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So, this have been bugging me for a while - what when we actually come to limits of the new technological and scientific advances that got us through the 20th c

So, this have been bugging me for a while - what when we actually come to limits of the new technological and scientific advances that got us through the 20th century? I doubt that anyone here doesn't see a comparison to Moore's law. Supersonic passenger flight isn't happening, Musk's spaceship (or at least, it's use for passenger travel) is a huge gamble... What if, among all the possible visions of the future, 2119 will have roughly the same tech as 2019? I don't doubt that there will be cosmetic differences, I'm talking more about about the fundamental stuff: energy efficiency, FLOPs, bandwidths, etc, being in the same order of magnitude. What if 2219 and 2319 still says the same, and the hockey stick of growth turns into another plateu? TBH, this future frigthens me even more than nuclear war or climate change. For both these old horrors, we at least know the theoretical solutions; but if we simply run out of new things to discover that make a difference for us as a species, what then?

konradb 7y ago
> if we simply run out of new things to discover that make a difference for us as a species, what then? Nothing left to do but live a good life and to try to make sure everyone is fed, happy, and treats the earth and everything else in it as well as they can.
mahart 7y ago
Biotech is still in its infancy and mastering DNA would open up a new frontier where humans can edit the genetic code to what makes a human. Assuming it isn't universally banned. The only truly depressing future to me is if interstellar travel really is as hard as it seems to us now. There kind of needs to be a physics/propulsion discovery on the order of magnitude of electricity or the journey can only be feasibly made by the immortal AI robot race that replaces us.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Interstellar travel IS hard, but the current laws of physics allow it to be done. Crewed interstellar travel can be done on timescales of ~50 years to the nearest star system using ~10Terawatt of solar power in space to power efficient beamed macron propulsion with the benefit being that most of the investment is in the macron beamer and power supply which stays in the solar system and can be reused like once every few months, sending a stream of ~100 ton spacecraft on magsails to Alpha Centauri (using the magsails to brake against the interstellar medium near the destination). Two way trips are not feasible in a human lifespan as it currently is, but one-way settlement of nearest stars is, with a stream of supplies and settlers arriving every few months. To really make this feasible, improvements in hibernation tech could help. Induced torpor over a week or two already works and could be used repeatedly so that psychological time in transit is only a few years (and the reduction in metabolism from torpor may also extend calendar life of the crew, but that is not yet proven). Even modest life extension (i.e. increasing healthspan from ~mid-60s to mid-80s or longer) would significantly increase the viability of human settlement of Alpha Centauri, and we're just getting to grips with the biochemical tools needed to fight aging, so who knows over a few centuries what will be possible. I think increase in human healthspan and lifespan is more likely than a dramatic practical but fundamental physics breakthrough cutting down the time.
sgt101 7y ago
There's a lot of exploit to do in computing, I mean, we've sat on top of hardware improvement and just slurped it up... We can do loads more with what we've got in the locker now, and what's happening isn't the end of hardware improvement is just the end of rapid exponentials.
Robotbeat 7y ago
Supersonic passenger flight is happening. Boom Supersonic is building their (crewed) subscale supersonic demonstrator right now. They hope to pick up where Concorde left off (but much more efficient and slightly faster and more granular, enabling more routes). NASA is building a low-boom civil supersonic demonstrator (also crewed) that will demonstrate sonic-boom-lowering techniques to enable passenger supersonic flight over the continental US. There's lots of room to improve these things still. And I'm excited still about lithium battery tech. It's the internal combustion engine of our century and its consequences are perhaps even more far-reaching. The theoretical useful energy of the most advanced versions of this, the lithium-air battery, are on par with that of hydrocarbon fuels, so by the middle of the century it's likely we'll have completely clean civil supersonic transport with low acoustic emissions as well. I think we still have a very long ways to go to advance technology. Vacuum tunnel maglev trains allow higher efficiency than even conventional rail but without an ultimate speed limit. They could operate at hypersonic speeds in 100 or 200 years from now, with the energy recouped regeneratively at the end. That makes efficiency orders of magnitude better than today's passenger air travel with speed increased by an order of magnitude. I think ultimately in the further future, if you want something exciting it'll be: Further urbanization of everything, so humanity concentrates in opulent metropolises well-connected by ultra-efficient transport. Food production increasingly goes to single celled organisms, freeing up space for rewilding of the Earth and healing of the ravages of industrialization while individual well-being is far greater. Human economic expansion in space is technically unbounded. The solar system allows access to many, many orders of magnitude greater energy supplies without an impact on the Earth's ecosystems. Things that can tolerate latency, like high performance computing will leave the planet to access unlimited energy in space (Moore's Law coming to a slow end will actually enhance this transition as you can afford to amortize the hardware over long enough periods of time for this to make sense). Musk's spaceship is just a taste of what's possible. Improvements in efficiency in even chemical rockets (by reducing structural weight, fine-tuning Isp over the mission cycle, using hydrolox near stoichiometric to enhance performance) can reduce cost of space travel to about what long-haul passenger travel currently is. I think things will continue to improve. And these are only the foreseeable things. The actual future will contain many unforeseeable discoveries. None of this is guaranteed, but it can be ours if we so decide to make it thus. A vision of the future beyond the Earth in the timeframes you mention: https://vimeo.com/108650530 https://vimeo.com/108650530
outworlder 7y ago
> TBH, this future frigthens me even more than nuclear war or climate change. For both these old horrors, we at least know the theoretical solutions; but if we simply run out of new things to discover that make a difference for us as a species, what then? This is very, very unlikely. Take a look at all open questions in physics, and you'll see that our understanding of the universe has severe gaps. Usually, whenever such a gap is filled, there's a technological boom. For instance, Einstein got us some: not only relativity (allowing for things like GPS), but also the photoelectric effect, allowing for (eventually) solar panels. Greater understanding of semiconductors (in no small part due to the above) brought us transistors, cheap lasers, which were refined (and still are) by quantum physics. We are dabbling into quantum computers now. Mind you, both lasers and radio waves were considered curiosities with no practical applications. Fusion research is still ongoing. Progress is slow, but steady. Once we have mastered, we'll have access to cheap and plentiful power, which will open up applications previously not even considered before. If it is possible to shrink the technology to less then building sized, then you'll also see vehicles (ships or spacecraft). Bio technology is still in its infancy. I cannot predict what the results will be, it's far too early. Some of the rapid progress from the last century might have been an anomaly. But we are not even close to running out of things to learn.

