Space Above This Line For Recorder 'S Use Loan No: Fill & Download for Free

First…Stop it.Artificial intelligence is not "intelligence". And it's not "artificial consciousness".Everyone is afraid that AI will suddenly wake up, get upset, and take over the world.Or that AI will wake up and take all of our jobs. This will happen. But without the "wake up" part.Below I describe what real AI is.If we want to understand the “existential threat” we first need to know what AI is.Then, if you are at a cocktail party and someone says, "but what if robots are intelligent?" you can argue with facts, mixed with a little bit of alcohol.---------A) STATISTICSStatistics is at the heart of most AI programs.Just like statistics is at the heart of a lot of human decision making.For instance, if you see clouds in the sky, your brain thinks: "Hmmm, the last 100 times I saw clouds this dark, it usually meant it was about to rain".When you think like that, you are using statistics to make the decision: "I should _probably_ go inside now."I'll give an AI example: Siri or Alexa. How does Alexa understand the words you just said?In 1989 I was visiting Carnegie Mellon to decide if I would go to graduate school there.One of the graduate students, Kai-Fu-Lee (now one of the most famous investors in the world and I would check out his excellent recent TED talk on AI) showed me what he was working on:It was speech recognition for the 60 or so commands that might happen on a Navy battleship (ten guesses as to who was funding his project).When you say the word "Fire!" a sound wave is created. When you say the word "hello" a sound wave that looks different is created.If 100 people say "Fire" and 100 people say "hello", all of those sounds waves are stored in a database.Now, if a brand new person says "Hello" the computer program needs to determine if that person said "Hello" or "fire".There might be 10 different attributes of every sound wave. It breaks the new person's sound wave into those 10 attributes.Then it compares that "vector" of 10 attributes with all of the vectors in its database for "Hello" and "Fire!"It uses a statistical technique called "Hidden Markov Analysis" to determine if the sound wave is more like the "hello"s in the database or more like the "Fire!" in the database.Then it says to itself, "This guy said "Hello". "It then has a line of code that says, "If someone says "Hello" Then say "Hello" back".Additionally, it adds your "Hello" to its database.Your "Hello" might be slightly different than the other 100 "Hello"s so it just learned a new way to say "Hello". That gives it greater ability in the future to recognize the word "hello".In other words, it "learned".So it used Statistics to hear you, code to respond to you, and database technology to learn. There's no real intelligence there but it feels like it's intelligence.Multiply that by 30 years and millions of patterns and computers a million times faster and you have Alexa and Siri in today's kitchens.Ask "Siri" what gender it is.-----B) EVALUATION FUNCTIONI just mentioned about language recognition. But how does a self-driving car work?Every second it has to make a decision. Does it move forward? Does it brake? Does it swerve to avoid an accident? Does it turn left?How does it get from point A to point B?1) Google Maps. - Using GPS it knows where it is. And it puts itself on Google Maps.2) List all of the possible routes. This is a "hard" problem in the mathematical sense (there's no way for it to guess the fastest route. It has to list each route and then sort by the shortest. )But now computers are so fast what would normally be a slow decision (drive me from this corner in Piscataway, New Jersey to the capital building of Sacramento, California) now just takes seconds.3) Waze. Use Waze to eliminate the routes with too much traffic.4) Start driving.5) Statistics: Every microsecond it uses statistics to see if there is blank space or an object that must be avoided or a traffic sign that must be followed.6) Decide what to do according to the code. For each traffic sign, it has code that tells it what to do (if a sign says "Stop" it Stops for a second, uses Statistics to see if any traffic is happening on its sides (with radar and cameras to provide the images). )If there is a person standing in front of it, it might just stop.If there's traffic it didn't expect, it might trigger the program to re-route.If it's blank space it will just keep going.If there's a baby crossing the street and it has to swerve to avoid hitting it, but if swerving will cause the car to hit a truck, killing the passenger in the car, then the "AI" of the car is dependent on the ethical decisions of the programmer of the car.In other words, in every situation, it determines it's options, then uses an "evaluation function" programmed by a coder, to determine which option has the most successful outcome (move the trip forward, don't kill anyone).Eventually the evaluation function will NOT be programmed by a human coder.Instead, through thousands of experiences of other self-driving cars, the experiences plus the outcomes will all be put into a central database.When a new experience is encountered, the code will look up that experience in the database and the database will spit back the best possible outcome.The code will learn statistically what the best outcomes are of each possibly decision and change the code accordingly and send updates to all self-driving cars.-----C) TREESThe hardest game in the world is a board game called GO. With chess, if a computer can evaluate a billion possibilities a second, it can be a world champion level player.But a Go game can involve trillions of possibilities. How did Google make a program, Deep Go, to beat the world's best Go player. This was thought to be impossible.And yet Google did it.For any game, a computer program first builds a tree of possibilities. Much like a human would.A human thinks: "If I make this move in checkers, my opponent might respond with A, B, or C and then I can do D, E, or F and then my opponent can do G, H, I if I do D or it can do J, K, L if I do E and I'm never going to do F.A computer doesn't select as well as a human so it builds the FULL tree. Meaning, what are ALL of the possible moves it can do, what are ALL of the possible responses of my opponent, etc.And then it uses a programmed evaluation function to look at the leaves of the tree it built.Whichever move results in the best leaf of the tree (as determined by the evaluation function) that is the move it makes.That's how computer chess worked for decades. I'll get to the secret sauce in a second for how computers conquered chess.And then after that I'll describe how computers miraculously conquered Go.It's only a miracle until science can explain it. It's only "intelligence" until it can be coded by a programmer.D) HARDWAREEverybody thought for decades (including many Nobel Prize winners) that the best computer chess programs would be developed when scientists encoded the knowledge of the best chess players in the world into the evaluation function.How does the world champion value a position instead of a weak player?This turned out to be wrong.The MORE code in the evaluation function (i.e. the "smarter" the evaluation function was from a human perspective) the SLOWER the program.Which meant a smaller tree would be built, which meant less possibilities would be analyzed.What really allowed the programmers at IBM to build "Deep Blue" which beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 were two things.Both related to hardware.a. Computers got faster.b. First the creators of Deep Blue developed software. But then they made the software into hardware, building the logic right into the hardware infrastructure of the computer. Making the program 100x faster than it would have been.And finally, they made the evaluation function STUPID in order to use less code so the hardware could value more positions.Then, before anyone caught on to their "artificial intelligence" they retired Deep Blue right after it beat the World Champion of chess.As hardware gets faster, artificial intelligence gets "smarter".