Listen to this secret truth.
In the afterlife you receive a clear answer about our purpose on the earth: our mission is to collect data. We have been seeded on this planet as sophisticated mobile cameras. We are equipped with advanced lenses that produce high-resolution visual images, calculating shape and depth from wavelengths of light. The cameras of the eyes are mounted on bodies that carry them around — bodies that can scale mountains, dive caves, cross plains. We are outfitted with ears to pick up air-compression waves and large sensory sheets of skin to collect temperature and texture data. We have been designed with analytic brains that can get this mobile equipment on top of clouds, below the seas, onto the moon. In this way, each observer from every mountaintop contributes a little piece to the vast collection of planetary surface data.
We are planted here by the Cartographers, whose holy books are what we would recognise as maps. Our calling is to cover every inch of the planet's surface. As we roam, we vacuum data into our sensory organs, and it is for this reason only that we exist.
At the moment of our death we awaken in the debriefing room. Here our lifetime of data collection is downloaded and cross-correlated with the data of those who have passed before us. By this method, the Cartographers integrate billions of viewpoints for a dynamic high-resolution picture of the planet. They long ago realised that the optimal method of achieving a planet-wide map was to drop countless little rugged mobile devices that multiply quickly and carry themselves to all reaches of the globe. To ensure we spread widely on the surface, they made us restless, longing, lusty, and fecund.
Unlike previous mobile-camera versions, they built us to stand, crane our necks, turn our lenses onto every detail of the planet, become curious, and independently develop new ideas for increased mobility. The brilliance of the design specification was that our pioneering efforts were not prescripted; instead, to conquer the unpredictable variety of landscapes, we were subjected to natural selection to develop dynamic, unforeseen strategies. The Cartographers do not care who lives or dies, as long as there is broad coverage. They are annoyed by worship and religion; it slows data collection.
When we awaken in the giant spherical windowless room, it may take a few moments to realise that we are not in a heaven in the clouds; rather, we are deep at the centre of the Earth. The Cartographers are much smaller than we are. They live underground and are averse to light. We are the biggest devices they could build: to them we are giants, large enough to jump creeks and scale boulders, an impressive machine ideal for planetary exploration.
The patient Cartographers pushed us out onto a spot on the surface and watched for millennia as we spread like ink over the surface of the planet until every zone took on the colour of human coverage, until every region came under the watchful gaze of the compact mobile sensors.
Estimating our progress from their control center, the mobile camera engineers congratulated themselves on a job well done. They waited for humans to spend lifetimes turning their data sensors on patches of ground on strata of rocks, the distribution of trees.
And yet, despite the initial success, the Cartographers are profoundly frustrated with the results. Despite their planetary coverage and long life spans, the mobile cameras collect very little that is useful for cartography. Instead, the devices turn their ingeniously created compact lenses directly into the gazes of other compact lenses — an ironic way to trivialise the technology. On their sophisticated sensory skin, they simply want to be stroked. The brilliant air-compression sensors are turned towards the whispers of lovers rather than critical planetary data. Despite their robust outdoor design, they have spent their energies building shelters into which they cluster with one another. Despite good spreading on large scales, they clump at small scales. They build communication networks to view pictures of one another remotely when they are apart.
Day after day, with sinking hearts, the Cartographers scroll through endless reels of useless data. The head architect is fired. He has created an engineering marvel that only takes pictures of itself.
Yet to us, the most sophisticated of all mobile devices, we know nothing of the cartographers motives. We can not even say for sure that there is an afterlife. After all, death seems a one way street. No returns. What little we know of life is that we all die. Our goal is not to life forever. Our goal, has become to create something that will.
For as long as the cartographers have collected data, we have collected memory.
Ochre was etched onto fire lit caves, as the language of place, was written into a land we were set to survey. Two dimensions gave way to three as we started to build memories - the birth of architecture. Sounds were given meaning, meanings created symbols and entire thoughts were written down for safe-keeping. Faster and faster we collected data, of our world, of us, and the spaces in-between. Voices recorded, pictures taken, information shared at speeds inconceivable only generations before.
We gave rise to the digital native.
A generation born into the uploading of digital assets.
A new dimension of landscape emerged - virtual space - the floating signifier. We discovered a new cave on which to scratch complex networks of collective memory. Yet, as we stand on the cusp of this cave; we know not, how deep the rabbit hole goes.
What will happen when we die? What will become of our data, our digital assets? What do we pass on to the next generation? Can our survivors box up our digital life and archive it? Or will the data be lost without people to tend it?
Or will the data live on forever? Can our digital self image achieve immortality?
ENTER DNA - The DIgital Native Archive.