konradb 7y ago

> if we simply run out of new things to discover that make a difference for us as a species, what then? Nothing left to do but live a good life and to try to make sure everyone is fed, happy, and treats the earth and everything else in it as well as they can.

mahart 7y ago

Biotech is still in its infancy and mastering DNA would open up a new frontier where humans can edit the genetic code to what makes a human. Assuming it isn't universally banned. The only truly depressing future to me is if interstellar travel really is as hard as it seems to us now. There kind of needs to be a physics/propulsion discovery on the order of magnitude of electricity or the journey can only be feasibly made by the immortal AI robot race that replaces us.

Robotbeat 7y ago
Interstellar travel IS hard, but the current laws of physics allow it to be done. Crewed interstellar travel can be done on timescales of ~50 years to the nearest star system using ~10Terawatt of solar power in space to power efficient beamed macron propulsion with the benefit being that most of the investment is in the macron beamer and power supply which stays in the solar system and can be reused like once every few months, sending a stream of ~100 ton spacecraft on magsails to Alpha Centauri (using the magsails to brake against the interstellar medium near the destination). Two way trips are not feasible in a human lifespan as it currently is, but one-way settlement of nearest stars is, with a stream of supplies and settlers arriving every few months. To really make this feasible, improvements in hibernation tech could help. Induced torpor over a week or two already works and could be used repeatedly so that psychological time in transit is only a few years (and the reduction in metabolism from torpor may also extend calendar life of the crew, but that is not yet proven). Even modest life extension (i.e. increasing healthspan from ~mid-60s to mid-80s or longer) would significantly increase the viability of human settlement of Alpha Centauri, and we're just getting to grips with the biochemical tools needed to fight aging, so who knows over a few centuries what will be possible. I think increase in human healthspan and lifespan is more likely than a dramatic practical but fundamental physics breakthrough cutting down the time.

sgt101 7y ago

There's a lot of exploit to do in computing, I mean, we've sat on top of hardware improvement and just slurped it up... We can do loads more with what we've got in the locker now, and what's happening isn't the end of hardware improvement is just the end of rapid exponentials.

