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The Conversation #22 — Wes Jackson

You’re deal­ing with timescales that are beyond humans’ inter­est. I mean, it’s sor­ta like glob­al warm­ing. The heat that we have now built up, that car­bon was burned thir­ty years ago. It’s going to take a while for the cor­rec­tion process. So, if you have the ele­ments of the phos­pho­rus, the potas­si­um, the man­ganese, and so on, it can be built back pret­ty fast. But a short­hand way of putting it is that soil is as much of a non-renewable resource as oil. And, more impor­tant than oil. I mean, we’re talk­ing about stuff we’re made of. So that’s why I’ve said that the plow­share has destroyed more options for future gen­er­a­tions than the sword. 

No Neutral Ground in a Burning World

Geek cul­ture and hack­er cul­ture used to be rel­a­tive­ly apo­lit­i­cal, but now every action that you take and every piece of code that you write has polit­i­cal effects. You may may intend some of these effects, you may not intend most of these effects, but they’re there and we need to start think­ing about and under­stand­ing these changes.