Our ancestors assembled megaliths. Today, we etch microchips in silicon. Are we really all that different?
What if these two practices – ancient architecture and contemporary computing – were related? What if we could learn something about one from the other and vice versa? To put it bluntly,
what if the future of AI is to be found in the pyramids of Giza?
And, if so, then might AI teach us who built them? Not by settling heated debates with deeper research and reasoning, but by revealing a contemporary mineral form that we can study for clues.
These are the questions that arise when we think in terms of “mineral arts.”
If we think of in terms of disciplines – architecture and computing – then we have to contend with the all the different cultural practices and histories that make them distinct. Reframing both as forms of mineral arts lets us entertain the idea that – perhaps – the only meaningful difference between them is scale.
Scale as in size. One place to start developing this new mindset is by adopting new terms that privilege size over discipline. Mega means big, lith means stone. By this convention, a microchip could be considered micro-lithic and its component parts nanoliths. The more you say megalith and nanolith, the more you begin to break down the mental structures that separate the two into different kinds of things and the more they seem to differ only in degree.