MR BRITTAS & SINKING THE BISMARCK - THE BLOCKCHAIN OF LIFE

“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.” - H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

I’m attacking this blog post late evening rather than over breakfast. Why? Because of Mr Brittas. Yes, Mr Gordon Brittas, manager of Whitbury New Town leisure centre. Right now, Brits of a certain age will be chuckling, while everyone else will be thinking WTF is Oli on about? Gordon was the manager of the fictional Whitbury New Town leisure centre, the setting for the early 90’s sitcom The Brittas Empire, starring Chris Barrie, of Red Dwarf fame - and if you don’t know what Red Dwarf is, then I’m sorry, but you’re beyond help.

Morlocks and astronauts

But, what, I hear you think, does a H.G. Wells quote have to do with a cheesy early 90’s British black comedy series? Nothing, of course… but also, everything. Okay, at this point, I think it’s only fair to warn you I’ve had a few intense blonds (beers, that is). You see, I remember watching The Brittas Empire as a child - when I was still at primary school (‘elementary’ school to our American cousins). We’re talking over thirty years ago. And therein is the thing. Thirty years. Three decades. Around 11,000 days.

That’s a long time, right? For a ‘family friendly’ sitcom, the script is still sharp, witty, and, compared to present-day sensibilities, sometimes shocking (really, every episode ends up with severely injured casualties being carted off in ambulances). But anyway, the point is that watching something like this reminds one of just how much everything seems to have changed, but just how much nothing really has.

Further emphasising that is the quote at the start, from The Time Machine, penned by one of my favourite authors, the indomitable Herbert George Wells. Like many of Wells’ works, The Time Machine is as powerful now as when it was first published in 1895. Can you not see the world increasingly divided into Eloi and Morlocks? Well, even if we aren’t quite there yet, I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up there soon enough. And, The Time Machine was published a century before The Brittas Empire first aired!

Okay, I’m getting distracted. But time is what I’m trying to talk about. The relativity of time, to be more precise. Sure, we divide time into equal, standardised parts, to make the administration of our lives possible. But, everyone inherently knows (and knows with increasing conviction, the older they get) that time is indeed relative. Just as the passage of time is slightly different for today’s astronauts, and will be significantly different for the space farers of the future, the older we get, the faster time appears to pass - because a year to a 40-year-old is a relatively smaller proportion of life than it is to a 10-year-old.

Swedish metal, the Bismarck, and the Wright brothers

As I’m writing this, I’m also playing around with artificial intelligence image creation over at mage.space, whilst listening to Sabaton’s Bismarck. Oh, good grief - I’m not sure my mind can cope with this. So, while my mind is being blown by the ability of an AI program to near instantly trawl the entire web, which basically contains the sum total of human-created imagery in one form or another, and use it and other ‘magic’ to create completely new and unique images to order, I’m listening to a Swedish metal band sing about the Royal Navy sinking the Kriegsmarine’s pride, the battleship Bismarck, in the Bay of Biscay in May 1941.

But, that was just over eighty years ago. Eighty years. Less than three times the difference between now and when The Brittas Empire first aired - and less than fifty years after The Time Machine was first published. What kind of insanity is this? It is time. Contributing to the sinking of the Bismarck were Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. Have you seen a Swordfish, or ‘Stringbag’ as their crews affectionately called them? If you haven’t, check it out here. It’s an archaic-looking propeller-driven biplane, with a fabric-covered fuselage and a top speed of just over 140 mph.

Less than four years later, jet fighters were seeing combat in the skies over Europe (the German Messerschmitt 262, and British Gloster Meteor). And, let's not forget the ballistic missiles (German V2) and nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American B-29 bombers, equipped with pressurised fuselages and remote-control gun turrets. Less than four years! But then again, let’s rejoin Mr Wells in 1895. At the time, humans had yet to successfully build and fly a powered heavier-than-air craft.

Of course, Herbert, and many other visionaries, were constantly thinking about the prospect, but it wasn’t until the Wright brothers took to the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903, that the era of powered flight commenced. However, by 1918, just fifteen years later, several countries had sizable air forces, equipped with all manner of fighters, scouts, and bombers. And, just over two decades later, the jet and rocket ages dawned. Hot on the heels of World War 2 came the Cold War and Space Race, and by 1969 mankind had set foot on the Moon. Another two decades and you’ve got Gordon Brittas managing Whitbury New Town leisure centre.

Of course, similarly, spectacular advancements were happening across other technologies too; electronics, industrial processes, land and sea transport, pharmaceuticals, agriculture - pretty much everything. The aviation thing is just perhaps the most romantic to conjure.

The blockchain of life puts things in perspective

And, talking of things to conjure. Think about this; whilst we’re used to thinking of time in terms of generations, i.e. twenty to thirty years (the time it takes, on average for children to grow up and have children of their own), a far more illuminating way to think of time is in overlapping lifetimes. Of course, today's life spans vary greatly, but the human body seems to have some sort of built-in expiry date, which is about one hundred to one hundred and twenty years. And it has been so for all of recorded history. Sure, average life spans have significantly increased (until very recently that is… but I won’t go into that here. If you know, you know already), but it seems the oldest exceptions always seem to pop their clogs at around a century or a bit over.

So, let’s say it’s perfectly possible, with good genes, an exceptionally long human life span is one hundred years. That will be our ‘lifetime.’ And, obviously, as long as someone is alive, they will probably meet the youngest member of the family. For example, in my own family, as a baby, my niece was held by her great-great-grandmother. This illustrates the connection, or overlap, between lifetimes.

Righty, so one lifetime ago was 1923. That was just after the First World War. Add another lifetime, and we’re back to 1823 - before the American Civil War, and not long after the Anglo-American War of 1812 and the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Another lifetime added, and we’re back to 1723. Just ten lifetimes and we’re at 1023 - before the Battle of Hastings! Bloody hell. Ten lifetimes. Ten people. How many people will you see in your office today? Probably more than ten. Ten isn’t a lot. Heck, you can get seventy or eighty people on your average bus!

It’s even freakier when you consider that, quite possibly, at any one time, four of those lifetimes could be overlapping. So, someone born today could be held by their great-great-grandparent, who was born in the early 1920s, or possibly even before. And, that person could have been held by someone born in the 1820s - or even possibly earlier. Maybe even before the Battle of Waterloo. Seriously. It’s not likely, but it is possible. If we think of that as a chain, then it is one living link that unites the present day with the early 1800s. I’m coining this the ‘the blockchain of life.’

So, when we are all caught up in the ever-accelerating pace of technological change, racing to find the latest blockchain-based solution or deploying AI into new areas, perhaps we should stand back and look at things in perspective. In terms of lifetimes, we’re just a few human links from Caesar’s Rome or Ahmose’s New Kingdom. Heck, we’re less than a bus full of links from the Sumerians!

And, this is surely the point. No matter how much we push the envelope of technology, no matter how important we believe our daily trials and tribulations are, and no matter how smart we think we are, we are all just a handful of lifetimes away from the pre-industrial age, and a couple of bus fulls away from Göbekli Tepe - and all that it represents. Now, I’m tired, so that’s fodder for another blog post - but, if you’re curious, look into the Younger Dryas catastrophe. That event shows us the true gravity of terrestrial life.

Until next time.