ishalon

Is there an end to technology?

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: ishalon ]</p>

fando

No.

Abacus

Human technology will end when the human race goes extinct.

ishalon

All this reading is hurting my eyes.

Coragyps

Paraphrased from The War in the Air by H G Wells, around 1898:
" 'That progress,' said Mr Mobley, 'it keeps on.'"

Mageth

Is there an end to technology?

No, but when the Microsoft amoeba finally absorbs it all, it'll have more useless bells and whistles and be subject to frequent, mysterious crashes.

fando

Hey, the question had a simple answer.

A more interesting question is whether there will be any fundamentally new technology that would seem like magic to us. Posed another way, will the technology of 1000 years in the future seem like magic, or will it be easy to comprehend with our current level of scientific knowledge? Consider what our world looks like to someone who lived 1000 years ago. That person would be extremely puzzled by modern technology and probably wouldn't have been able to imagine any of it. However, we can easily imagine that Humans will be spacefarers in the future, travelling the cosmos in some yet to be discovered advanced propulsion technology. Even a society saturated with nanotechnology might not seem too alien to us. So, will the future seem as alien to us as our present world might seem to someone from the past?

Friar Bellows

I don't believe we'll ever be cosmic or intergalactic or interstellar spacefarers; in other words, we're stuck in the solar system. It's all due to the following quantities having the wrong values: a) the length of our lifetimes (which affects our perception of time); b) the average distance between stars in our Galaxy; c) the speed of light. These quantities are such to make human interstellar travel essentially impossible.

Now, you could call me unimaginative, of course. Or you could lump me with those who said we'd never fly or reach the moon. But generally I think that due to basic physics there are limits to how powerful one can make technology. We're not quite there yet, but we'll get there one day, if we don't wipe ourselves out.

Bill

I beg to differ.

First, your comparison scale is all wrong. The beginnings of modern technology was only about 500 years ago, and it didn't really get going good until about 200 years ago. People of 1000 years ago, transported into the world of 200 years ago, would not notice any really important technological differences. At least, not in the world of common average people. But move just one more century into the future, and you have the beginnings of a vast difference, with electricty, gas, lots of railroads, and so forth making their way into the lives of average people. And a second century into the future brings us to now.

Second, looking the other way, we are approaching the actual limits of human knowledge. Most scientists believe that we are only a few years (or maybe, a few decades) away from a Theory of Everything, which would (eventually) expose all basic knowledge that actually exists. Once that is discovered, what more is left but to invent all of the useful gadgets which that basic knowledge would allow? And once we have all of those gadgets, won't any further changes be just "fashion" rather than "technology?"

So, my personal opinion is that a couple of centuries from now, we will reach the end of technology. We are smack in the middle of the technology revolution, beginning about two centuries ago and continuing to about two centuries from now. I do think that, presuming that human civilization survives that long unimpeded by nuclear war or other calamity, what exists at that point will be dramatically different from what exists today. For one thing, we will have fully controlable genetic engineering and the ability to extend life indefinitely. This will lead to dramatic differences in what people look like, and perhaps even to a very different definition of what the word "people" really means (in other words, even a geneome would not necessarily define what your physical body looked and worked like; it would be subject to change, perhaps not as frequently as clothing styles change, but still more than once in a lifetime).

It is doubtful that we will discover any more fundamental forces of nature or any more basic particles beyond "strings" (with the possible exception of something that lies between "strings" and quarks). In other words, we will not see anywhere near as dramatic of a change as the harnassing of electricity brought to our existence.

At least, that is my prediction.

== Bill

Liquidrage

Bill.

Strings (from String Theory at least) are not fundamental pieces. While a certain configuration of strings would make up say a quark, the strings exist in space.
A fundamental theory needs to produce space not exist in it. Else you are left with an ether and that itself would be more fundamental.

I would also say my dog, a cute little Boxer named Kota, is rather smart. But I don't think she even wonders what happens when you die. Or what those light in the sky are.
From a similar view, I don't believe I can ask all the questions. We think we know it all. But we don't even know all there is to ask.

Maybe you are right and we are reaching the limit of human understanding. But then who is to say humanity is the end?

I also hope the TOE is near. But that doesn't mean it is. It is only within the last 100 years we even knew we needed a TOE. It could take 1000's of years before we really have one. We just can't be sure. And even when the TOE does come, I just put forth that we don't even know all the questions to ask.

I offer one last thought.

The limit of technology would be if every indivisible part in the universe was used to form a single storage of data.
Although I am sure it could go beyond my limited 21st century use of information storage I feel I can safely put forth that any technology not utitilizing all possible resources is lacking compared to one that is.

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>