SCI-FI AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY: Despite being a “semi-techie”, I was never much of a science fiction reader. Maybe that was because most of the science fiction on TV left a bad taste in my mouth. It was generally quite negative: unstoppable aliens, nasty monsters, unexplainable horrors, death and destruction on a massive scale. The one exception was Star Trek; the Enterprise still encountered plenty of war and weirdness, but there was also a positive vision weaved into the plot. I didn’t take the original Trek too seriously back in ’65, but I later became a devoted fan of The Next Generation, mostly because of the gravitas that Patrick Stewart lent it. Stewart’s Captain Picard conveyed the sense that humanity finally stood united behind its better values and its notions of decency, and was out to spread them throughout the galaxy. (Star Wars by contrast was pretty schmaltzy, but there was still something appealing about the notion of “The Force”.)

I’ve been told that certain science fiction writings present grand visions of humankind’s future. Writers like Asimov and Bradbury sometimes envision tremendous technical accomplishments and utopian social arrangements unfolding over centuries and millenniums. That’s the beauty of science fiction: the sky’s the limit. Through science fiction, a writer can ask some of the biggest questions, such as where humankind is going and how long civilization will last.

Our present form of civilization is a rather energy-intensive proposition, burning up the earth’s resources at an alarming rate. Sometimes it looks to me as though we’re gonna lose the battle against entropy, i.e. the natural trend towards increasing disorder in the universe. It seems as though we’re headed pell-mell for a new (and maybe permanent) dark age, during which the human species will slowly fade away. However, such a dark view does not account for the progressive effects of organized intelligence. It seems to me that shared intelligence is some sort of anti-entropic force, something that might keep humankind in the game despite declining sources of easily-derived energy (e.g. petroleum).

So, the question is, will entropy win the day such that the human experiment with civilization, and possibly humankind itself, will terminate within next few millennium? Or will our advancing science and technology allow humanity a limitless future out amidst the stars? Will our species still be kicking around somewhere in the galaxy a millions years hence? Will our progeny go on to grander and grander accomplishments, such that if human intelligence still exists billions of years from now, when the universe itself has either gone cold or is heading back into a “big crunch”, we will harness the forces of nature to create a whole new universe for ourselves? In effect, will our legacy of intelligence, however it might be hosted in the impossible-to-imagine future, in itself become God? (I would have to guess that if humans survive that long, our bodies will have been modified and evolved into complex machines that wouldn’t have much resemblance to our skinny-gorilla bodies of today — maybe our consciousness won’t even be limited to any one “body”, we will all be spread across some sort of hyper-network).

Sounds great, but when I flip the coin as to humanity’s future, it lands on the edge. From what I’ve seen and know about humans, I suspect it can go either way. We are incredibly smart, as can be seen through our science and technology; and yet we’re incredibly dumb, as can be seen through our wars and self-inflicted wounds. We just keep on fighting each other and worrying too much about the short term, about our immediate comfort and entertainment. Cooperation and social progress requires that everyone trust that the next guy will also do the right thing, and right now we seem to be running on the fumes in that regard. Technology seems mostly to be speeding up our efforts at self-eradication.

I’d like to think that the cornucopia of wealth that technology provides allows people to get over their fear of resource shortage and thus encourages them to take more risks in the social cooperation arena. While that has arguably happened to some degree, at the same time it has inspired fantastic greed, manifesting itself in an incredible concentration of wealth amidst a tiny fraction of our population. Just why do families with $5 million need to become families with $50 million, a not-uncommon event during the 1990s?

Well, I’d like to stick around for the next 500 years or so to see just how this neck-and-neck horse race is going to turn out. But that just ain’t gonna happen. So, I just hope that the generations that will follow mine will keep on cheering the horse of cooperation and civil conduct, and lose their fascination with the deceptively beautiful horse of greed, conflict and personal aggrandizement.

WEB SITES AS WORKS OF ART: I’d like to think that my web site, along with this blog, is a work of art of sorts, a deeply personal statement of my being. Is there anyone else out there with a web site like that? Right now I don’t have any links, but I’m thinking of putting together a list of “life-work sites” like my own. One qualification I’m going to impose: the site doesn’t offer anything except ideas and feelings. Any significant advertising is a deal-breaker (yea, I know, I’m shilling for Blogger below in exchange for their services, it ain’t a perfect world admittedly). I’m on the lookout for sites like that, but I’m also open to any suggestions from my audience (assuming that I have an audience!).