Charles Babbage is often referred to as the father of the computer. He invented both the “Difference Engine” and the “Analytic Engine”, probably the first computing devices.
He also wrote about how change propagates throughout the world, suggesting that the air, the oceans and the rocks act like vast libraries.
In a paper he published in 1837, he describes how every word we utter creates movement in the molecules of the air (that’s how others can hear us) and every molecule which moves changes the position of other molecules.
The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or even whispered.
He wrote that the same principle applies to water and rock, but there it is actions which produce the changes. He gives examples of the wake caused by passing ships. And I wondered about how often you can find fossil sea shells high up in land far, far above sea level. I also wondered about the changes to landscapes, forests and rivers produced by the actions of Industrial society over the last couple of hundred years.
Whilst the atmosphere we breathe is the ever-living witness of the sentiments we have uttered, the waters, and more solid materials of the globe, bear equally enduring testimony of the acts we have committed.
All this also reminded me of the way our bodies remember, of how memories of events and experiences remain in our cells because they are changed by the words and actions which impact on them.
I love that such a clear, and even imagination inspiring, idea was published almost two hundred years ago, but I wonder how much longer it will be until we live according to this discovery that everything is connected.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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