What is geology?

Geology is the study of the Earth, the materials of which it is made, the structure of those materials, and the processes acting upon them. It includes the study of organisms that have inhabited our planet. An important part of geology is the study of how Earth’s materials, structures, processes and organisms have changed over time.

Why does any of this matter?

Geology affects many things in our day-to-day life, such as fundamental resources – things like water, minerals, iron, aluminium and fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). The different types of resources are formed in different geological settings. Other minerals such as diamond and gold are also resources that are arguably essential to global trade and economy. The application of geology is also to understand where to find them. There are other direct effects such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, flooding all have roots in geology. Hence a better geological understanding of these can improve our ability to live with these events.

What are rocks actually made of?

Rocks are made of various combinations of minerals that occur naturally in the earth and depending where on the earth the rocks are found will have an impact on the minerals that make them up. There are basically three types of rock formations: igneous rock formed by the cooling of volcanic magma – granite is a common example; there is sedimentary rock that is formed by successive layers of sediment which has created pressure over time, an example would be limestone; and then there is metamorphic rock which is formed from one of the previous rocks and subjected to extreme conditions that have actually altered their make up, good examples being either marble or slate.

What makes oil so controversial?

A whole bunch of reasons – one of them is clearly it is a fossil fuel – it’s a finite resource. It pollutes the atmosphere when burnt and therefore has an environmental impact on the planet. It is also a highly political resource, as well as having a heavy economic influence across the globe. Higher prices can hit economies and in some developing countries it can adversely influence governmenta because of its value.

Having said that, oil does offer huge benefits – it does provide positive economics in many countries and allow them to develop. It also currently provides mankind with sources of heating and energy, infrastructure, roads, technology, plastics and even fertilisers to feed the global population – this list is endless. There will probably always be a place for oil, but it has to be together with both renewable and cleaner sources of energy, that will enable us to reduce oil’s use as a fuel. 

How can I make sure that I will be fossilised for future generations to find?

Firstly, avoid cremation and lie yourself in a peat bog or somewhere at sea as this reduces the chance of erosion – preferably somewhere where (a) you won’t decompose very fast and (b) you won’t get broken up and eroded away.

If we humans actually wipe ourselves out in the next hundred thousand years or so, we could provide a very rich yet thin layer of what is termed a ‘Zone Fossil’. So Just make sure your fossil is one of the best preserved.

I’m not old. I’m only 21. But that is, by a whisker, just old enough to have missed out on one of the grandest qualitative changes that ever happened to childhood. There isn’t a scent of regret in ‘missed out’ – I think we c.21 year olds nailed it.

We did our first growing up in a very different world from the one in which we will work and die. In my formative years, enormous, boxy computers had arrived in our classrooms but not quite everywhere else. Only drug dealers and businessmen had mobile telephones. The internet still had a Pacman vibe but, since it wasn’t installed in homes yet, that didn’t scare us. Electronic goods were, fundamentally, far too expensive for children to be left to play with, and, ultimately, far too Office ’97 for children even to have wanted to.

At school I listlessly practised making Power Points (unwatchably animated), or natty spreadsheets (unreadably useless). However, for genuine, after hours, infantile diversion my brothers and I didn’t turn to a composite electronic nanny made up of Gameboys, iPads, internet telephones etc. Instead, I think we played a lot with leaves and ants. They played War Games from which I was excluded because my tank noises were too generic. As a sop, they let me have a go with the Frisbee instead.

In other words, we grew up in the unhoovered gap between two very different sorts of childhood – the computer-free and the computer-sodden. We were the last generation to be raised without the parental crutch of pervasive digital entertainment, but, equally, the very first to acquire computer literacy with effortless, child-like fluency.

What I want us to acknowledge is that we are not, really, part of the Information Generation (I’m sure somebody is calling it that). We are instead the feral precursors, a rare breed, a dodo-like subset. We may share the mad web skillz of today’s 15 year olds (and even if I don’t, you might) but, crucially, their young brains didn’t develop like ours.

The difference is that their brains have developed, I propose, with weaker ingenuity. It is now very easy to be entertained as a child. That is a new thing. My childhood was an ingenious, inspired campaign fought against boredom with exceptionally limited resources. It was mental guerilla warfare, and it wasn’t easy. Frisbees, leaves and ants are not riveting per se: if these ingredients are to rivet, they must be deployed with ingenuity.

The problem is that electronic devices (as my siblings and I found, goggle-eyed, on our first, rationed computer) are extremely riveting, with no ingenuity required. But they rout boredom too easily. They offer more entertainment – but less exercise.

Science backs me up here. Watching television produces no more brain activity than looking at a blank wall – and sometimes less. You might counter that that example is passive – our web-surfing on various devices is rather more active in character. However, this mental exercise does not nourish all mental muscles equally. The ability to look up information whenever we like actually weakens our ability to retain information in our memories. Furthermore, the ease of flicking between screens, articles and devices results in far shallower stints of concentration than sustained absorption by a single thing.

In short, we should be worried about the children who, throughout their formative years in a way my generation could not, immerse themselves in a surfeit of devices. The mental muscles developed by the Frisbee kids in their boredom-war must, logically, be punier specimens in the computer kids. And although I must surrender my polarisation and admit that a balance is maintained by many parents, I think we should go further. Even the acceptable face of childhood computing, improving and educational software, is too entertaining in my book. We need to reintroduce boredom – mental austerity.

And what, you may snort, if we don’t? Then I think the struggling rich world, the world that can afford to silence its mewling brats with educational vids and the soothing blips of the GameBoy, will find it even harder to make its way in the future global economy. The children in India and Africa who are at this moment riveting themselves with leaves and ants are the ones who will turn out, on average, to be more ingenious and resourceful. It stands to reason, therefore, that their economies will enjoy more entrepreneurs and more imaginative businessmen because of it. Which is why me and my peers, feral precursors to the ‘Zombie Generation’, had better pull our weight.