Deep Time : How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia

by Benford, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780380975372
• ISBN10: 0380975378
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

In his first work of nonfiction, novelist and scientist Gregory Benford offers profound insight into the ways we communicate, not to each other, but to whatever civilization may exist tens of thousands of years from now. Combining a scientist's rigorous research with the lyrical skills of a novelist, he analyzes humanity's conscious attempts to make its culture immortal with structures such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids, while confronting the unconscious messages we continue to send through our treatment of the planet. Based on his own experiences working with the United States government to construct time-proof correspondence and warning systems, Deep Time makes for clear, compelling, and exciting reading.

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Here to Eternity	1	(31)
Ten Thousand Years of Solitude	31	(56)
Vaults in Vacuum	87	(48)
The Library of Life	135	(34)
Stewards of the Earth: The World as Message	169	(33)
Afterword	202	(6)
Acknowledgments	208	(1)
References	209	(8)
Index	217