The Future Of Civilization

[Liquidtruth]

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This is an interesting video, I urge everyone to reflect on this. While he may not be totally correct because we cannot really know for certain what the future holds, I believe it is more or less accurate. We do have to wake up and be cautious, we need to work together instead of against one another, and we most certainly need to come to a place where we can all agree on how certain things should be done. If we do not, we will not survive, and we will destroy ourselves.

[lazysac]

This man has watched too many Sci-fi flicks. While he has an incredible imagination and is no doubt very educated, his examples are of science "fiction". In no way is what he alluding to representational of any sort of current reality, it is merely conjecture. Though it is fun to ponder this subject I think any theories about our future as a galactic people should be taken with much more than a grain-of-salt.

[PoorlyRoldJoint]

Originally Posted by lazysac

This man has watched too many Sci-fi flicks. While he has an incredible imagination and is no doubt very educated, his examples are of science "fiction". In no way is what he alluding to representational of any sort of current reality, it is merely conjecture. Though it is fun to ponder this subject I think any theories about our future as a galactic people should be taken with much more than a grain-of-salt.

I agree, naturally hes not alluding to current reality, hes pondering the future. But he seems a bit too confident in his own assumption and beliefs as to how we will progress. It seems like hes fogeting that these are merely theories... far fetched ones at that. His imagination is a bit overactive and he is buying into his own make belive world a bit too much. Almost comes off as arrogant; but interesting none the less.

[Liquidtruth]

Oh, most certainly. Still, what he says is true, even if he is making many assumptions in regards to the technology. What I mean is, when he talks about the dangers we face and what the next hundred years can mean for us, I would say he is right on. Though, I do not think his idea about us sending robots to build crap on other planets/moons is really that out there.

[PoorlyRoldJoint]

The one thing I do agree with is that none of this will be possilble unless we get our priorties straight on Earth first. This sort of effort would need to become a priorty for us and our resources would need to be concentrated on it much more than they currently are I think. We are much to preoccupied with warring and destruction. But then again through war we advance technoloically as well. I guess everything we do has bearing and significance. A hundred years just seems like a very short amount of time for such change to occur. But then again look at the previous hundred years and the technological evolutions he makes. It definately is an exciting time to live in, as he stated.(sorry if this is incoherent, just writing whats popping into my head)

[Maitereya]

i have 56k and cant watch that movie so i cant comment on it.

but as for the future of humanity... were doomed, the apocalypse is coming and the 7 horsemen are going to get you. repent damnit!!!

[Rasta_Man]

Let's build the space elevator and get started.

It's always astounding me; we have an enormous fission reactor within a few million miles of us, that has a three billion year shelf-life, putting out massive amounts of energy -- yet we're still digging up ancient guck and throwing it in our cars.

Sign me up for the first colony ship!

[Azimuthal]

Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. It had three categories, based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal and increasing logarithmically:

• Type I — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet, approximately 10¹⁶ W. The actual figure is quite variable; Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74×10¹⁷ W (174 petawatts). Kardashev's original definition was 4×10¹² W. (Kardashev had originally defined Type I as a "technological level close to the level presently attained on earth", "presently" meaning 1964.)
• Type II — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star, approximately 10²⁶ W. Again, this figure is variable; the Sun outputs approximately 3.86×10²⁶ W. Kardashev's original definition was 4×10²⁶ W.
• Type III — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 10³⁶ W. This figure is extremely variable, since galaxies vary widely in size. Kardashev's original definition was 4×10³⁷ W.

Also, we're not at level 0, we're at 0.7, fusion power will bump us up to 0.8, the space elevator to 0.9. Though I would suggest that a world government will be a huge step backwards for human society, this scale is intended (imo) to measure purely technical advance.
Wake me up when we get to level 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

[Maitereya]

we wouldnt need to cover the sun in solar pannels if we could just convert every atom in our garbage pits to energy. i think that would be more economical too. of course we dont have the technology... yet.

[CH3VELLE]

awesome video. personally i think we're going to have a really tough time with this transition. this reminds me of the "can people change?" thread; its not a matter of if we can change, but rather if we want to.

from the looks of it it appears we arent willing to change at all. it seems as though humanity selfishly desires a bigger incentive than peace, love and understanding.

[HighGrowMan]

There will have to be a radical change on this planet, in order for us to ever come close to efficantly harnessing even just the power available on the earth. (and this is mandatory before you can ever even think about harnessing the sun).

If you were saying earlier that we are close to 70%, I would disagree with you. My estimate would put most companies at around 10% efficacy, so even if we were capable of 70%, 90% of that gets eaten up in bureaucracy, monopolistic practices and politics, so we are really only seeing around 5%.

For us to start breaking that barrier we will need some outside help.. It's just not going to happen on it's own.

[CH3VELLE]

a wise man once said, "before you harness the energy of a planet, you must first harness your own energy."

well actually no one said that, but i think someone should.

[fearthebug]

Originally Posted by CH3VELLE

a wise man once said, "before you harness the energy of a planet, you must first harness your own energy."

well actually no one said that, but i think someone should.

"before you harness the energy of a planet, you must first harness your own energy." -CH3VELLE

how's that?