MADreads

Contemplating the distant future

September 9th, 2009 Dennis - Central

Every once in a while I’ll spot a book that Just Looks Interesting. Case in point: Year million : Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, a collection of essays by scientists and science writers edited by Damien Broderick.  What will things look like 1,000,000 years from now? Fourteen different essays contributed by fourteen different people with some pretty impressive academic credentials have fourteen different ideas and opinions, but no definitive answers.

There’s not really a road map on how we’ll get to the future, either. No one predicts what the world will look like in even twenty years, which was kind of a disappointment. We’ll probably keep getting smarter, or at least we’ll be adding to the sum of human knowledge, where most mathematical problems have been solved and the physics of the universe is more fully understood. And we’ll be able to store and retrieve that knowledge more efficiently. We may travel to the stars, but we may not be able to exceed the speed of light, in which case interstellar voyages may be less Star Trek-like visits, and more like colonization, with no plans to ever return to our “home” worlds.  Although we may decide that physical exploration is pointless if less developed life forms we might encounter are as fascinating to contemplate as mold in a petri dish.  Two-way communication with colonies on distant stars won’t be possible either, if the lag time between sending and receiving messages is measured in years.  This is all assuming we don’t figure out how to travel at faster than light speed.  Energy needs will still be a problem.  If power needs keep rising, at some point we’d have to surround the sun with solar collectors just to absorb every bit of available energy and convert it for our needs.  Not to mention deconstructing most of the planets in the solar system for their usable materials.  So if you thought we’re a rapacious species now, well, we’re just getting started.

Humans will continue to evolve, of course. We have been evolving all along, although we don’t really notice it over the course of three or four generations, except in the machines we develop. One of the essayists pointed out that humans are actively evolving, just by being selective in choosing their mates. Smarts, being good providers and physical attractiveness will still be desirable characteristics in a mate. Not stated is whether there will be an X-Men type super-species that will for all intents evolve a separate evolutionary path while homo sapiens becomes another branch of the hominid tree that the new “we” acknowledge as sharing the same ancestors. The ability to extend life, or perhaps digitally store most human thoughts, feelings and memories is also suggested. If we achieve a form of immortality where we’re ageless, all-knowing, and essentially indestructible, will we become like the gods our ancestors worshiped?

Community may evolve as well. Social networking has already caught on. Terms like the “hive mind” aren’t quite as threatening as they once were. Advances in communication will continue and that, combined with computer processing power and storage as well as portability, means that people can stay connected and share more. It’s even possible that the lines between human and machine will blur. Nothing so threatening as the the Star Trek Borg, of course.

Fascinating stuff to contemplate, although the are some pretty daunting ideas to grasp. The future we can envision from today’s vantage point is a far cry from the one imagined by previous generations. The sad part, of course, is that with these big brains we’ve evolved we can also envision past 1,000,000 years in the future, when not only humanity itself ends, but also the universe itself. At least as we know it.

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction, Science Fiction