilizations will say about our era, are we preserving wisdom
49:07
Speaker 1: or setting ourselves out for another dark age? Yeah?
49:13
Speaker 2: Well, the ultimate litmus test on that will be where
49:19
Speaker 2: are we in a thousand years? But you know, you
49:23
Speaker 2: can imagine someone in even five hundred years or two
49:28
Speaker 2: hundred years finding a buried cell phone, and if they
49:38
Speaker 2: could take that cell phone and turn it on, would
49:41
Speaker 2: they be able to use it, or to find any
49:45
Speaker 2: of the information that's on it, or be able to
49:50
Speaker 2: make any sense out of it. They might just think
49:52
Speaker 2: it's a piece of metal or something like that. So
50:00
Speaker 2: it's the crux of the problem is we need to
50:05
Speaker 2: think about how we save the information. So, for example,
50:10
Speaker 2: today we have libraries that have huge problems. I just
50:15
Speaker 2: read an article where JPEG standard is going to change.
50:19
Speaker 2: There's going to be a new one come out, and
50:23
Speaker 2: what do libraries do with all the JPEGs they have
50:26
Speaker 2: of pictures and they have huge terabytes of stores of information.
50:33
Speaker 2: You know, it's a big problem for libraries and do
50:38
Speaker 2: they convert it to this new format and what do
50:41
Speaker 2: they do? So there's a lot of people, a lot
50:44
Speaker 2: of smart people working on this, but it's a big problem.
50:48
Speaker 1: And we don't really.
50:50
Speaker 2: We always think, you know, the latest thing is the
50:52
Speaker 2: best thing. Well maybe it is, but make sure we
50:58
Speaker 2: give ourselves a path to keep the information that's old.
51:03
Speaker 2: I've got an interesting story about that. I interviewed the
51:08
Speaker 2: curator for the Internet Museum in San Francisco, and at
51:13
Speaker 2: that museum they have all of the original ibms and
51:18
Speaker 2: IBM PCs and original Apple computers, and he was telling
51:27
Speaker 2: me a story that those computers all use floppy discs
51:32
Speaker 2: to store and save the information, and those floppy discs
51:37
Speaker 2: only last a short time and then they become brittle
51:41
Speaker 2: and fall apart, so they can't read them anymore. And
51:45
Speaker 2: I don't even believe you can buy them anymore. I
51:49
Speaker 2: don't know. But what they do at the museum is
51:53
Speaker 2: they take the programs that are on those computers and
51:56
Speaker 2: they print them on paper. I mean, is that going
52:00
Speaker 2: backwards kind of interesting? So, you know, that's an example
52:08
Speaker 2: of how we got to think about things, you know,
52:11
Speaker 2: to make sure that they're extendable into the future.
52:15
Speaker 1: The philosopher George Santiana said, those who cannot remember the
52:20
Speaker 1: past are condemned to repeat it. Do you agree?
52:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I do, and I think there's proof
52:29
Speaker 2: of it. I think we have plenty of proof. We
52:33
Speaker 2: have examples all over the place. So I didn't talk
52:39
Speaker 2: about this example, but I'm going to talk about it
52:41
Speaker 2: now because it's close to all of us, something that
52:44
Speaker 2: we're all very familiar with, and that's the toilet.
52:49
Speaker 1: You know.
52:50
Speaker 2: The toilet is commonly believed that it was you know,
52:55
Speaker 2: invented by Thomas Crapper in eighteen sixty one. That is
53:01
Speaker 2: his real name, by the way, but in fact he
53:06
Speaker 2: only invented an improved version of the toilet. The modern
53:11
Speaker 2: toilet was invented in the fifteen hundreds in England for
53:15
Speaker 2: use in castles. But the Babylonians also had sewers in
53:23
Speaker 2: twenty nine hundred BC, as did the Romans in five
53:26
Speaker 2: hundred BC. However, in the Middle Ages in Europe, they
53:31
Speaker 2: had no sewers or toilets. The sewage ran off the
53:35
Speaker 2: top of buildings and into the middle of streets and
53:40
Speaker 2: may have contributed to the Black plague. So if we
53:45
Speaker 2: don't think about things, and don't remember things, and don't
53:49
Speaker 2: utilize our knowledge, we will go through difficult times. You know,
53:55
Speaker 2: those people in the thirteen hundreds in the Middle Ages
53:59
Speaker 2: did not have have a good time. You know, that
54:02
Speaker 2: was not something we want to go through again. So
54:07
Speaker 2: it's important, you know, this is a sanitary purpose, but
54:10
Speaker 2: that we don't forget our knowledge and don't lose it absolutely.
54:16
Speaker 1: What message do you hope readers take away from Lost
54:19
Speaker 1: in Time?
54:21
Speaker 2: Well, the number one thing that to keep in mind,
54:27
Speaker 2: and this is in the last chapter of the book,
54:30
Speaker 2: is be humble, you know, be open to new ideas,
54:37
Speaker 2: be open to old ideas. You know, be mindful about
54:43
Speaker 2: what you're using, what knowledge you're using, and where it's from,
54:47
Speaker 2: and what you're using it for. I think a lot
54:51
Speaker 2: of times, I know, in business, I've been in places where,
54:55
Speaker 2: you know, they may have information from a previous project
55:01
Speaker 2: or previous thing that was done, and they don't want
55:04
Speaker 2: to use it because they say, well, this time it's different.
55:07
Speaker 2: Well maybe not. Maybe this time you could use some
55:11
Speaker 2: of that information. Maybe there's parts of it you can
55:14
Speaker 2: use that will help you to do it quicker, faster, smarter, cheaper, easier.
55:23
Speaker 2: So be humble and think about being wise. You know,
55:28
Speaker 2: those are the two key things.
55:30
Speaker 1: The wisdom of my guest Jack Biolick his book Lost
55:34
Speaker 1: in Time are forgotten and vanishing knowledge Jack one more time,
55:38
Speaker 1: please chair with listeners. Whether you get your book and
55:40
Speaker 1: find out more about you and your work.
55:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you Victor. Yeah, they can go to Amazon
55:47
Speaker 2: or Barnes and Noble look it up. Lost in Time
55:51
Speaker 2: are Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. You can also go to
55:55
Speaker 2: my website, it's Lost in Time dot world and find
56:01
Speaker 2: information there and links to the hardback, south back and ebook.
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Speaker 1: Jack. Thank you so much for joining us ensuring this
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Speaker 1: important and amazing information.
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Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Victor, thank you for having me on
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Speaker 2: this broadcast, and.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor
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Speaker 1: the Voice Furman. Have a wonderful week