"Time Capsules from Alexandra Drennan." The Talos Principle, fiction. Audio, transcribed. When I was a little girl one of our teachers, Ms. Higgin's, told us to make a time capsule; write letters to the future so one day we could remember what it was like to be children. I thought it was stupid, so I didn't do it which I really regret So I guess I'm gonna make one now -- bury it in the archive instead of under a tree I don't know if anybody will ever find it, but somehow it seems important to keep talking -- to keep thinking -- for as long as I can. The answer that came to me again and again was "play" Every human society in recorded history has games We don't just solve problems out of necessity, we do it for fun Even as adults: leave a human being alone with a knotted rope and they will unravel it, leave a human being alone with blocks and they will build something Games are part of what makes us human We see the world as a mystery, a puzzle Because we've always been a species of problem solvers I was in school when I first read about the Talos Principle I think it disturbed me at the time, made my hyperaware of... my body as a physical object, the material reality of the brain... Ideas that made me uncomfortable at first, but I think in the long run it helped me understand how frail human beings are and how precious It's not a comforting way of thinking about the world, but I'd rather face the truth than lie to myself When I was in ninth grade my parents took me to Pompeii At first I was amazed by the feeling walking through an ancient city but then I suddenly got scared I realized that I was walking through a real place where real people had lived people like myself with mothers and fathers and lives and hopes and dreams and now it was all gone forever I ran to my father crying and told about this and he said -- I remember so clearly -- he said "Yes, but we are here. So long as there are people in the streets, the past isn't really gone." Great empty cities, silent roads stretching for miles, the Earth from space all dark, not a single light to guide me home. But if someone really came from another world what would the Earth look like to them? A wilderness? a wasteland? I don't think so. Even after thousands of years they'd see a world shaped by our hand in every aspect of its being. They'd the cities and the roads the bridges, the harbors and they would say "here lived a race of giants" These dreams they scare me but they also remind me that we built all of this DNA is information transmitted across time The living and the dead are part of the same chain bound together by chemistry That's true of all species but humanity has taken this bond further Thanks to technology we have access to the thoughts and ideas of people who's physical bodies are long gone like you listening to me now even though I'm definitely dead at this point You're part of that chain You have the capacity to remember How do you solve a problem that expands beyond your own lifespan? That question may be the essence of civilization. the only answer I can find is: to initiate a process to create an environment in which the solution will occur independently of yourself But that requires a difficult sacrifice: letting go of your desire to bear witness to exist at the center of the cosmos To participate in the project of civilization is to accept death. Oh, Alex, you're such a fun person On the first night when I knew it was over I went out to look at the stars, and I thought "somewhere up there are the stations we built and the probes we sent out. Voyager 1 & 2 beyond the edge of our solar system continuing their long journey through interstellar space like memories of our ambition ambassadors who have outlived their homeland", and then I thought "if they still exist are we really gone? if machines are an extension and the human body then so long as they continue to function we're still here" Sometimes I think about the Middle Ages about what it must have been like to live in the ruins of some great civilization To know that so much has been lost But then I remind myself that while the West sank into darkness others picked up the pieces That civilization always survived because the great insights of philosophy and science are not bound to any one culture or people they belong to all of us and one day they will belong to you Sometimes I worry that the answers I embrace are too simple can we ever truly fully understand the divide between our biology and our intellect how much is nature, how much nurture if my intellectual capabilities and my knowledge were replicated in a machine would that machine be me? Would it be human? And what would be more humbling to my ego? if the answer was yes of if the answer was no What if I'm making too many assumptions? but there's no time to worry about my ego now there's work to be done When the scale of it all overwhelms me this is what I tell myself: We can calculate the age of the Earth the size of the universe the future of the stars Sure, we are minuscule momentary flashes of thought on a grain of sand drifting through the cosmos but our minds can recreate the past and predict the future Friday a million years from now we'll all be dead but right now we know what the night sky will look like on that day and so, in a way we're not