[as an aside, I once gave a date a chip that was the initial chip for “Chip Test” - the “ancestor” of what became the best chess computer, Deep Blue. She was weirded out.]----INTERLUDEWhat I just described is all the basics. You can stop now.The rest of artificial intelligence is simply combining the basics to make more advanced techniques.-----E) STATISTICS + TREERemember the TREE from computer gaming. And STATISTICS from speech recognition.Now let's go to the impossible game of Go. Google developed the program "AlphaGo" to win at Go when everyone else thought it would take another 20 to 50 years.First, remember Kai-Fu Lee who worked on speech recognition. And later developed Apple's first attempts at speech recognition in the 90s?At one point in his grad student days, he was getting tired of navy battleship commands (as one does) and decided to focus on building a program to play Othello.He ended up building the world champion of Othello.He took a lot of games, let's say a million, and put them in a database. And each position from each game, he would label, "winning" (if it was a position on the winning side) or "losing" in a massive database.He would identify several attributes of each position (how many white pieces, versus black pieces, how many corners were controlled, how many pieces were on the sides, etc).Now, if the computer was playing a brand new game, it would determine all the attributes of that position, then use Hidden Markov Analysis (remember: speech recognition) to match that position to the database.If the position pattern-matched a "winning position" then it would make the move that would lead to that winning position. If it matched a "losing position" it would not make that move.That program became the world champion of Othello.AlphaGo took it one step further.It put in the positions of millions of Go positions and did the same sort of breakdown.It used faster hardware to speed up the process.Then, once it became pretty good at GO, it played BILLIONS of games against ITSELF to put many BILLIONS of new positions into the database. In other words, it "learned".Now it was ready to play Go. It crushed the world champion------That's basically it. That's all of artificial intelligence.Let's say a bank wanted to fire all of the employees in charge of lending. And replace them by artificial intelligence.How would the bank lend money?Well, there's 100s of millions of loans already out there. And for each person who has ever borrowed money I know:- their age- where they grew up- what their job is, are they married?- are they divorced? do they have kids?- How often do they move? how have they done on prior loans like this? and I even know what they buy on Amazon and how often they fly to Las Vegas.I can put all these vectors in a database and divide them into people "most likely to pay back the loan" and people "most likely to default".Then, just like speech recognition or the Othello program above, I can use statistics to determine who I should loan money to.And if I say "no", I don't have to explain. On to the next one!---Let's say I want to fight terrorists.I already have examples of many terrorists who trained in the US and then went on to perform or attempt acts of terror.I know everything about their bank accounts. How often they transferred money. How often they traveled. How often they took out cash versus using a debit card.And so on.I can build a vector of attributes of what a terrorist bank account looks like. Then I can match new people against that database of vectors of terrorists.Believe me, every time you do a bank transfer, some AI program is out there trying to determine if you are a terrorist.----This is all that AI is.It is nothing more. It's not "intelligent" from a human sense. It's not conscious, nor will it ever be.Here's how AI has improved in the past forty years (and how it will improve the next 40):- statistics has gotten better- methods of building the trees have gotten better (this was the subject of some of my research when I was in graduate school)- hardware has gotten faster- more data is available about everything.What is changing the fastest is data. The land grab of modern society is not land, or gold, or oil.It's data.I have been invested in many companies that collect and sell data. I was an early investor (and on the board of) bit.ly, as an example. bit.ly accounts for about 2-5% of all Internet traffic.Believe me when I say, data-driven companies know how many strawberries you ate last summer.And right now that data is used mostly to target you for ads about sneakers. Or politics.But this is AI 1.0. Soon that data will be used to target your every movement, your every want, your every need.Amazon Prime won't be about delivering you what you want tomorrow. Amazon Prime Plus will be about delivering you what you want yesterday.Police 2.0 will be like the movie "Minority Report".Even art and music will be driven by AI that studies the neurochemical responses to music you like to music you don't like. And then compose accordingly.Where will humans still be unique?I don't know. Ask the humans with AI implants that enhance their brains so when they look at you they know exactly what answers will make you happy.BUT… will AI replace jobs?The answer (at least in the next decade or so…) is NO.Look at recent examples:A) Many people were worried ATM machines would replace bank tellers.Instead, the banks made so much in profits they opened up more branches than ever, creating new jobs.B) Will autonomous delivery services cost jobs.Right now there are millions of truck drivers involved in delivering goods. With autonomous delivery, less people will go shopping, more people will be required to shop in the aisles, finding products for people.Obviously this is not a high-end job. But this replaces the fact that less cashiers and drivers will be needed.Meanwhile, there will be more high-end jobs. More maintenance engineers for the cars, customer service, marketing, etc.C) Ecommerce. Branding will become less important (branding is VERY important when everyone is shopping at the big box store but advertising will have to become more clever and digital) so the millions in profits that are generated from AI will filter down to more people starting e-commerce ventures and the ancillary businesses associated with that.)Final conclusion:AI will probably create a “have” and “have not” situation, particularly as humans start to use AI to increase mental and physical capacityThis is probably a net NEGATIVE for society as the higher classes will be able to afford “super AI” capabilities, making them demi-gods to lower-classes.AI will not destroy as many jobsInstead, massive profits will be generated, which will be soaked into the economy through a rising stock market, increase in opportunities, etc.We can’t predict. ATMs didn’t destroy bank tellers. VCRs didn’t destroy movie theaters. Spotify/Pandora/etc did destroy music stores and record sales but that was replaced by growing revenues in music tours.Education needs to scale up. AI, programming, and the higher-end jobs that will be created need to be studied. College is not the place to study these opportunities. Instead: Khan Academy, Lynda, CodeAcademy, Coursera, etc should become accredited and get people ready for the opportunities that will arise.

