To the stars?
What does the future really hold in store for mankind
As an avid scifi fan I have read hundreds of books talking about human colonization of other star systems. At the same time I have read dozens of books explaining cosmology and reality as we understand it now.. One of the most comprehensive is the Elegant Universe.
The simple fact is these two world views are totally incompatible. I have been aware for several years now that no human being will ever leave our solar system. Not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, not in a million years. A post by Charles Stross explains why. You don't really need to read the details, just recall what Douglas Adams said. "The universe is big, no really big!".
Much more likely, the future will be much like it is now - except more so. Human endeavour cannot scale up much further but there is plenty more room to expand to smaller scales.. A second post by Charles Stross explains that in just a few decades we can reasonably expect that it will be possible to carry the sum total of all human knowledge in our pockets.
The simple fact is these two world views are totally incompatible. I have been aware for several years now that no human being will ever leave our solar system. Not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, not in a million years. A post by Charles Stross explains why. You don't really need to read the details, just recall what Douglas Adams said. "The universe is big, no really big!".
Much more likely, the future will be much like it is now - except more so. Human endeavour cannot scale up much further but there is plenty more room to expand to smaller scales.. A second post by Charles Stross explains that in just a few decades we can reasonably expect that it will be possible to carry the sum total of all human knowledge in our pockets.