7A. Purpose:

Are cities facilitating reproduction? To answer this question, start with an exercise that will exemplify the short period of time our civilization has existed on the planet. In this exercise the age of the Earth (~4.5 billion years) is represented by one hypothetical year. In other words 1 hypothetical year equals 4.5 billion years. This results in a hypothetical year where one minute is roughly equal to 8,500 years. Now, pretend you can sit back for a year and watch the planet from its birth to today. Considering the fact that the first large cities visible from space did not appear until 700 BC (Rome was established in 753 BC) it would not be until December 31 at 11:59:40 pm that you might start to notice cities. Honestly, 700 BC is conservative. The traits of cities that have been the focus of this paper like exponential growth, the ability to emit light at night, and global networks would not occur until the final two seconds of the year. Figure 23 is testament to the brief nature of this current civilization.

Figure 23: World Population in the last 12,000 years. In the hypothetical year exercise described above, one second equals 167 years.

An aspect of civilisation that is particularly relevant to a discussion about the fate of the urban organism is the fact that in the last two seconds of the hypothetical year (in addition to cities blooming across Earth’s surface) the planet begins to emit spores (satellites and rockets) at an accelerating rate. These spores both orbit the planet and shoot off into space. Of all the biological parallels I have drawn in this paper, herein lies the most profound.

The purpose of the urban organism is to facilitate the spread of life off of the planet and throughout the Universe. While the idea of human beings establishing colonies on other planets is a popular image, this is not the sort of life spreading I am suggesting. Instead, I see the “seed of life” as residing in something far less obvious; the metallic satellites and probes we have already sent and will continue to send into space may hold within their molecular and atomic parts a system of motion, pattern, or vibration that not only holds Earth’s signature but also the elemental chain reaction that created life as we commonly know it on Earth.

At the beginning of this paper, I redefined life. I broke down the barrier between things traditionally considered living and non-living and determined that life is any system in motion. I furthermore dismissed the notion of randomness and equated life in general to a rose seed. In other words, I suggested that human civilization is coded in the DNA of the seed of life. Such fundamental arguments are important because I am suggesting that the seed of life could be a metal, or in other words, a rock. While we commonly view life in the same way Wikipedia.com has defined it, life may in fact be coded in the vibration of physical matter. Inherent to everything from Earth is its signature. Given billions of years, perhaps a crashed satellite (or piece of rock from what was once Earth when our planet is long gone) on a distant planet (with the extremely rare and necessary conditions) will create a chain of events that result in the appearance of mobile organisms. Perhaps given enough time, that satellite will create a chain of events ultimately producing humanoid organisms living in rapidly expanding cities.

The previous paragraph can be difficult to believe or take on board. However, consider your own life; a statistically insignificant miracle. In his entire life, it is likely your father produced billions and billions of sperm. Of those billions, how many children did he have? The ratio of sperm produced versus sperm that produced children would lead any scientist to determine that the probability of a sperm becoming a human being is impossible. In other words, sperm are waste products. Yet, it is from one in a billion tiny sperm that life is consistently produced. I mention this example to highlight the fact that life in itself is founded upon the “impossible.” While the scientific method and statistics are important parts of science, we must also acknowledge the limitations of such methods when held up against realty. Simply put, A fungi like organism continues to rapidly expand across Earth’s surface and it is continuously emitting spores into space; you be the judge.