Dr. Kristin Hilda stared at the computer monitor in disbelief. She checked the readings again, and compared them with data gathered during the previous few days. This couldn’t be right, could it?2017, she thought. Too soon.NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had predicted that Voyager 1 might have enough juice to continue transmitting until 2022. Maybe 2025, if they were lucky. But it appeared that The Little Probe That Could had finally given up the ghost. With no communication, it wouldn’t even be possible to ask Voyager what was wrong. Dr. Hilda imagined the spacecraft floating through space, a lifeless husk of metal, cold and dark and silent forevermore.Dr. Hilda called her supervisor, the current manager of the four-decade-old Voyager project.“Dr. Lewis,” she said, nearly choking on the emotion stirred by the finality of what she was about to say, “I think we’ve lost Voyager 1.”The news coverage was less than the Voyager team expected. To them, Voyager 1 was their life and their livelihood; to the public, it was a dusty relic of a by-gone era. Very few people were even aware that Voyager 1 was still a thing. If they remembered the heady days when the Voyagers sent back breathtaking pictures of fantastic alien worlds, it stirred little nostalgia in them today. Deep in the bureaucratic bowels of NASA, funds and research time were quietly re-allocated. The Deep Space Network, which had been humanity’s link to Voyager 1, was loaned out to other projects. After a few days, the news cycle returned to its endless fascination with political scandals and horrifying crimes.Humanity moved on.Dr. Ernesto Jenaro tapped the face of his wristwatch to activate his personal information display as he walked into the spacious lobby of NASA’s new Deep Space Exploration Network (DSEN) main control building. The gleaming holographic display summarized the reams of data that his team had gathered overnight. Sixty-three new asteroids and twelve comets had been spotted by his team’s Hyperfine Deep Sky Survey, smaller and further away than ever before. Every day, Dr. Jenaro and his team came one step closer to achieving their ultimate dream - the most comprehensive survey of the solar system ever made.“Hey team, what’s new?” asked Dr. Jenaro as he strode through the door into the meeting room where his colleagues were assembled. Eddie Brannon, a graduate intern, placed a holoprojector on the tabletop and waved his hand over it, triggering the projector to start its presentation. A three-dimensional model of the solar system appeared above the table, and as the team watched, a few dozen glowing dots popped up throughout the system. A gentle curve grew from each dot, expanding prograde and retrograde simultaneously, eventually wrapping around the Sun to make an elliptical orbit projection. As the curves bent around on themselves, they became fuzzy and less distinct. Dr. Jenaro nodded; it would take a few months to nail down the future orbital tracks of these newly-discovered bodies.Then something interesting caught his eye. A very small object, no more than a few meters across, had been spotted on a hyperbolic trajectory. That was not unheard of in itself. Every week or so, the team spotted an outbound comet that had passed close enough to one of the gas giants to get boosted out of the system. This was different, though. Although the prediction was fuzzy, the computer had calculated a high probability that this object was heading inwards, not outwards.“What’s the story with this one?” asked Dr. Jenaro, motioning his hands to zoom in on the curious orange dot.Dr. Eleonora Sargent, the team’s chief programmer, punched a button on the console in front of her seat to bring up the dot’s projected orbital elements, along with margins of error. She read aloud to the seven other people in the room: “New Object 22414 dash A994, discovered May 13, 2053, by HDSS-23. Confirmed by 29 and 51. We have a good lock on its position, but that’s about it. Orbital elements are still fuzzy, but we’re about fifty percent sure that it’s extrasolar. Whatever it is, it’s tiny. Its cross-section is somewhere between one and fifteen meters. It’s moving fast, too.”Dr. Jenaro adjusted his glasses as he digested the string of numbers floating beneath the orange dot. An extrasolar rock. That was interesting. In the mission’s four-year run, they had only spotted three objects with possible extrasolar origins. Until today, none of them had been on a track that would bring them close enough to the fleet of satellites to get a good lock on their motion. It might take a few weeks, but this one was looking very promising.“Scroll forward along the track, please. I’d like to see how close this is going to get to Earth.”Dr. Sargent slid her finger across her console, and the display shifted to predict the position of the dot in the future. The dot lost focus as the uncertainty grew. Suddenly, the dot turned from orange to purple, an indication that it had reached the point of closest approach. Earth was not visible in the display, so Dr. Jenaro waved his hand to zoom out. The resolution display changed: 0.05 AU…0.1 AU…0.5 AU…and then the pale blue dot representing planet Earth swung into view. Dr. Sargent punched a few more buttons, and a line appeared connecting the center of the fuzzy purple dot to the center of the blue dot.Dr. Jenaro whistled. “0.62 AU, give or take 0.02. Damn.”This was exciting news. For the first time since the Hyperfine Deep Sky Survey had begun, they were going to get confirmation of an extrasolar object passing through the solar system. Even better, it would drop close enough to the Sun that maybe, just maybe, one of their autoprobes could manage an intercept. It would take some string-pulling; after all, the autoprobes were technically meant to wrangle asteroids that threatened Earth. But if this…thing…whatever it was…turned out to be a rock from another star system, that might convince the powers-that-be to lend him one of their toys.Dr. Jenaro adjusted his glasses and smiled at his team. They had a lot of work to do.Autoprobe 79 had been quietly orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars for seventeen years, waiting for the call that humanity hoped they would never have to send. As spacecraft went, it was a simple affair: a computer core with enough artificial intelligence to handle the steering, riding on a fuel tank and four low-thrust, high-efficiency engines. Mounted to the front was a simple grappling claw. Its mission was simple: if called, it was to plot a rendezvous course with an asteroid, latch onto it, and then use its weak thrusters to nudge the rock onto a new orbital path. Autoprobe 79 had one hundred fifty-nine brothers and sisters scattered around the system, all waiting for their chance to save Earth.Twenty-three days after Dr. Jenaro’s team identified ESO-1, as the media were calling it, Autoprobe 79 received a string of instructions from Earth. It was to intercept ESO-1, grab it, and slow its orbital speed enough to bring it into a stable orbit around the Sun. After that, it was to wait three months, then fire its thrusters again to push ESO-1 into a new orbit that would eventually intercept Earth. If Autoprobe 79 had been programmed to feel indignant, it certainly would have done so. It was being asked to do exactly the opposite of what it had been built to do.Dr. Jenaro and his team stood in the control center of the Deep Space Exploration Network, surrounded by scientists, mission specialists, and administrators. It was Day Zero - the day that Autoprobe 79 finally reached its closest approach to ESO-1 and fired its thrusters to match velocities. For sixteen long months they had watched this mysterious thing falling closer and closer to the inner solar system. They had waited patiently as the autoprobe completed its slow burn, then coasted around the Sun to meet the visitor. Now the autoprobe was finally close enough to get a visual lock on ESO-1, and maybe, finally, some of the mysteries would be solved.Dr. Jenaro, Dr. Sargent, and the rest of the team stood with nervous anticipation in the crowded, stuffy room. The display screen was black; the telemetric ‘scopes were still waiting for the data transmissions from Autoprobe 79. The tension filled the air like smoke, nearly choking the few dozen people who had hitched their ambition to ESO-1 for more than a year.Outside the building, thousands had gathered. Some were religious fanatics who believed that ESO-1 would turn out to be a message from God Himself. Some thought it