I wonder what our ancestors in the distant future (if we get that far) would make of us.   I wonder what they might find if they dig down, (aside from evidence of very rapidly elevated levels of carbon and indications of mass extinction).  Instead of fossils, they might find a layer of lego, a layer of iphones, car parts, bottle-tops, plastic bottles and novelty Christmas items.   I wonder what they would make of it all.  Would they think that 'Samsung' was a deity?  Or ‘Wallmart’, a kind of temple?  Would they find a hard disk drive and un-encrypt someone's data?  Would they be shocked, or would it all feel very familiar?  Would they, could they, learn?

Shortly after writing Anthropocene I read 'Star Maker' by Olaf Stapledon, the tale of a man who goes out for a walk up a hill in North London to get some air following a disagreement with his wife.  He suddenly finds himself transported beyond the speed of light through the stars, to the edge of the galaxy and beyond.  As the story unfolds, he finds himself hopping from strange world to strange world, becoming an anonymous and invisible alien anthropologist.  To a contemporary reader it reads as poor satire but considering that it was written in the 1930’s, it is uncannily predictive of where we find ourselves in our society.  In one scene an alien civilisation excavate land for a building and uncover a fossilised wireless radio, abandoned by an ancient culture they had no knowledge ever existed.  On another planet, one of the civilisations he visits are manipulated through small wireless devices they carry in their pockets…