Testing Ground

Maura and I started the working part of our honeymoon yesterday, visiting one of three sites on Hawaii’s Big Island that WICO is using to integrate and test some of the technologies that will likely be deployed to rehabilitate land and water ecosystems as part of the global strategy. The site was one of WICO’s test communities until three months ago and has many of the original personnel still working there. I recognized several of the names from my brief time in Quality Assurance; and as their former boss, Maura was recognized by all of them.

“Invasives remain our biggest problem,” said Dan Rogan, the leader of the testing group, as he took us on a tour. “We’ve got robots out hunting the worst of them, most by air.” A small drone whirred past us, as if for emphasis. “They’re still a stopgap, of course, because those technologies have too high a footprint beyond about two years. You’re going to hate this, Maura, but we’ve been given a green light for biotech alternatives.” She stood stunned as he continued, “The effort is being led by a company that’s trying to get them to gorge on pollution and then safely decompose when it kills them.”

“Safely?” she asked. “How can something like that be safe? You’re not testing it now are you?”

“Two years,” I said as he shook his head, “Wouldn’t you need that long just for development?”

He shrugged. “I’m told that they’re fast-tracking it.”

“You don’t fast-track something like that!” Maura was as agitated as I’ve ever seen her.

“I heard the transition time might be cut in half. Maybe they don’t have a choice.”

“I doubt that will happen,” she said. “Nobody’s going to sign off on the resulting casualties.”

“We’ll be ready if they do,” he said optimistically. “Meanwhile, we’ve also got to deal with drought and typhoons. Some of the new portable building designs with attachable shielding and catchments are showing a lot of promise. As soon as they’re proven, the county will deploy them to vulnerable communities and safer areas that people can use as soon as possible.”

“What about volcano eruptions?” I asked while we walked to an area dominated by three demonstration structures that resembled lumpy yurts.

He explained that air pollution was the main issue after people got out of the way of lava. “In addition to portability, suitable filters and building materials are being designed into the buildings.” He then invited us to stay overnight in one of them.

Reality Check

The descriptions of the technologies are fictional and intended mostly as requirements.

Discussion of the timeline is based on multiple simulations related to the “C-low” scenario previously discussed. For example:

Education on Hold

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 95 DAYS

I met with Education group leader Victor Lansing to discuss how the group’s efforts match with the set of rules in the strategy’s agreements section. My hope was that we could collaborate and save time in both of our activities, as well as ensuring that we were consistent. “We saw some value in what Sanda wrote in that section,” he told me, “but there is too much there, and it is too complex for average users to understand and use. Also, the rules tend to be far too general for our purposes.” Rather than borrow from it, they decided to start from scratch with guidance from Sanda like the hand analogy she/it shared with me last month. 

“Our group’s focus has been on teaching about the main drivers of extinction, and how to reverse them. The simplest, but not the easiest, are population and over-harvesting, which take extensive cultural conditioning to limit. Habitat loss can be reversed by tearing down buildings and avoiding or breaking up roads so animals can move easily between contiguous areas of land. Pollution is the hardest, because it typically requires technological aid to identify, remove, and detoxify, and we are deferring to the WDP group for guidance on that subject. Invasive species can be very difficult to eliminate, especially if they are established in an ecosystem or easily spread by animals or plants whose movement we cannot - and often do not want to - control; we are mainly providing guidance about how not to move them in the first place.”

What he described seemed far too complex for the approach I expected they were using. “In my experience, analogies tend to fall apart fairly quickly,” I shared. “How much detail can you teach without putting everyone through the equivalent of a college-level course? Also, how do you deal with the fact that technology typically used for such teaching, including books, is going to be phased out as the strategy is implemented?”

I was prepared for him to be annoyed, but I was totally surprised by his response. “Sanda was helping us with those issues. We have been on hold since the crash to find out how the strategy will be affected, so we do not waste time and resources based on the wrong idea of what is needed.”

“Isn’t what you just talked about fairly straightforward?” Even someone with my limited knowledge could put together a decent package, with placeholders for what wasn’t known.

“The stories we might tell would have a lot of potential pitfalls, as you anticipated. We need an expert like the AI to ensure we do not go down a proverbial rabbit hole by picking the wrong representatives for the concepts and facts.”

I offered to help, but he insisted that the best approach is to wait for Sanda to come online, which we are expecting tomorrow. Of course, they are counting on the questionable assumption that there won’t be serious problems uncovered during testing.

Reality Check

The discussion of extinction drivers is based on my understanding. Views of my alter-ego are also my own.