was an alien spaceship; others wrung their hands at the terrible notion that it might be a weapon, sent to destroy all of humanity. Many were simply curious for the big reveal; for all the time that ESO-1 had dominated the news, nobody knew what it was.They knew it wasn’t broadcasting. They knew it wasn’t particularly hot or cold. They knew it reflected a fair amount of light for its size, which was about two meters across. But what exactly was it? Nobody knew. They were all there to find out together.Inside the DSEN headquarters, the screen crackled to life. Dr. Jenaro held his breath. Dr. Sargent, not normally an expressive person, clutched Dr. Jenaro’s arm. Eddie Brannon, PhD candidate, tapped his lapel camera to begin recording the proceedings. It was against policy, but nobody was paying him any attention.On the screen, Autoprobe 79’s camera slewed to the right, sweeping across the vast blackness of outer space. Then a tiny dot swung into view. The probe’s cameras followed their programming and zoomed in on the pinprick of light. Closer and closer the camera zoomed, revealing more detail each moment until…“Son of a bitch!” somebody swore, and the room erupted into chaos. Despite the mission manager’s repeated calls for order, the pandemonium would not be contained. Several employees tapped their earpieces and began loudly dictating the events of the last few moments to media personnel locked outside the building, in direct violation of pain-of-termination orders given earlier that day. Some, spurred by an undying commitment to professionalism, dutifully monitored the progress of Autoprobe 79. Others wept openly. Everyone in the room shared a profound certainty that nothing would ever be the same again. Whatever they thought they knew would have to be revised.After an absence of more than 37 years, Voyager 1 was back.For the first time in recent memory, it was impossible for the media outlets to over-sensationalize the story. Scientists had no answers, which led the public to make up their own. The religious fundamentalists found the message from God they were looking for. Who but the Almighty could pluck a space probe from the fabric of space and time, only to place it down again on the exact opposite side of the solar system? Scientists, of both the professional and armchair variety, speculated wildly on everything from aliens to wormholes. Cynics declared that it was all a giant hoax to drum up extra funding. By the time Autoprobe 79 completed its approach and sank its grappling hook into the side of Voyager 1, the public had already joined a passionate debate about the mysterious reappearance.Mitch Carbonaro sat in front of his holoprojector, as he had done for six hours a day for the past two years, watching his decryption program spool through line after line of unbreakable code. Every few hours the projector would emit a beep, indicating that it had reached the end of yet another fruitless attempt to make sense of the Voyager code. Mitch rubbed his eyes in frustration. He was not alone.Ever since Voyager 1 had been returned to Earth, ten years earlier, cryptographers around the world had slaved over the impossibly complex code they found inside Voyager’s archaic computers. The 1’s and 0’s that had been programmed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory nearly a century before had all been replaced…by what, nobody knew. No operating system, past or present, could make sense of the code. Despite its small size, no larger than a still image file, the code was impenetrably dense.Mitch started working with the decryption project fresh out of college, convinced that the bizarre patterns of data were simply the result of corrupted data. In Mitch’s opinion, whatever had teleported Voyager 1 across the solar system had also scrambled its computers. His chief manager at NASA’s Deep Space Exploration Network, Dr. Edward Brannon, had other ideas. Dr. Brannon had been on the ground level on Day Zero, and had always been convinced that there was a purpose behind Voyager’s return. Dr. Brannon had hired Mitch, and about a dozen other promising cryptographers, to discover that purpose.The holoprojector beeped its failure, and Mitch decided to let it run while he went to dinner. As he sat in the park, eating his Synth-Meat burger and questioning his career choices, he heard a beep from his earpiece. Then two beeps. Then, unexpectedly, his earpiece began playing the 1812 Overture. Mitch dropped his burger and gasped, nearly choking. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.But it was. His holoprojector had sent him the signal he never expected to receive. His heart pounding, Mitch tapped the face of his watch. It turned green, indicating success.He had done it. He had done the impossible. He had isolated a pattern in the seemingly patternless Voyager code.Mitch tossed the rest of his burger to a grateful pigeon and raced home. He burst through the door of his apartment, sweat-covered and panting heavily, and stabbed his finger on the control panel of his holoprojector. The motion simultaneously saved the log file and notified his employer. Within minutes, his apartment was swarming with government agents.Dr. Edward Brannon stood nervously at the podium in front of the DSEN headquarters. He had been dreaming of this day for more than a decade. Now that it had arrived, he found himself unable to focus. His life was once again about to change forever. Everybody’s life was about to change forever. The code - the now-unmistakably alien code buried inside Voyager’s computers - had finally been broken. Dr. Brannon, who had dedicated himself to public transparency, decreed that there would be no secrets when the code was revealed. Hence, he did the unthinkable. Against the pleas and threats of his colleagues and government overseers, Dr. Brannon arranged to have the code’s message revealed for the first time in a public forum, via a small press conference in a secret location.He knew it was career suicide, but he did not care. He had reached the fulfillment of his career. He was also reasonably certain that he would not be arrested. No matter what, Dr. Brannon would always be the person who had brought the Voyager message to the people. How could you put a man like that in jail?He stepped up to the mic and adjusted it to his height. He stared out at the room full of faces, all of them gazing back at him. With their eyes, they pleaded for good news. They pleaded with him to give them hope, to allay their fears. They begged for release from the uncertainty that had haunted the backs of their minds since Day Zero. Dr. Brannon licked his lips - a nervous habit - then cleared his throat and began to speak.“Fellow citizens of Earth,” he began, realizing how grandiose it sounded, “we now know that the force responsible for returning Voyager 1 to us was an alien intelligence. We know that they left a message for us - a message they embedded within Voyager’s computers. Why they did not deliver this message personally, we do not know. Where they came from, we cannot say. All we have from them is their message.”He paused to scan the crowd. He thought about his wife. He hoped she would be okay.“My friends”, he continued, “the time has come to reveal that message. In the interest of complete transparency, nobody has seen or heard the message before now. The message was decoded entirely in the mainframe at DSEN, without oversight by myself or any of my staff. I have elected to follow this controversial route because I believe that the message is for all of us, and we should all experience it together.”He paused for a long moment, chewing on his lower lip as tears welled in his eyes. The moment had come. There was no point in delaying.“Begin the message,” he said, waving his hand over the holoprojector. The air above the projector lit up with a fiery orange hue. Shapes danced in the flame-like hologram, slowly spinning and coming into focus. As the breathless moments passed, it became obvious that the shapes were letters…English letters. Like a butterfly from a cocoon, the message emerged. All at once, it became clear.And the audience gasped.In shimmering letters suspended in mid-air, the Voyager probe’s message was finally revealed to the audience in the underground chamber, and through their cameras, to the world at large. Years of anticipation came crashing down like a tsunami, crushing the air from the observers’ lungs. The world simultaneously wept, laughed, and tore their hair at the beautiful - yet maddening - simplicity of humanity’s first message from an intelligent species:NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UPThe conclusion to this story was inspired by Justin Franco’s answer to this question: If you were a serial killer, what would your signature be? Forgive me.

