You mean the propaganda/imagined versions of any era.

Please have a look at this link: http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive?utm_source=deadspin.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

It talks about warp drive that is currently being designed by NASA.
Dr. White, head of the project says if experiments go well, they could build an engine that takes man to Alpha Centauri (closest star) in just two weeks.

Please share this article with Ray Kurzweil. I’m currently reading his book, The Singularity, that talks about circumventing or surpassing the speed of light through worm holes. This warp drive would be approx. 10 times faster than the speed of light. If this is possible one day, it will be an amazing breakthrough for humanity and colonizing space will cease to be an issue.

Best regards,
Alexandre Cassanello Amaral

You could argue that it’s all just illusions and fantasies, and indeed it’s true (though very good ones come to life)….but at that point, I ask the question of why you would, in truth, still want to achieve time-travel if such a thing were possible…because again, if I could fearlessly “time-travel” to any time-period I want in VR, without worrying about paradoxes or anything at all….then what on earth is the point of trying to accomplish the real deal?

If anything, again, the illusion of time-travel is better because I don’t have paradoxes or all sorts of issues to think about, versus trying to accomplish the real deal which will be much harder and demand I think about them.

It’s something that opens all sorts of discussion, but, when it comes to discussing aliens, I feel we are thinking more in the right direction in picturing something like machine intelligence with molecule-size starships rather then humanoids not to different then us, like the movies.

I’d very much like it if we’re able to continue the exponential curve for the foreseeable future, but even Gordon Moore himself has said that he’s been pleasantly surprised that we’ve stayed on it this long.

Instead of trying to send us enormous, ugly bags of mostly water to distant stars, why not use what biologists call an “r strategy” and aim billions of much smaller “seeds” – autonomous robotics with specific sets of preprogrammed objectives and the ability to root, grow, (and terraform) toward billions of preselected candidate stars.

If they did understand, than money spent on bailouts, welfare, corporate welfare, wars – would be spent on cloning Von Neumanns, Einsteins, Turings. We may not have the means to build a AI with superhuman intelligence, but cloning technology has arrived to the point where we can attempt to create many humans with superhuman intelligence.

This would probably take at least Type 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale. Needless to say, we should have other priorities at this point in our evolution.

No, no exponential goes on forever, but the ultimate ramifications of Moores Law/LOAR are extreme, even if/when they do hit a wall. Even if we can’t transcend past a certain point, the good thing is, is the reminder that we’d never stop until we couldn’t go any further, because, well, why would we? So even if/when we did hit a wall, we can rest assure that we went as high as we possibly could.

Still, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t in for a lot more of the same before the exponential growth of technological progress starts to slow down. And even going to a slower exponential growth rate (say, doubling every 5 years instead of every 2) or gradually trending towards a “mere” polynomial growth rate (eg, T*T rather than 2**T) would still lead to very rapid technological growth by historic standards.

Time will tell, but for now it’s probably better to assume the worst case and consider propulsion systems that are already known to work at least in theory.

But the point is, what can these settlers accomplish in this time frame that makes the project worthwhile? There’s really nothing there that would justify the hugely expensive costs of shipping it back to Earth, except for scientific research, most of which can be “shipped” electronically. The costs of sending humans there are huge, even after this becomes routine (the $500,000 per person would be after a significant colony of, say, 20,000 people was established – the first few might cost a billion each, clearly well beyond what all but a tiny number of people could afford, and which would almost certainly mean a government-sponsored project). Even at $500,000 each, if you want to fund a scientific mission there are plenty of places much closer to Earth that would be much cheaper and for which it’s not a one-way trip. Clearly this won’t be a way to reduce “overpopulation” on Earth; you just can’t send enough people at a reasonable cost.

Moreover, if you’re just doing scientific research, this can be accomplished much cheaper using robotic probes, which will have increasingly good AI as time goes on.

In the long run, a colony on Mars probably will make sense: it has a much lower escape velocity than does the Earth, plus it’s much closer to the asteroid belt, and might be able to support exploiting minerals on Mars and the asteroids for deep space building materials cheaper than doing so from Earth (the asteroid belt will probably not be a good source of minerals for the Earth for the foreseeable future because it’s too expensive to transport them). But for building objects in near-Earth orbit, building mining and manufacturing facilities on the Moon will make more sense.

Personally I think this particular idea might be better to put off to 2040 or beyond, while we build our space infrastructure closer to the Earth and continue to improve our technology.

