Sentient Life as Nature's Video Recorder
Hypothesis: Sentient life is nature's recording machine. This morning, we are watch Mo Rocca's Innovation Nation , on which one of Mo's quiz answers was the invention of the video recording machine--what enabled television shows to be replayed later instead of live. Add to this the fact that I'm currently reading a work of post-apocalyptic fiction-- The Second Sleep --in which all the information we've been storing online is lost, and only fragments of written works remain. And, include my previous interest in the durability of oral records--Buddhist works being passed down through the ages by memory and recitation, the works of Homer possibly being memorized recitations before they were written down, etc. Magnetic Core Memory These things stirred my mind to think that sentient lifeforms, and particularly human beings with our facility for language, might be nature's recording machine. We witness the world, we remember it, and we speak it. Generations pass on