Minoan technologies are not well understood.The only one I can think of that we don’t have today is potentially an unusual prism type lens to reproduce a natural rainbow (see lenses below if in a hurry and look for the wedge crescent-shaped one, it is not clear if this was its purpose or coincidental, however, Minoan optics are superb for the time, they preceded the Nimrud lens by around 8 centuries and are of much higher quality and are precision ground from rock crystal (natural glass), Daedalus’ nephew is accredited with inventing the dividing calliper (a compass) and as you’ll see this dramatically improved their engineering tolerances which are as good as tool placement to within 20 micron, 0.02mm).We tend to think of technology (the art of science) as modern, however, some ancient civilisations were really good at developing new technologies and exploiting them to improve their lives.SummaryConsider the scene and oar arrangement on the flotilla fresco from Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini) to another Greek island, Delos at the centre of the Cyclades (it’s naval). Images can be zoomed by clicking on them. State of the art technology before circa 1628 BCE and a glimpse into the Minoan World, enjoy …Theran white-hulled FleetSmall boats of 10 rowing oars or less, are shown as plain wooden hulls in the fresco. Those over 10 oars are white hulls or copper in one case. The significance being that large plain wooden hulls over 10 oars (non-Minoan) for transporting goods can be identified as they pass through the Cyclades and duty potentially levied.Minoan Peak Sanctuary Observatories are present at elevated mountain tops and peaks which have a commanding view of the shipping lanes, farms (to estimate areas to establish quota for tax), the night sky noting the clear markers for measurement, potentially signalling and night fires providing a beacon for boats.Peak Sanctuaries have line-of-sight between them across most of the islands in the Cyclades. Line-of-sight to the horizon from a ship's deck is approximately 4kms by comparison. A method of island fire beacons is reported in the Illiad to report the fall of Troy to Argos within hours, not quite satellite communication, but for the time impressive, its over a 500 miles as the crow flies, there is nothing to touch this until radio communication over three thousand years later).Large Labyrs or double-axe (mirrors) could have been rested on the so-called stone ‘horns of consecration’ for signalling and coordinating fleet. Peak Sanctuaries likely used for solar observation and astronomy, as well of observing coastal approaches and shipping lanes. You can see the ware and repair on the artefacts below. N.B. The double axe is gravity cast flat in copper and would be approximately 85% reflective when polished on the ‘A’ side.In this way, large double-axe mirrors (3m high), could be rested against the ‘horns’ on the wall of the peak sanctuary and retained using a base and rocked to signal over a huge distance, a translation of Labrys is ‘bright’ or narrow street (e.g. a beam of light), interestingly ‘lightening’ means ‘star-axe’.Consider what is shown on this seal mirrors which could be seen from over 200kms away.Specific accounts of signalling being used in the Greek age[1][2] and according to Homer, fire beacons (on islands) although there are no earlier accounts (e.g. In Minoan times), this may have been and think likely a legacy from Minoan times.Talos (machines) possibly an early catapult (Minoans were proficient with standoff weapons, slings and archery, and as you can see are good at technical development). One can see on this seal, peak sanctuaries may be connected in some way and a catapult is implied for throwing rocks (likely protecting ports and or nature harbours), encouraging ship to anchor in ports where duty could be levied by throwing rocks at ships trying to anchor in natural harbours and circumventing the ports authority (and tax)!The historians generally concur that early machines likely existed as accounts refer to automatons, statues that move by themselves. Although there are no archaeological early examples that survive, my own view is that pulley wheels were within there manufacturing capability, these automatons delighted audiences with their movements and ‘sang’. I think we can reasonably assume Minoans were ‘nerds’, whether male or female they loved their technology. There are accounts of Hephaestus creating a serving automaton, likely three-wheeled trolley to serve food that could at least ‘walk in’ and return. The account of Daedulus alludes to how they might be powered, he used mercury which is 13.5 times denser than water, in this way the liquid can sequence movement when it fills a pot and under gravity falls, moving a spindle or pulley wheels to actuate movement of limbs, that could also draw in air (through a whistle) as it escaped which could explain how the machines were able to sing. Though how complex these machines were is difficult to say.The early craftsman may possibly have been able to achieve something like this, both of these are much later example and in this case, I think it is likely to be a much bigger device and would use pulleys rather than gears.There is an intriguing account of a palace of Baal having a door that opened with fire (steam), that is thought to be built by Minoan engineers. I think this possible, they had hot and cold running water using copper pipes to upper stories in palaces (so probably did have boilers but there are no surviving examples - this later example is from Samos around 700 BCE, I seem to remember it's now in the Met (NY).Minoan hydroengineering is generally considered to be comparable with 18th century Europe, the significance of this would be that they are exploring using machines to do significant mechanical work. Of all the civilisations at this time, the Minoans are on a trajectory to bring about an industrial revolution sooner, they are at the level of making many copies (batch production), then not quite there and then in 1628 BCE Thera erupted and they never fully recovered to the same level of sophistication and had other priorities.Carian marinesThe so-called ‘ship-wreck’ fresco is in the same room as the first flotilla fresco that may be part of the same story on the North Wall, that may suggest Carians are paid in head of herd, a hecatomb - 100 cattle [/island?] at a festival to Apollo on Delos, the centre of the Cyclades. This is aligned to the oral accounts for the founding of Delos.Delos, if you would be willing to be the abode of my son Phoebus Apollo and make him a rich temple –; for no other will touch you, as ou will find: and I think you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly. But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollo, all men will bring you hecatombs [hundreds of head of herd] and gather here, and incessant savour of rich sacrifice will always arise, and you will feed those who dwell in you from the hand of strangers; for truly your own soil is not rich.Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo 51–60It is known that Carians lived on Delos and adjacent islands, including Naxos, a redistribution centre. Carians supplied crew and soldiers (marines) for Minos’ navy. Carians being accredited with many shield inventions, horsehair helmets and military dances (formations/drill), they were considered by the later Greeks to be the most disciplined fighters, for hire (later in history), full-time professional soldiers. Note the Ship Winter storage sheds.Delos today, is one of the most if not the most archaeological dense sites in the entire world.Carians were known to be driven out of the islands by Minos (ca. 1,600–1450 BCE) and resettled on Caria which is where they get their name from, sometime after the Thera eruption, possibly a civil war broke out as the islands did not have food surplus available. This seal may represent this, a Cretan athElite left and Carian right. This same scene is recorded on many Minoan seals but this is one of the finest (ever found), it is 1.4″ in size.Zoomed in to approximately 10mm wide, the fidelity is extraordinary, the woollen kilt has clear raised lines with a fineness of less than 0.1mm (circa, 60 microns and very consistent, a human-hair fine). It does beg the question as to how this was made without optical magnification? Read on. If you download this image and zoom in you can see microdrill holes in the hairline - only a few, the artist missed, how they produced such fine rebated square sections I have no idea, it would be admired whenever it was produced, but this is circa 1500BCE, this entire width is 10mm, it is jaw-dropping).This is a 1mm square section and if you look carefully you can see some of the milling holes have not been worked. This suggests a tool bit of around 0.06mm and placement precision of 0.02mm, as you’ll see Minoans had lenses to realise this…It is worth adding that a compass may have been used to create this seal, the significance of this is that you can dramatically increase engineering tolerances. The dividing calliper (compass) is accredited to Perdix (Daedalus’ nephew), which archaeology seems to confirm is correct.This does tend to suggest that the majority of Minoan artefact currently found are Minoan brick-a-brac, what is needed is a deserted Minoan Citadel and there is one, see fresco, its around the Modern-day airport on Thera under a large amount of pumice that has likely preserved everything!The Theran eruption caused regional and to a less degree globe crop failure with the ash fallout (tree ring circles from Ireland had been used to date this eruption and there are other written accounts as far east as China) and with this the potential inability of the islands to pay the Marines in cattle!Vulcanologists generally concur, the Thera caldera had a single opening to the Sea to the West before ca 1628BCE when the eruption occurred, which implies that the fleet is heading North (to Delos) rather than South to Crete.Fresco orientated to North (left), e.g to Delos, noting this is shown on the North Wall of the room also, Thera pre-eruption (middle) and today (right).Weight assisted propulsion (lost in antiquity). The oars on the large ships appear to protrude mid-hull. This may be a counterbalanced oar, that uses a rope around the oar connected to weights. In this way, the weight of the oar, at some distance from the ship, is counterbalanced and crew can be adjacent to the hull rather than set away from it, saving useful stowage space.The fresco shows the end of the pull stroke, on the return stroke, the rope is extended further (outside the hull) and the internal weights within the hull are lifted. This would offer greater speed as work is performed continuously and unnecessary work is avoided, the oar is counterbalanced. Substantially faster passage could be achieved with this arrangement. Minoan technology is wonderfully simple. Not even Leonardo realised that work could be performed on the push and pull strokes who did explore how to harness human power for propulsion and flight.Minoan Marine TechnologyThere are many improvements over ships of this time shown in the fresco which include:a) Freestanding deployable masts, see main fresco.b) Composite reinforced hulls, a Minoan hull has been reconstructed (shown below) using a wooden frame with strong mortice and tenon joints and reinforced with flax linen cloth, in a pine resin matrix infused with limestone powders to make them white, the copper ship would suggest reinforcement was applied inside and out, the advantage is that if the hull runs into rocks although the wooden hull will fail, the inner composite will delaminate, keeping the hull watertight to make landfall and repair, saving the ship, crew and cargo.It is possible the Therans realised copper repels barnacles (that increase drag dramatically), the Royal Navy copper-bottomed ships for this very reason, the term today means the best. Fishing boats anchor within the Caldera to this day to clean the hull as copper is found within the islands rock formations. This seems to be limited to one ship (shown above), noting copper is a valuable commodity.To give an idea of what a copper hull may have looked like, this is a modern cold cast part (resin impregnated with copper filings and burnished). Splendid and would keep the hull clean to go faster too if the copper colour hull is using it. If the Minoans are using limestone powders I suspect they would experiment with other things too, the inner of this ship seems to be using lapis lazuli for example and is blue (need to zoom in to see it - at the rear of the vessel by the captain's cabin and blue being a feature colour on many hulls). Lapis Lazuli imported from Afghanistan coming into Phoenician ports, along with Tin (the other sources are Iberia, Cornwall/Britanny and there is a small deposits in the Anatolian mountains).I wonder if Orichalcum - Wikipedia which is referred to in the ancient text but only known by name in Plato’s time, is not a metal or an alloy as such, but rather a composite with metal powders for cold casting or applying a metallic surface finish? The issue being this would not age well using natural resin, so I’m not surprised it's not found in the archaeological archive. Second in value only to gold according to Plato.c) Devices that may be anemometers are shown on the ships hull which may deflect in wind, giving an indication to the captain and pilot of crosswinds so course correction can be made), bells appear to be shown on the line on some ships to give an audible indication of wind intensity to the crew, facing backwards.Minoan CompassOther artefacts suggest Minoans may have had superb navigational tools. Many Minoan buildings are aligned to magnetic North, which does suggest that they had a compass using magnetite, meteoric iron struck by lightning available from Skyros, although there is only a single example of a land-based compass. I cannot see that if they had this capability they would not use it at sea. The sub markers on this land-based example represent the fractional angle to True North (1 mark/total), the main pointer is West to indicate declination.It is worth noting that the four Minoan deities represent the four cardinal directions and seasons (solstice and equinox), a Minoan society working with these natural cycles to improve crop yields and developing conventions to assist navigation of the seas to facilitate trade.An Early Marine Sextant to establish Latitude (Jacob’s Staff) *.Consider Orion (the Hunter, male) and Ophiuchus (the Serpent-holder, female), in the star chart. Click to zoom.Labrys could have been used as a Jacobs staff to measure angles to reference stars, such as Orion’s belt or Ophiuchus, the Snake bearers [elbow] on the opposite side of the sky, called the serpent holder above (in English). The height of both these constellations approximates the extent of the axial tilt of the earth, the attitude or inclination of the stars position change by this extent over the year, these are the only constellation which expresses this, both being associated with moving the Zodiac constellations around the sky. The so-called ‘snake goddess’ may be little more than a Priestess explaining how to use Ophiuchus for navigation. Minoan used a lunar-solar calendar and added a 13th month every fourth year, an Olympiad when they celebrated by jumping the bull, so Ophiuchus is possibly their name for this intercalated month, this actually shown on the Orbit calculator later in this article (note that the lunar device flip-flops before advancing a position.There are a huge number of Labrys found, they are assumed to be of cultural significance, however, may have been a practical tool to assist with navigation and would also be a symbol of their naval power, Minos (Wanax or ruler) is accredited with creating the Worlds first Navy.Labrys being gravity cast in copper or gold in the case of small examples are practical mirrors when polished, B side shown. A signalling mirrors on board ship (ship to ship) and at peak sanctuaries (huge - 3m high shown above, shore to ship) to coordinate fleet perhaps.