The Apocalypse Generation

[Morphizm pal and brainteasing cartoonist Andy Singer weighs in with a potent dose of personal insight into exponology, dropping some interesting data in the process. To check out Andy's work online, make sure to check out his site. If you're looking for his books, try his store, and don't forget to read our interview with him from issue three of Along for the Ride. -- ST]

Scott, I first heard (or saw) something of this sort about 20 years ago at an exhibit on population at the New York Museum of Natural History. Some artist had created a giant map of the world on the wall -- maybe 6 feet by 12 feet in size -- Where all the continents were composed of of tiny little LEDs. Each LED represented a half million or a million people (I forget exactly). At the top of the map was a giant digital counter which counted up the years from "0 AD" to the year "2100 AD," taking maybe 5 to 10 minutes to go through a complete count-up cycle. As the clock counted up the years, little LEDs would light up in various locations around the world as human populations grew. Gradually you see cities in Europe and Mediterranian start to grow and people showing up and multiplying in other parts of the world. In the 1300s, you see a brief reduction in LEDs (population) due to the plague. But, in general, the number of lights (and humans) just keeps growing at a plodding, steady rate. Around the late 1700s, the growth of population starts to accelerate and keeps accelerating until, suddenly, within a couple years of 2100, the whole screen suddenly turns white with light. It was an intense and scary visual display of Exponology. Or "X going to infinity" (in Calculus).

Later, I encountered this phenomenon through a mathematician friend who went to UC Berkeley. He studied the impacts of fishing on fish populations and the impact of biological pest control (predators) on insect populations using various mathamatical models. In general, both of these also reveal Exponology, although there are some interesting unpredicted twists like, at slightly slower rates of fishing, the population may actually die off faster, for example. This was part of his PHD research.

I've also encountered Exponology in researching transportation and energy issues. What kills us, in petroleum demand, is the GROWTH in demand-- which is one of the best arguments in favor of conservation (of any resource). If you can reduce the Growth in demand by even one percentage point, you have more impact than tremedously increasing your supply. Am I making sense? My spouse had a great article on this (by a mathematician/environmentalist). Maybe I can find it.

So, yeah, we're "Exponentially Fucked" and it doesn't look like we're gonna wake up to it until it's too late. (Which makes me wonder why I'm wasting my precious life's time worrying about it). The only thing "positive" I can say is that (if you've ever read any books on Gaia Theory) the earth has defense mechanisms including diseases, extreme weather and other mechanisms that operate like white blood cells and can kill off a population of inhabitants that is getting out of control. A mass wave of bird flu could wipe out a third to a fifth of the world's population without harming the rest of the environment (the way a nuclear war would). This would greatly reduce demand for resources!

Isn't that a happy thought??!? We're like some bacteria or disease growing on the earth that's taken over and is exponentially growing. But, like all bacteria, we'll either kill the host (and ourselves) by suffocating in our own waste. Or some mitigating factor will kill us and/or greatly reduce our populations. I read they're getting Malaria mosquitos now as far north as central Italy.

We're part of the Apocalypse Generation.