In addition, I’m not at all convinced that future Earth-based propulsion mechanisms won’t include internal combustion of some sort, at least as a significant alternative. That might not mean (and in the long run, probably won’t mean) fossil fuels; but synthetic fuels (hydrogen, biodiesel, ethanol, etc) might well be useful for a very long time – possibly even indefinitely. The problem is that mechanisms like electric cars require those huge batteries, which are not only heavy, but which store a very limited charge (compared to a tank of gas), and which also take a significant amount of time to recharge; by contrast, combustible fuels have a much higher energy density and are much more convenient for refueling. These considerations also make electrical airplanes pretty much a pipe dream at this point. I expect battery technology to continue to improve and to be very useful especially for commuter transportation, but it’s really got a long way to go to replace internal combustion fuels, to say nothing of hybrid technologies like hydrogen-based fuel cells. This really has nothing to do with whether the production of the fuel is “carbon-neutral” or not – it’s purely a question about the energy density and convenience of the fuel(s) used for transportation systems, particularly in situations that don’t use some kind of fixed guideway, which can have their electrical supply built in.

Propulsion in space is another proposition altogether – there’s no particular reason why chemical combustion is a very good idea in the long run, even just within the Solar System, or why the oil companies should have a stranglehold on propulsion mechanisms.

I can easily imagine alternative scenarios. For example, mind uploading and strong AI are developed in research labs, but remain extremely difficult and expensive and confined to specific high profile applications (like going to the stars).

The Singularity is many things depending on who you ask – from Kurzweil’s point of view at any rate, it’s not a ‘big bang’ moment…it’s simply the moment when $1000 dollars gets you intelligence a billion times more then all biological intelligence today…from the pov of the unenhanced, it will be seen as a moment when they can no longer follow the exponential growth of tech (which has essentially become the exponential growth of humanity).

It’s not so much a ‘big bang’ moment, so much as simply a threshold…it’s not tied to things like mind-uploading, AI, and so on in such a way that, if we don’t “believe” in it or know it or whatever, it won’t happen….technology like nanotech is and will continue to evolve regardless of whether or not a tech Singularity happens or not.

So from that pov, one can argue that the Singularity has already gotten started or, shoot, it’s already here…it depends on your viewpoint of the word which, honestly, makes me feel it’s sort of redundant to even bring up. Technology like AI, nanotech and so on will continue to develop regardless of our notions of a Singularity.

The solution here is re-gearing the education system into producing, independent-minded, knowledge-workers. In fact, I think “worker” is inappropriate, but rather knowledge creators. Humans need to be involved in not just the assimilation, but the creation of knowledge. That doesn’t necessarily have to be scientific. However, if human cognitive sciences was turned into an information technology, we will also see exponential growth in cognition.

That would make it very difficult for AI to surpass us as of now, because all its enhancement will immediately be incorporated into us. This arms race will simply heighten humanity and should be welcomed with open arms. The time when performances converge, there will be no human, machine, or even physical realm: We’ll be gods.

Individuals will be able to create and manage systems as large, and complex as our universe. We will be able to create our own worlds much like a God, much like Sims, or SPORE. Some may argue that it could result in unimaginable evil, but I think by that time, our moral compass will be a lot more developed. Much like civility today is far greater than during the Biblical ages.

The house is starting to revert to simply being a place to live in and not being a productive asset in itself. This change is going to increase afford-ability tremendously. We’ll be seeing credit almost exclusively going into innovation development and that’s going to result to converge between the 1% and 99%.

The top 1% are still largely benefiting from the speculatory aspects of the economy. In others, they’re not productive and coming exponential growth is going to bring economic production closer to the home. This is going to break the traditional oligarchs; and shift help establish a higher degree of equity. It’s not as if a low socio-economic disparity isn’t achievable…just look at Nordic states.

As for “overpopulation”, the fear is quite overblown. The subcontinent of Africa only has a billion people. It isn’t that populated. The real problem here is the huge inefficiency with food production. There is plenty of food for the entire whole, several times over, but most are being wasted.

The idea of water scarcity can be mitigated through local water catchment technologies. Large public transport vehicles such as buses, rails – not just multi-unit buildings – could capture and filter water. This has yet to be incorporated in most nations, never mind desalination mated power by fusion ( longer-term tech).

Humans and machines will converge just as language – a human technology – became “human”.

And, BTW, this parameter seems to elude most people.. scalability .. what works for a limited group of people, does not work for large or very large groups.. For example, Sweden is the example for successful socialism.. yes, but the population of Sweden is around 9-10 million people.. there are more people than that in LA .. The Swedes are pretty much all of the same DNA stock.. white, northern Europeans.. they all pretty much agree on everything.. try that in New York..