Telescoping History

[Lusty_Muffins]

Has anyone seen Waking Life? It's a wierd little movie that mainly just spreads some interesting ideas and such. Hard to explain but this one guy, a professor, was telling how evolution (not genetic evolution but civilized evolution) is a telescoping effect.

Hundred of thousands of years for man to become civilized.
Thousands of years for man to discover the basic blocks of life as we know it. Math, science, literature/language, and government.
Hundred of years to establish industry.
Tens of years to develop advanced technology.

What comes next, I wonder? It feels to me that life is runnign at such a fast pace that my mind can barely keep up with the current situation. So much major history has never happened in such a short period of time as it has in the past 10 years or so. Hell, even in the past 5 years, probably.



What do you all think of this? Thought on what happens when our "evolution" has just sped up to the point of a standstill (or whatever YOU think will happen).



PS - Corrections on my crappy timeline welcome. Can't remember exactly what the guy said in the movie.

[Lusty_Muffins]

Found exactly what was said in Waking Life.


"Now what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here, two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it, you're beginning to see the telescopic nature of the evolutionary timeline. And then when you get to agriculture, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years, and you're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's going to telescope to the point we should be able to manifest it within our lifetime, within a generation. "

[-V-]

I agree on that point. It seems that our rate of advance occurs at an exponential rate. It took us thousands of years to get from stone tools to iron tools, it took us about ~100 years to go from knowing of isotopes and radiation to a nuclear reactor and it took us about 40 years from knowing what DNA looks like to having a cloned sheep.

Heck what's next? Colonies on Alpha Centaury by 2050?

[Krispy Joe]

I think human development may hit a terminal velocity, as to say progress may slow down or even downright stop for a few decades or centuries, and then flare back up again. Just compare the world 100 years ago to the world today. I really can't see that big of a change by the 22nd Century.

[-V-]

I would say quite a bit has changed from the world of 100 years ago: Electricity was still a bit of a novelty, worker protection was non-existant, we really didn't have antibiotics, and our understanding of medicine was still fairly rudamentary. Communication was also quite slow, especially by today's standarts, travel was still painfully slow, no airplanes, no sattelites.

I would conjecture that the speed of advances in human sociotey and technology is tied directly to two, maybey 3, things: Population density and ability to communicate and ability to store and recall information. With the world of today, sharing and storing information has never been easier, and I suspect it will only cause the rate of advance to accelerate further. Granted statistically it ought to eventually and level off, but Isaying that there isn't going to be a big change by 2100 is akin to what directer of the US patent office said in the early 20th century, that the Pattent office should be shut down because nothing else new could possibly be invented!

[Daywalker]

I think human development may hit a terminal velocity, as to say progress may slow down or even downright stop for a few decades or centuries, and then flare back up again. Just compare the world 100 years ago to the world today. I really can't see that big of a change by the 22nd Century.


Yea, I have a feeling we'll get to a point where the next step is too hard to do for awhile. Sort of like a videogame, you cruise threw like 15 levels easy, then you hit 1 that takes a lot longer to do.


Medicine is moving very fast. In the 1800s people were using crude oil, radium, and other substances in "cure all tonics" and now we have complicated medicines that can cure a variety of things. At the beginning of the century Hospitals could barely do anything if someone stopped breathing or their heart stopped. Now we have automatic defibulators that can be implanted into people and deliver shocks if their heart stops.

[FaKToR]

Awesome movie.

[GoatChomper]

Nothing new, really.....Future Shock was written by Alvin Toeffler almost four decades ago.

[kreket]

Why haven't the 80686 processor arrived? Seeing we went from 80286 to 80386, stepped inside the 80486 sx and dx and "stopped" with the pentium series.

Anyone feel like helping with a list of advances yet to be done? Some of these could credibly could be done by 2100.

In medicine:
Mystiscism in science, explaining the phenomena of sugar pills and 'alternative' medicine.
Drugs with far lesser sideeffects. (They are looking into this already.)
DNA checked tailor drugs.
Longevity vaccine. (Probably too sci-fi.)
Spareparts growing projects.
Mapping the chemical processes of the mind.
A clearer definition of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. How do we define and at what level should we cure mental illnesses in the populace?

Spacefaring
Reaching Mars.
Finding a world equal to earth by telescope.
Sending drones to find a planet with a biotope, preferably one we could live in. (Too sci-fi probably.)
Setting up communications with an alien race. (One of the major arguments for me against our ability to enter space is that no spaceship has contacted us.)
A colony within our own system.
Improving control over space.

Computers
More is always needed.
Computer of different materials.

Energy
Wave energy from the sea has not been tapped to the level it could be.
Greater use of green sources and alternative energies.

Others
Explaining ball lightning and freak phenomena.
The creation of nanobots.
The equation of all. What is the relation between energy, gravity, time, mass and so on?
Tesla died after signing a contract with the US gov to invent a death ray. Interesting?