World-Script : Script for Re-Making the World

2000

DRAFT - Conceived for the Popular Science/Care call for Care Packages for the Future

This project proposes a script for re-making the world, should the need ever arise. There would be two levels of re-making, to be used depending on the level of need. The first level is a soft re-start comparable to re-starting a computer's operating system while leaving the machine on. This is a script for a performance on the scale of human civilization from which future generations could re-make human civilization and culture. The second level is a hard re-boot comparable to shutting off a computer's machinery and turning it on after which the operating system re-starts. This is a script for a von-Neumann probe that could create a new sun and planet upon which the first script would be enacted to re-make human civilization.

Many "creation myth" texts, from the Rig Veda to Eddas to Bible contain memories and recipes for making the world. The creation myth of contemporary western culture may well be History, and the script proposed here is based on history. As an artifact of an information society, it is the first creation myth that is "executable" (can be read by computers for processing as well as by humans). A script is a series of behavior command or action-triggers. A script can take the form of a musical score, a theatrical script, computer code, or perhaps creation myth.

The script would be generated in a decentralized manner. Historians from around the world would join together in a great collaboration/competition much like the Human Genome Project to enter a backbone of historical timelines, description, and analysis. However, the script system would also be open to anyone in the world via the Internet (and a variety of other communication means) so that any person can add events and stories from a more local level -- history that can accommodate a level of granularity from the history of nations down to personal diaries. Anyone could also contribute an alternate vision of a particular historical event or period already in the system. Different contributions are additive and are clearly attributed using FOAF (1). FOAF a standards-based method of identifying people that allows people anywhere to create a unique ID that is not monitored by any central agency. Cultural heritage organizations like museums, libraries, and archives are already creating a network of standards-based regional and international online systems describing archival and artifactual collections (2). These institutions would be invited to contribute their data into the system as well, providing links from events to actual instances of historical evidence.

The entire data content of the World Script, once reaching a critical mass, would be transmitted via radio waves, encoded in binary format as a bitstream, to a planet at a distance that the signal should return to Earth in 50 years. The content, being entirely based on one simple text-based standard, would be very small, thus allowing the entire content to be re-transmitted in a continual loop. The loop would allow updates to the system to be added to the next transmission (each loop would include a version number). It would allow for error checking and correction, and it would allow the message to be received over as great a time period as it was sent.

The Care Package for re-making the world would contain two items. A satellite receiver that, when activated, would turn to the direction and bandwidth necessary to receive the world script being sent back to earth reflected off a distant planet, and store the data. The second item would be a von Neumann probe which could contain the first item and could be launched into orbit of a hard-reboot of the planet was necessary.

The format and syntactical expression of the world script for soft-reboot would be in ASCII (3) which is a small, robust, time-proven text format used in computers and digital systems throughout the world today, and which will stand the best chance of being recoverable and decodable in the future (the satellite dish in the care package would receive and display the text in any case). When ASCII is combined with another standard, XML, rich levels of data and metadata are possible.

The specific format for the world script would be an XML-based standard called SMIL (4), an existing standard that is currently used as a Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language for coordinating and presenting complex time-based multimedia events. SMIL is highly hierarchical and modular, which allows an umbrella world script to make reference to sub-scripts written in the same standard. This provides the scaleability to allow for large narratives to include an infinite number of versions and infinite granularity. SMIL is intended to describe time-based events and is thus adaptable for describing human events instead of computer media. The world script in SMIL would essentially be a vast work of cinematic metadata. SMIL would be modified so that instead of defining regions as regions of the screen; they become regions of the world where actions are carried out. The standard format for regions would be the Thesaurus of Geographic Names(5), a Getty standard that attempts to create a persistent means of identifying places that may change names or governance over time. SMIL would also be modified so that instead of SMPTE time-code used to time and cue movies and audio, dates would be used to time and cue human events. As for places, times would be noted in internationally standardized format, using the International Standards Organization time standard ISO 8601:1988(E) (6). Below is an example of contemporary unmodified SMIL code followed by an example of modified SMIL code used as part of the World Script.

Normal SMIL Example (for playing back an audio, slideshow, and text stream)

< smil >

< head >

< !-- Presentation attributes. -- >

< meta name="title" content="House of Dreams" / >

< meta name="author" content="RealNetworks, Inc." / >

< meta name="copyright" content="(c) 1998" / >

< layout >

< !-- Width, height, and background color of entire presentation. -- >

< root-layout width="580" height="213" background-color="black" / >

< !-- Text region. -- >

< region id="text_region" left="0" top="0" width="260" height="213" / >

< !-- Images region. -- >

< region id="images_region" left="260" top="0" width="320"height="213" / >

< / layout >

< / head >

< body >

< par >

< !-- Play these streams concurrently (in parallel). -- >

< text src="house.rt" region="text_region" begin="1s" />

< img src="house.rp" region="images_region" begin="1s" />

< audio src="house.rm" clip-end="145s" / >

< / par >

< / body >

< / smil >

SMIL modified to act as WorldScript (example showing two events from '100 years war')

< smil >

< head >

< !-- Presentation attributes. -- >

< meta name="title" content="World Script 1.0: 100 Years War" / >

< meta name="author" content="Distributed" / >

< meta name="copyright" content="Public Domain" / >

< layout >

< region id="World, Europe, France, Poitou-Charentes, Vienne, Poitiers" Lat="46 35 00 N" Long="000 20 00" src="TGN" / >

< region id=" World, Europe, France, Haute-Normandie, Seine-Maritime, Département de la, Rouen" Lat="49 26 00 N" Long="001 05 00" src="TGN"/ >

< / layout >

< / head >

< body >

< seq >

< event src="poitiers.smil" region="Poitiers" begin="1356-10-05" lang="en"> Battle of Poitiers ...

< / event>

< event src="rouen.smil" region="Rouen" begin="1431-04-15" lang="en"> Joan of Arc burned at the stake ...

< / event>

< / seq >

< / body >

< / smil >

Notes and References

•1. FOAF - http://www.foaf-project.org/

•2. Cultural Heritage Projects

◦Museums and the Online Archive of California - http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/moac

◦Library of Congress: World Culture & Resources - http://international.loc.gov/intldl/intldlhome.html

•3. ASCII text encoding - http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/iso_table.html

•4. SMIL - http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/

•5. TGN - http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/

•6. Date and Time standard - http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime