Imagine gathering the hundreds of people that worked on the Apollo missions and fitting them in the room that housed the project's main computers. They might all fit. Then tell them before most of them were dead they would be able to put all of those computers in their pocket.
Ok. Now imagine that we don't kill ourselves for the next thousand years. What are going to be able to do? What about ten thousand?
I'm going to state this, on behalf of all of humanity:
1) We're not alone. The universe is teeming with life much like this planet is.
2) What's technologically possible is bound only by the extent of our future imagination.
3) The planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds like the ones reading HN. The internet planted the seed that will grow the tree whose fruits will destroy tyranny.
1. While indeed we're likely not alone, I see no reason to think that the density of life in the universe is anything like as big as the density of life on earth.
2. What's technologically possible is clearly limited by the laws of nature, whatever they turn out to be. It could very well be that there simply is no way to travel faster than light, for instance.
3. I would be interested to know your evidence that the planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds. (And: given your (1) and (2), isn't control of this planet rather a feeble goal anyway?)
Perhaps I'm just too much of a nerd, but I think it's important to believe things on the basis of evidence and reasoning, not on the basis of whether they feel good.
In "A Breif History of Time" Stephen Hawkins states that time travel isn't impossible. If you can travel in time, you can go faster than light -- in the sense that temporal relations (such as "faster") lose their absolute meaning. If I need to go 100 lightyears (and can travel at c), I'll transport myself back 100 years and hit start. To a by stander, I'd have gone there in zero time.
Measuring your own time, you can get across the Galaxy as fast as you want to --- if you have enough energy. Of course you always stay below c, but the distance seems to shrink.
Thats an interesting bit. Thinking about numbers that is. But if you think about Singularity, it might seem like that might happen much sooner than you think.
Imagine gathering the hundreds of people that worked on the Apollo missions and fitting them in the room that housed the project's main computers. They might all fit. Then tell them before most of them were dead they would be able to put all of those computers in their pocket.
Ok. Now imagine that we don't kill ourselves for the next thousand years. What are going to be able to do? What about ten thousand?
I'm going to state this, on behalf of all of humanity:
1) We're not alone. The universe is teeming with life much like this planet is.
2) What's technologically possible is bound only by the extent of our future imagination.
3) The planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds like the ones reading HN. The internet planted the seed that will grow the tree whose fruits will destroy tyranny.
So it is written.