entirely bound by time Knowledge is a kind of "freedom" This is all ego isn't it? Recording these random thoughts, these letters to the future Just a desperate grab for immortality But you should know yes this was my idea My project, but so many people helped, people I don't even know, people I haven't even met who can do things I don't even begin to understand That if we succeeded, if someone's listening to this I really can't take credit for it What we achieved we achieve together and if we fail, well, it doesn't matter God there's no time just not enough time We're trying to build the future out of old video game code and half finished research projects We should have had years maybe decades but the kind of money they use to put into building bombs -- ah, if i stop and think about how crazy this is i will have a nervous breakdown so I won't. yeah, ok back to work Alex Intelligence is more than just problem solving Intelligence is questioning the assumptions you're presented with Intelligence is the ability to question existing thought constructs if we don't make that part of the simulation all we'll create is a really effective slave I look at this inert shape and I wonder who you're going to be Will you hold the same values as we do? Will you love us for having created you? Will you resent us for having put you into an uncertain and dangerous world? Looking back at our history our achievements our crimes what will you make of us? Will the world you create be like ours? Or so different that we can't even imagine? Either way I hope that you'll find this little blue planet to be as beautiful as we did I hope you'll take care of it a lot better than we did and i hope one day you'll look up and reach for the stars If you're looking through the archive you may find people from my time claiming that civilization doesn't really matter, that we'd be better off dead We have a lot of cynics like that I hope they seem as absurd to you as they do to me I hope you can find something in all those files a song, a book, a movie, maybe a game just something that you'll love that makes you realize how much poorer the universe would have been without it I really hope so, because a lot of people made a lot of sacrifices to preserve it all. Nearly everything on this planet from the surface of the Earth to the compisition of the atmosphere itself has been shaped by life It's a process that takes millions of years but we humans with our technology with our understanding and manipulation of systems have changed everything in just a few centuries. I think that's also part of what makes us human we reshape the world in our Image. It's how we create ourselves and how we destroy ourselves. Is there anything that we associate more closely with intelligence than curiosity Every intelligent species on Earth is attracted by the unknown Our methodologies are full of riddles and mysteries and divine knowledge. Even the word 'apocalypse'. Even the word 'apocalypse' mean revelation. It seems like our ancestors always imagined that even at the very end we would solve one last mystery. My best friend died today. In the abstract a human death is nothing of course An insignificant blip in a sea of billions. But the world is not abstract. Reality is always specific. Painfully so. that one specific human being Who existed only once of all the infinity of time and space. That human being was my friend but he's not coming back. No matter how much I want him to. So, all I can do in the end is keep working because that specificity that uniquness of people of real people is worth preserving. I look in the mirror sometimes and i see myself like some alien being. I think, "Who am I? Why do I have these eyes and those hands? Why do I see the colors that I see? Why do I think like I think?" I did not choose to exist. I was created. Every single part of my body, every strand of my DNA is part of a story that stretches back billions of years I exist only because of the choices and sacrifices made by so many others, but I don't know who they are. and what effect will my choices have on those who come after me? Maybe that's what it means to be human. Every species is part of the story. but we're the only ones that know that. There are flaws in the system. I think sometimes it accesses the wrong databases. Pulls random data. I don't know, I don't know how bad it is. It all seems to be stable but can't tell what kind of impact this is going to have on the process. I just don't have the strength to go over all of the code again. I just don't want it all to be for nothing I spent all my time here. I didn't visit my parents. I didn't see my friends. I did nothing but work, and I'm so scared that it didn't mean anything. That I just wasted it all, because I thought we could... *hysterical laughter* We could save the world. I can't keep my eyes open anymore. I... think this is... This is it. The end of, uh, me. I don't believe that I will continue to exist. I would like to think that there is a soul or spirit, some part of my conciousness, that will persist. All the evidence says that when my brain dies I will be gone. I've lived my life never turning away from the truth, even if it scares me, and I can face this. Face my own end, and -- and say with absolute conviction, That it was good to be human.