`The use as Jacob’s staff is confirmed by this later Phoenician iconography that adopts Labyrs, becoming straight-edged.‘Double axe’ marks are used for datums on Minoan buildings as a shadow is cast on the mark precisely at typically Equinox or Solstice datums.In this case, to refer to stars and constellations (Phoenician).Natural Birds to estimate Longitude *Birds illustrated, which also feature on the bow and stern posts of Phoenician ships, unfortunately, no surviving Minoan white hulls have yet been found, however, a small Minoan Shipwreck has recently been found but results are yet to be published.A possible reason is that caged birds face (longingly) towards the port they were exchanged in, this has been well established by scientific studies, they scuff the bowl in the cage, cover one of the bird’s eyes and they lose this ability, incredibly it looks as if they exploit a quantum effect as light as a wave rather than a particle, e.g. the two-slit experiment. The Minoans would not understand this, just recognise that birds had/have this ability (they hone to the desired location with the migratory seasons, which is what the Minoan sailors wanted to do and did). From this longitude (tricky) can be estimated by triangulation, it will not be perfect but some indication of longitude in the middle of the Mediterranean would have been extremely useful.It is known that Minoans realised high sea passage, but not how this was achieved, a puzzle that has perplexed marine archaeologists. These technologies being millennia ahead of the time, fibreglass hulls were not ‘invented’ until the 1950’s AD for example, flax linen cloth is almost as strong in tension as E-glass cloth used for composite hulls (GRP) of today but flax has improved flexural qualities. This is a half-scale reproduction (video tour) Minoan white-hull - 20 oars (the mid-hull oar arrangement, freestanding masts and devices of metrology (measurement) not reproduced, but according to the fresco are used).Palace ShipyardsThe Minoans do not appear to give away their advantage and likely kept these technologies secret, which is why little about this is known, obviously, the white hulls are on plain view in port, but no-one else knew how to build these ships and probably thought this was for decoration, the ships are pretty, featuring the fastest animals to ‘fly’ or ‘porpoise’ across the sea at speed! Ships likely produced by Palace controlled shipyards. It is worth noting that when Theseus returned to Athens the ship was kept for many centuries as a prize, had the mainland finally learned the Minoan secret of the location of metals of the world and to navigate it? Well maybe, but the mainland didn’t see the advantages of reinforcing a hull! Theseus made a beeline for Skyros on his return, a source of magnetite (iron), he was thrown off a cliff, the islands clearly didn’t like what he (Athens) offered.Seals. The profusion of seals found, allude to Palace seal authorisation. It is often difficult to interpret Minoan artefacts, are these possibly clay imprinted tokens for the passage for tradespeople or a kind of promissory note to exchange commodities on the next visit to port perhaps or perhaps a receipt against which the holders personal account is credited when presented to the Palace after the goods are delivered to port? Most of these impressions are found on the Phaistos Disc - Wikipedia.Palaces had shutters over doors for air management and fountains for natural cooling, flushing toilets, sewers, aqueducts, flat concrete floors, clay interlocking plumbing for freshwater, hypocaust (for heating), steam rooms and communal bathing, alabaster glazing (before flat glass, hazy but light penetrates), paved roads and canals being evident, not just writing but blind embossed printing, lost wax casting and formers to make once well and scale production with apprentices making many copies, fancy stuff. Why would anyone want to leave? Then again, they need to gather raw materials to make these wonderful things.The Priestess set quota for farms and monitor variance and there is evidence of economic planning to make up shortfalls through trade, winter food storage and magazines will have had significant metal reserves that they likely call upon following the Thera eruption, significant ash fallout fell on Crete. It may look like pots but the treasury is likely under the floor and you can’t see it for pottery.This is what the ladies in Minoan society did, organise, everything!The Priestess seem to collect internal revenues, the Minos external revenues (duty) and this may have been stored in the caves (protected by the Dactyls), on can see metal ingots stored in the caves, in this seal. Minos (lion) went to the caves every nine years to bring in new laws, the nine olives of victory being shown, Minos was last to leave the Arena according to mythology, which suggests Minoan leaders were appointed by talent. Briefly, the Minoan deities are shown on the top left branch: Daught Moon (Artemis), Mother Earth (Demeter); the bees, Son the Sun (Apollo) and his consort Venus; the love birds. The Minoan names are respectively: Potnia Theron (the Mistress of Animals), I-DA-MA-TE, Kouros (the Master of Animals), (J)A-SA-SA-RA-ME (Venus).The Priestess (bottom right) have corresponding houses. Mother Superior is shown behind the Griffon that represents the Great Year (a 26,000-year cycle, yes they worked this out, it 26 are shown repeatedly on Griffon iconography). The populus bottom left.The Priestess (bees) are like civil servants with special powers, they understand the science of the day (astronomy) and administration (organisation), purposeful intervening to increase production capacity and yields (e.g. literally seedcorn loans) to support an expanding population: 100,000 in Knossos - huge, which is around 1% of the world population at the time. It is called a Palace but it is more an administration centre (Government).It is generally assumed that coinage was ‘invented’ in Lydia around the 6th century BCE by the Priests of Artemis. Now consider these token minted by the Priestess of Potnia Theron (the Mistress of Animals and the forerunner to Artemis) and Demeter, know as the bees, respectively responsible for the Harvest and Winter food storage. They likely represent a months salary for acolytes (young trainee priestess, eight is frequently shown which represent an Octaeteris - Wikipedia that is associated with Venus, one of their four deities, A-SA-SA-RA-ME). The tokens are of a standard bullion weight and design and are found in quantity (often in hundreds) and used from around 1800 BCE. They are likely used to facilitate trade transactions and could have been drawn from the Palace and deposited at another to setup an account which good could then be drawn down from magazines against, in the main Minoans used a system of credit and reconciled accounts, drawing down goods with seal authorisation (like a credit card). Palace records show quota being set for farms, repaid at harvest time (with tax) and variance monitored and rolling