Our mission
Throughout human history our understanding of the world, and beyond, has grown exponentially. In order to keep developing we had to specialise; specialisation begot even greater complexity, and the means to retain the information we discovered moved from our brains, to the page, and then into computer code. We have become the beneficiaries of technologies whose potential outstrips our capacity to understand them. And so, what if one day the lights go out? As a species we stand at the pinnacle of our achievement, but as individuals we are impotent. What do you actually know how to do?
What is 1squared?
1squared is a user-generated collection of instructions to make things that we’ll need. We are going to be re-building civilisation from the ground up, so nothing is off the table – from science and exploration, to art, philosophy and politics. Humankind has learnt to do a lot, perhaps not all of which we need to do again!
With the aim of giving a little more context to the mission, each method or set of instructions is tagged with one of five levels from within a Hierarchy of Needs.
What is the Hierarchy of Needs?
Back in 1943 acclaimed American psychologist Abraham Maslow first defined a Hierarchy of Needs. A key principle was that, in order to moved up through the hierarchy, a person had to first attend to the needs below it.
The list you see above is our attempt to harness Maslow’s principle when applied to our job of rebuilding civilisation! It’s also a great way to make sense of all of the methods that you create.
Indestructable technology
I know what you’re thinking… if the lights really do go out then won’t 1squared be lost too? Reduced to some inaccessible digital information on an unbootable server somewhere. So, every year we will create a book of the best methods, by the most esteemed and knowledgable contributors. We’ll make the book available online so you can buy copies for yourself and whoever else you think might survive! You can keep it in your shelter, or maybe just under your bed.