While we need the well-informed doom-mongers to help save us from ourselves, there is no shortage of them, and we also need other, similarly knowledgeable scientists to give us a vision of what a successful outcome for humanity and the planet might look like, to give us hope and something to work towards.
His chirpy optimism might irritate a little, but it is good to listen to a Michio Kaku and not just the Eeyores. He goes boldly where other scientists are too defeatist to venture, while always presenting his predictions as potentialities only, grounding them in established fact and with caveats. Written in 1998, some of the breezy technological predictions in “Visions” haven’t seen the light of day, but to dwell on these would be to miss the point, which is to consider the big picture and what the potentialities are. Where my interest really perks up is when he talks about Type I, II & III civilizations as posited by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, and based on progressive energy consumption. On this cosmic scale, ours is a Type 0 civilization, deriving our energy from dead plants (fossil fuels) and “like a spoiled child unable to control its self-destructive temper tantrums and outbursts. Its immature history is still haunted by the brutal sectarian, fundamentalist, nationalist and racial hatreds of the past millennia.” If a Type 0 civilization doesn’t destroy itself in nuclear war or by over-polluting its planet, it should eventually “unlock the secret of life, artificial intelligence and the atom” with “the biomolecular, computer and quantum revolutions to link all their peoples in a powerful telecommunications and economic network …, the knowledge to cure disease and feed their expanding population … and the power and materials to build a planetary society.” “About 100,000 years ago, soon after modern Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, the Great Diaspora began when these small wandering tribes began to spread out.” As a consequence, we became separated by both culture and race. Kaku sees the current scientific revolutions unleashing forces that will erode the centrifugal tendencies of the Great Diaspora and favour the decline of nations and the building of a planetary culture. Comments are closed.
|
Blogging good books
Archives
November 2024
Categories |