over to the next accounting period. How very organised.There is a duality in this society, robustness to defend their way of life that is tempered by the female fascination with how nature is organised (the cycles of life). This society prospered (before the Thera eruption). Minos is accredited with suppressing piracy (facilitating trade).Minoan Orbital Calculator and astronomyClosing thoughts here is a casting stone to make many copies of an orbital calculator (manual), it precedes the Antikythera mechanism by over a millennium and defines many of the periods used on the later device. The four main Minoan deities define periods of time, an Earth Day (mother), a Lunar month (daughter), a Solar year (son) and a four-year Olympiad or Octaeteris (lady - consort). The device can also predict Saros cycles when the celestial bodies return to their original position, which can be used to predict eclipses, the device is 94% accurate in doing so. Rather impressive stuff. As you can see the device on the left, can be used to express angles as fractions of opposite and adjacent, that are the underlying elements of trigonometry, and particularly useful for orbital calculation, for example, to establishing the seasonal offset due to Earth’s axial tilt to accurately determine latitude. These people are geeks, they love their multifunction devices as do we today, theirs are a bit more basic but also very useful.The device on the right is for lunar periods but mostly for keeping a calendar, the first use of a 7 day week (lunar phase), the device flip-flops before advancing one position on the left solar device each month so that an accurate 29.5 day month can be maintained (clever huh), there is additional archaeology that confirms this. The solar device and notch systems allow a four-year Olympiad to be maintained, that the Minoans may have celebrated every four years with Bull-leaping (the first games), literally the leap month celebration, according to artefacts. Minos, the Cretan ruler, ‘being last to leave the arena.’ I suspect this device is more for the populous, the Priestess likely to have even better instruments, unfortunately, none of these has yet been found. It is mainly used for maintaining an accurate calendar but can perform some very useful mathematical functions, specifically, trigonometry for orbital calculation and seasonal offsets for determine latitude. It is a remarkable device and precedes the Antikythera mechanism by a full millennium, accepting its manual, non-mechanical, but still, the hard part is determining all these astronomical cycles and is self-evident that the Minoans clearly studied and define.One can see how the idea of the cog (a huge thing) may have evolved from this, but it is not in itself a meshed gear. There is no archaeology in-between this and the mechanism (or the North facing chariot with a differential that appears around the same time) for example. If you know of some any cogs around the first millennia BCE, please do drop me a comment!Minoans understanding of the solar system and particularly optics seems comparable to that of the time of Newton considered to be the start of the enlightenment (with amazingly far fewer materials, precision ground rock crystal lens shown below that are optically superior to a single Babylonian example), I don’t think they saw the value of tubes with fixed focal length, there seem to be extendable poles present at peak sanctuaries according to the artwork, two of the lens have elongated sections that seem to imply that the lens was attached to some form of pole (possibly fixed with linen thread and pine resin, it's how you attach an arrowhead to the shaft). Consider, the wedge crescent-shaped device it will recreate a Natural rainbow, the prism wasn’t invented until newtons time, then again prisms are found at mountain top workshops too, what on earth we’re they doing splitting light into a spectrum, we can only speculate as to what they may have used this for.The wedge-shaped crescent lens being remarkable, it may have been used to reproduce a natural rainbow, noting Newton is accredited with splitting light into its spectrum using a prism, he did not reproduce a rainbow, simulating nature is hard to do so shows a true understanding of optics. Minoan Palaces have both light and dark rooms to study these things, they watch the passage of Venus across the Sun in the reflection of water bowls for example.It is extraordinary what they achieved with the limited materials of the day.The meaning of the Griffons, is they protect the celestial cone which mother Earth wobbles back within throughout the Ages, a 26,000-year cycle, that they may have been trying to calculate, as the pole stars gradually drift over the centuries due to precession of the equinox (three pole stars being shown on each Griffons (2) wings in iconography, the lions digit front paws make 13 x 2 = 26, lions only have 4 digit claws on the rear shown on the each and probably represent four-year Olympiad and eight-year Octaeteris). They studied what we would call today Astronomy and Earth science, it is not just the heavens, but nature, plants and trees that can help identify metal ore, provide treatments, even a nice cuppa: a well-deserved chamomile mountain tea break!UPDATE: they have nailed the Great Year, 13 marks are shown on each griffon collar flanking the embodiment of Demeter (Mother Superior).This is confirmed on the Saffron gathering fresco, 26 ‘V’ are shown on the single griffon's wing.ConclusionI don’t believe Minoan artefacts can be understood in isolation, they need to be considered in a wider context and generally show the state of the art before bronze age collapse. The Minoans connected three continents in trade, the ideas and commodities of the known world flowed through their ports and technological advantage maintains the ‘Minoan Peace’.A hugely productive period in the story and advancement of civilisation, before ca. 1628 BCE when Thera erupted.This technology is almost divided (scattered), the Greeks get the Priestess, the Oracle of Delphi with priests of the Double Axe: the Pythia had her hands full trying to dissuade city-states from fighting amongst each other. The Islands to some degree preserve the astronomical knowledge. The Babylonians got a lens and trigonometry, the archaeology suggests trig in a basic form originally came from the British Isles of all places! The Phoenicians get some of the navigational tools. Composite hulls and this wonderful method of storing energy for propulsion is lost to time.I hope this shows that Civilisation is a privilege rather than a right. An unforeseen event can fundamentally change the course of human progress.These people celebrated life! The art appears modern, as Cycladic art (the indigenous people of the islands, leading to the Minoans), inspired the much later modern art movement.One way to consider the four Minoan deities being: Organisation (North), Creation (East), Commerce (South), and Science (West). In this Minoan fresco, the pigment wants to move around on the fresco wall. Art (state of), science (technology) and commerce are considered in a holistic way for the betterment of society (by organisation).This fresco summarises the Minoans for me, OK it looks highly stylised and pretty, but the artist embeds everything we need to know, 49 lunar months are shown in the horizontal border, a four-year Olympiad. The verticle count is 14 (years), that collectively give a saros when the organised ones (the celestial bodies, their deities) return to their starting positions. I’m so looking forward to a worldwide celebration next year, our own games!! This blaster virus has really upset the natural order of things.Have things really move forward or become complicated? What can you do in your lifetime? Get busy, go places, see what can be done! All speed. Go make something amazing!Footnotes[1] https://research.ncl.ac.uk/histos/documents/2017AA04MooreFire-SignalingInGreekHistoriography.pdf[2] The Lighthouses of Greece