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Imposing large scale engineering projects of this nature will probably have to wait until after production and point control of self-replicating nanorobots, org

Imposing large scale engineering projects of this nature will probably have to wait until after production and point control of self-replicating nanorobots, organic or otherwise, is fairly mature. At that point the cost reduces down to design and raw materials and looks feasible when compared to simply going to other worlds in search of additional space, or building arcologies, or other methods. Sadly much vision has been lost somewhere in the last century. People are much more conservative about preserving the present state of whatever exists, and have lost the sense of wonder and ambition that characterized the opening of the modern age of machinery.

ertdfgcb 12y ago
Well, he did think it would take over a century. It would be nice if this could be completed in our lifetime, but that was never part of the plan (at least not the original plan)
twright 12y ago
Can you say more about this ambition we've lost? In my eyes that ambition is more arrogance that we can control the forces of nature around us without consequence.
- junto 12y ago
  One man's engineering visionary is another man's environmental disaster. Just an observation.
- aaronem 12y ago
  It is the peculiar human genius that we adapt our environment to ourselves, as well as the converse; we're not the only species on Earth which does so, but we're the only one for which adapting our environment is the keystone of a species survival strategy so successful that we have made ourselves, and for the foreseeable future will remain, the entire planet's apex predator. Lately, we hear much of how this strategy is doomed to failure, of how such failure will come sooner rather than later, and of how anything less than its immediate and radical replacement will surely doom our species. I don't buy it for a second. That the developed world has some rough times ahead, I don't doubt. But we're smart apes, and mean, and tough to kill, and there are an almighty lot of us. Perhaps we're due a new dark age, and perhaps not. But if so, we'll come out of it eventually, and we'll be better and smarter still for it, just like we were last time. Be it ever so popular of late, the belief otherwise is, in my considered opinion, born entirely of arrogance, in two parts: first, that even we have the capability to so radically reëngineer this planet as to no longer support our species, and second, that our species is somehow apart from nature, such that the axiom that all species not killed outright by them eventually adapt to changes of environment, somehow does not apply to us. That humanity is special, I happily agree, but we are not gods.

ertdfgcb 12y ago

Well, he did think it would take over a century. It would be nice if this could be completed in our lifetime, but that was never part of the plan (at least not the original plan)

twright 12y ago

Can you say more about this ambition we've lost? In my eyes that ambition is more arrogance that we can control the forces of nature around us without consequence.

junto 12y ago
One man's engineering visionary is another man's environmental disaster. Just an observation.
aaronem 12y ago
It is the peculiar human genius that we adapt our environment to ourselves, as well as the converse; we're not the only species on Earth which does so, but we're the only one for which adapting our environment is the keystone of a species survival strategy so successful that we have made ourselves, and for the foreseeable future will remain, the entire planet's apex predator. Lately, we hear much of how this strategy is doomed to failure, of how such failure will come sooner rather than later, and of how anything less than its immediate and radical replacement will surely doom our species. I don't buy it for a second. That the developed world has some rough times ahead, I don't doubt. But we're smart apes, and mean, and tough to kill, and there are an almighty lot of us. Perhaps we're due a new dark age, and perhaps not. But if so, we'll come out of it eventually, and we'll be better and smarter still for it, just like we were last time. Be it ever so popular of late, the belief otherwise is, in my considered opinion, born entirely of arrogance, in two parts: first, that even we have the capability to so radically reëngineer this planet as to no longer support our species, and second, that our species is somehow apart from nature, such that the axiom that all species not killed outright by them eventually adapt to changes of environment, somehow does not apply to us. That humanity is special, I happily agree, but we are not gods.