Vertical Agriculture

The Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 25, 2010) had a piece in its Review section entitled “The Farm of the Future: Harvesting the Sky (http://www.icyte.com/saved/online.wsj.com/341123).  It reviews a new book by Dickson Despommier entitled The Vertical Farm. I’ve attached a short article by Despommier and Eric Ellingsen which describes the theory of vertical agriculture in somewhat more detail than the Journal article, although the latter has a good interactive visual which is worth looking at.

Despommier, Ellingsen, and the Journal are quite excited by this new approach to intensive agriculture on the vertical rather than horizontal scale as a means of eliminating the ecological disadvantages of industrial farming (extensive agriculture) as it is currently practiced, without sacrificing its enormous productivity gains which have eliminated widespread famine and made mass prosperity a hallmark of 20th-Century capitalism. I remain skeptical; they underestimate the ecology movement’s obsessive preoccupation with “naturalness,” which will lead it to denounce the product of this new form of non-territorial agriculture as “Frankenfood.” And the movement’s hidden agenda of radical population reduction, rooted in its usually unspoken hatred of the human race as “the cancer of the planet,” will also militate against endorsing vertical farming. Nevertheless, it will be politically difficult to oppose any new form of food production which “liberates the land” from mankind’s food requirements at the same time that it harnesses so many of the new politically correct technologies like solar and windpower.

But the aspect which I find most fascinating about Vertical Farming is how it compares, and contrasts, with the role of the skyscraper in early 20th-century capitalism.

Skyscrapers first emerged on the urban skyline when Otis’ automatic speed governor (300 lbs of greasy brass -- I actually own an early version) made it possible to safely transport people for many stories up and down tall buildings. Tall buildings were a necessity if corporate capitalism was to efficiently administer its huge industrial and financial assets. Efficient administration was accomplished through military-style organization of ranks and files of middle-management and their clerical assistants, located on whole floors stacked one on top of another in huge “cathedrals of capitalism.” The skyscraper incarnated the corporate bureaucracy that managed the joint-stock enterprise, which replaced capitalism’s earlier institutional form, the family-owned business. It also conveyed a domineering presence as a side benefit.

But the skyscraper as capitalism’s premier architectural symbol has become obsolete. The computer-driven database, spreadsheet, project management and word-processing software revolutions have sharply reduced the need for middle management and its support staff in the modern corporation. They make possible a much more efficient centralization of control by eliminating middle-management’s tendency to stimulate bureaucratic “thickening.” Top management can now get almost real-time data on production and sales flow and all the other information requirements that govern business enterprise in the modern world. “White-collar” workers are now joining their “blue-collar” brethren in lumpenproletarian droves.

Enter the agricultural tower! This development transfers the vertical dimension of construction from the administrative to the production side of capitalism. It liberates agriculture from its age-old dependence on horizontal “fields” (the root of “agriculture” is the Latin word ager, “field,” or “country”) and thereby transforms verticality into an dimension of wealth generation rather than coercive oversight. Farms can now move into cities – not as space-wasting and busywork urban “greenplots” but as resource-efficient testimonials to human ingenuity. And exploitation of verticality need not stop at agriculture. Most industrial production in the world still follows the horizontal model, because it is labor-intensive. The beauty of the vertical model is that it is technology-driven – and coercion plays no role in technological functioning.

Coercion can then be liberated from its apparent roots in a non-existent economics of scarcity to assume its undisguised purpose in capitalist society, which of course we are not allowed to discuss.

Space Cadets

What Are the Chances

of There Being Anyone Out There?

Dec. 22, 2010

by Tom A. Milstein

Vanishingly small. Indeed, infinitesimal. The buzz surrounding the search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence project (ETI), akin to the spiritualism, fairy photography, and colonic irrigation crazes of earlier eras (and no doubt future eras as well), needs only a trained gimlet eye in order to be exposed for the chimera that it is. I propose my own.

But first, a few words about my qualifications. I have none. My scientific credentials derive from an avid interest acquired in olden days from a youthful reading David Dietz’ The Story of Science, but alas, always dampened by mathematical incompetence. Also, since I plan on bringing up the subject of Fundamentalist religion later in this article, I should state that I am not and have never been a Fundamentalist, although I must confess to being uncomfortable about finding myself so often among their “fellow travelers” (and would therefore appreciate their public disavowal).

With preliminaries out of the way, we turn to the meat of the subject. I must be brief, for there isn’t any. No one of sound mind has ever seen, heard, felt, or otherwise interacted with an intelligent extra-terrestrial. Or if they have, they are (wisely) keeping quiet about it. This is a cruel fact of nature. There is a paucity of evidence for ETI. In other words, none whatever.

Ah, but there is, say the ETI searchers. You just have to know where to look.

Now we enter a realm in which I am eminently qualified, having just read Mark Twain on statistics: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” For the entire case for the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence is based on Twainian statistics. In the absence of any solid empirical evidence, it has to be. So I shall demonstrate, according to these same statistical formulae, that there are no ETI’s.

The ETI searchers base their quest on the Vastness of the Universe (VotU) stochastic principle. We know that there are trillions (Quadrillions? Gazillions? I told you I was a mathematical incompetent) of stars in the universe. We can actually see some of them. Some of these stars have planetary systems. We can see these too, or at least detect evidence of their existence.

But VotU takes matters a step further, beyond what we can actually observe: VotU informs us that some of these systems have life-supporting planets, and that some of these planetary life-forms have evolved intelligence akin to or beyond our own. Hence the search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence! VotU proves you’re out there. We just have to look for you.

VotU accomplishes this remarkable feat on the basis of Twain’s statistics. Let me demonstrate. If there are “some” planetary systems in the Vastness of the Universe, then there must be a lot. “Some” as a fraction of infinite vastness is still a mighty big number. By the same logic, “some” of “some” is still pretty big. So some of these planetary systems must contain planets that harbor life, and some of these life-forms must have evolved intelligence – well, you get the stochastic principle, and if you don’t, you’re too dumb to be reading this article.

But if you are with me so far, you are now trapped! And by your own logic, too! For if our intelligence leads us to search for intelligent life-forms “out there,” then it stands to stochastic reason that They are also searching for us. It would be the sheerest human egocentrism to think that only we have arrived at this level of scientific curiosity. Not only that, we must assume that “some” of these extra-terrestrial searchers are a lot smarter than we. After all, who are we to believe that our evolution has achieved the highest form of intelligence and technological competence.  A little humility, please.

So the question arises, why have we not heard from these “smart ones?” Why do we have to shoulder the SETI burden alone? But it appears that we do, in embarrassing violation of VotU stochastics.

Ah, but perhaps the Smart Ones are so smart that they deliberately refrain from contacting us, out of respect for our puny human limitations, or because they are waiting for us to destroy ourselves so they can colonize our planet, or whatever. But even these speculations contradict VotU. “Some” of the Smart Ones may not be as smart – or may be a lot smarter – than the others. Statistically speaking, that fraction of the Smart Ones must be conducting their own SETI projects. Yet we have not heard from them either.

The conclusion is inescapable, based on sound VotU principles, that They are not Out There. The ghastly fact is that we are alone in the Universe. We are peerless.

How shall we treat this stunning news? I don’t know how you may react to it, but I must tip my hat to the Fundamentalists, who somehow have preached it all along, without benefit of Twainian statistics. God bless ‘em. They seem to know something we do not.