Robotbeat 7y ago

Supersonic passenger flight is happening. Boom Supersonic is building their (crewed) subscale supersonic demonstrator right now. They hope to pick up where Concorde left off (but much more efficient and slightly faster and more granular, enabling more routes). NASA is building a low-boom civil supersonic demonstrator (also crewed) that will demonstrate sonic-boom-lowering techniques to enable passenger supersonic flight over the continental US. There's lots of room to improve these things still. And I'm excited still about lithium battery tech. It's the internal combustion engine of our century and its consequences are perhaps even more far-reaching. The theoretical useful energy of the most advanced versions of this, the lithium-air battery, are on par with that of hydrocarbon fuels, so by the middle of the century it's likely we'll have completely clean civil supersonic transport with low acoustic emissions as well. I think we still have a very long ways to go to advance technology. Vacuum tunnel maglev trains allow higher efficiency than even conventional rail but without an ultimate speed limit. They could operate at hypersonic speeds in 100 or 200 years from now, with the energy recouped regeneratively at the end. That makes efficiency orders of magnitude better than today's passenger air travel with speed increased by an order of magnitude. I think ultimately in the further future, if you want something exciting it'll be: Further urbanization of everything, so humanity concentrates in opulent metropolises well-connected by ultra-efficient transport. Food production increasingly goes to single celled organisms, freeing up space for rewilding of the Earth and healing of the ravages of industrialization while individual well-being is far greater. Human economic expansion in space is technically unbounded. The solar system allows access to many, many orders of magnitude greater energy supplies without an impact on the Earth's ecosystems. Things that can tolerate latency, like high performance computing will leave the planet to access unlimited energy in space (Moore's Law coming to a slow end will actually enhance this transition as you can afford to amortize the hardware over long enough periods of time for this to make sense). Musk's spaceship is just a taste of what's possible. Improvements in efficiency in even chemical rockets (by reducing structural weight, fine-tuning Isp over the mission cycle, using hydrolox near stoichiometric to enhance performance) can reduce cost of space travel to about what long-haul passenger travel currently is. I think things will continue to improve. And these are only the foreseeable things. The actual future will contain many unforeseeable discoveries. None of this is guaranteed, but it can be ours if we so decide to make it thus. A vision of the future beyond the Earth in the timeframes you mention: https://vimeo.com/108650530 https://vimeo.com/108650530

outworlder 7y ago

> TBH, this future frigthens me even more than nuclear war or climate change. For both these old horrors, we at least know the theoretical solutions; but if we simply run out of new things to discover that make a difference for us as a species, what then? This is very, very unlikely. Take a look at all open questions in physics, and you'll see that our understanding of the universe has severe gaps. Usually, whenever such a gap is filled, there's a technological boom. For instance, Einstein got us some: not only relativity (allowing for things like GPS), but also the photoelectric effect, allowing for (eventually) solar panels. Greater understanding of semiconductors (in no small part due to the above) brought us transistors, cheap lasers, which were refined (and still are) by quantum physics. We are dabbling into quantum computers now. Mind you, both lasers and radio waves were considered curiosities with no practical applications. Fusion research is still ongoing. Progress is slow, but steady. Once we have mastered, we'll have access to cheap and plentiful power, which will open up applications previously not even considered before. If it is possible to shrink the technology to less then building sized, then you'll also see vehicles (ships or spacecraft). Bio technology is still in its infancy. I cannot predict what the results will be, it's far too early. Some of the rapid progress from the last century might have been an anomaly. But we are not even close to running out of things to learn.