{
  "title": "Scaling Civilization",
  "description": "Multi-lane log-time timeline showing Energy, Coordination, Memory, Replication, and Latency metrics from 1M years ago to 2030+.",
  "fields": {
    "Lane": "Metric lane (Energy, Coordination, Memory, Replication, Latency)",
    "Era": "Historical era (Prehistory, Neolithic, Ancient, Pre-Modern, Industrial, Modern, Digital, Future)",
    "Event": "Milestone event name",
    "Years_Ago": "Years before 2026 (absolute)",
    "Metric_Value": "Quantitative value for the lane metric",
    "Metric_Unit": "Unit of measurement",
    "Impact": "Historical impact level",
    "Notes": "Additional context",
    "Phase_Flip": "Phase transition description (if applicable)"
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "name": "Our World in Data",
      "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/",
      "accessed": "2026-01",
      "notes": "Energy, population, historical data"
    },
    {
      "name": "Herculano-Houzel",
      "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/",
      "accessed": "2026-01",
      "notes": "Neurons/kcal relationship"
    },
    {
      "name": "Kaplan/Charnov LHT",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory",
      "accessed": "2026-01",
      "notes": "Life History Theory, Optimal Foraging Theory"
    },
    {
      "name": "Kurzweil",
      "url": "https://www.singularity.com/",
      "accessed": "2026-01",
      "notes": "Technology acceleration patterns"
    }
  ],
  "lane_glossary": {
    "Energy": "Energy available per person; higher is more leverage.",
    "Coordination": "Approximate size of stable coordination group; higher is broader coordination.",
    "Memory": "Externalized information storage per person; higher is more cumulative memory.",
    "Replication": "Approximate time to copy an artifact or message; lower is faster replication.",
    "Latency": "Approximate communication delay; lower is faster coordination."
  },
  "metric_direction": {
    "Energy": "up",
    "Coordination": "up",
    "Memory": "up",
    "Replication": "down",
    "Latency": "down"
  },
  "transformations": "Log x-axis: -log10(years_ago + 1) to compress prehistory and expand modern era. Log y-axis for each lane. Replication and Latency improve as their values decrease.",
  "created": "2026-01",
  "author": "mschwar"
}