> A panel of experts, including scientists, futurists and science-fiction
> writers, developed the plan to make WIPP an unwelcome place when it is
> retired in about 30 years.
Gosh, did this panel include any linguists? And has anyone subjected the
pictographs to any scientific behavioral tests of how understandable they
are to people who are unfamiliar with them?
I am not impressed with futurists. I haven't been since I read a book
called "Encounters with the Future" that predicted a Soviet invasion of
Australia.
The whole modern approach to trying to warn people away from nuclear waste
is laughable. Basically, we are trying to create a sign that will enable us
to forget about the contaminated sites. Furthermore, the sign has to be
tasteful and scientific-looking by 20th century standards.
It's astonishing that no one mentioned preserving relevant photographs
instead of pictographs, or preserving the corpses of radiation sickness
victims in special plastics.
Ancient peoples would have come up with better methods to create taboos that
last for centuries.
First off, the nuclear waste sites should be surrounded by walls and moats
both lined with huge spikes, whose points should be sharper than ice picks.
Impaled on the spikes should be hundreds of carcasses of animals killed off
by radiation. The carcasses could be sprayed with special preservatives.
Also, there should be a religious order whose sole purpose is to warn the
unwary away from the site. This religious order should have its monastic
centers situated on every route to the site. The work of this order could
also include irradiating more livestock to create carcasses for the wall and
moat of spikes.
Should the religious order survive for thousands of years, then the language
problem is solved. But even if the religious order survives only a few
hundred years, the records it leaves would be a few hundred years closer to
being decypherable by the people of the distant future.
Incidentally, genetic engineering may make it possible to create vats of
bacterial goo that emit revolting odors for hundreds and even thousands of
years. That and the spikes should get the idea across.
Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Chang" <Zhang2323@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 8:13 AM
Subject: infotainment: LANGUAGE EXPERTS SPEAK TO THE FUTURE
> from the Oakland Tribune, June 12, 2000:
>
> LANGUAGE EXPERTS SPEAK TO THE FUTURE:
> Researchers must invent universal communication
>
> By Glenn Roberts, Jr., staff writer
>
> Thousands of years from now, granite obelisks will stand above the
desert
> landscape of southeast New Mexico to warn visitors of radioactive toxins
> buried nearly one-half mile deep.
> An earthen berm, implanted with magnets, will mark the boundaries of
the
> toxic dump. Chambers with granite-slab walls, buried near the surface to
> survive the millenia, will be engraved with warnings.
> The messages will be written in seven languages, including English,
> Chinese, Russian and Navajo. Pictographs will relate universal messages on
> the dangers of radioactive and toxic wastes.
> Pictographs, such as the symbols that represent pedestrian crossings
and
> no-smoking areas, transcend written language with simple visual cues.
> Since the dawn of humankind, people have used pictures to relate
> information and ideas. Cave paintings and spiral motifs carved on
Stonehenge
> monoliths are among the earlier examples.
> The pictographs at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico will
> include drawings that warn of the harm caused by digging and drilling at
the
> site.
> > Their task was to communicate to strangers - to convey clear
messages to
> all visitors who stumble upon the site within the next 10,000 years.
> Researchers at the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence Institute
in
> Mountainview[, CA] face a similar challenge in speaking to an unknown
> audience using a universal language.
> Doug Vakoch, a social scientist at the SETI Institute, is studying the
> use of pictographs and other forms of universal communication to send
> messages to others beings in the universe. "To me, the question is not
'Would
> another civilization be smart enough to talk with us?' but, 'Can they be
dumb
> enough?' " Vakoch said.
> Radio technology, which has been used to broadcast messages to space,
is
> only about 60 years old on Earth, he said, though it is possible that
radio
> is rather primitive to other civilizations in the universe.
> One of the challenges in sending messges to space is to send messages
> that show our sophistication rather than our ignorance, he said.
> "If we're going to communicate with another civilization, we have to
show
> that we're an advanced civilization. The first impression could make a big
> difference."
> Perhaps the creation of a new language, based upon mathematics and
> pictures, will help us to formulate messages, he said.
> Frank Drake, president of the SETI Institute, in 1974 used a radio
> telescope to send a binary message to the stars. The message was a
pictograph
> with a human figure, the planets in the solar system, and the double-helix
> structure of DNA, the key to life on Earth.
> In the 1800's, researchers theorized that people on Earth could
> communicate their knowledge to beings on the moon and other planets by
carving
> a Pythagorean triangle in the forests of Siberia or igniting a circle of
> flames in the Sahara desert.
> These early concepts for communicating beyond our planet convey some
of
> the mathematical and scientific achievements of our day.