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I was asked a question by a friend today who had read a discussion on civilisations somewhere. Why did mankind not discover electricity, light, gas, and create complex communication equipment say 100,000 years ago? If a "techno-boom" is the inevitable goal for the human population, why didn't a creator give it to us from the start? Why did technology have to evolve? Paradigm shifts will continue to become progressively more widespread, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.
"We won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The cusp of the next big thrust will be when we conquer the scarcity of energy. Mankind is poor due to its inability to capture easy source of Energy. Formula P=E×T, rules advance of civilisation, where P measures the advancement of the culture, E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilizing the energy.
Are we prepared to answer these questions? In the next 100 years, our future generation would be facing a new revolutionary spurt of growth in knowledge! Civilization has advanced from a primitive state to incredible achievements in just a little over 100 years. Why did mankind not discover electricity, light, gas, and create complex communication equipment say 100,000 years ago? You visit any site where discussion on our origins is a hot subject and you find these questions going unanswered.
Our social systems are determined by technological systems. We have advanced from (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial (5) special (like fishing societies). Culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased. This advancement was based on harnessing of energy. According to White, the primary function of culture" is to "harness and control energy." White differentiates between five stages of human development: the five stages of human development are characteristic: In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (agricultural revolution). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy.
All Homo Sapiens before Sir Isaac Newton could be regarded as primitive forms. Perhaps they would have produced transitional fossils if you were able to look at the knowledge content of their brains in that way. The ability of man to think freely helped Newton in Cambridge to write 'Principia Mathematica' (The Principia states Newton's laws of motion, forming the foundation of classical mechanics, also Newton's law of universal gravitation, and a derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion which Kepler first obtained empirically. The Principia is "justly regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science”). There is a huge connection between mathematical methods that included in the field of calculus and design of design internal combustion engines.
How science helps progress the freedom of mind! Thinkers and scientists like Galileo and Newton are the fathers of Enlightenment.
Once calculus (in formulating his physical theories, Newton developed and used mathematical methods now included in the field of calculus. But the language of calculus as we know it was largely absent from the Principia; Newton gave many of his proofs in a geometric form of infinitesimal calculus, based on limits of ratios of vanishing small geometric quantities) was properly defined, we were able to design internal combustion engines; the harnessing of forces of nature in designed environment through our intelligence produced the productivity boost that helped human population and productivity stagnated since last two millennia to jump exponentially. (Human population was 210m in around 100 AD and until 1000 AD increased to 270m from 1000 AD to 1800 AD the population increased to 900 million but after that in 200 years we are 7 billion and much better off).
Philosophers and several Enlightenment figures whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions: The 'academic origins' of the French revolution were provided by the likes of John Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet. They in turn were inspired by Galileo's and Newton's conception of the Universe based upon Natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology. Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of Natural Law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems.
Revolutions are inspired by these prophets of 'Enlightenment.' Until Iranian/Arab enlightened philosophers are brought ahead of the sacred writings no 'revolt' is possible. Revolutions only succeed when a society is able to embrace new realities. If society chooses to live in space of decadence and old thought, any revolution will only be a tool to accelerate its descent to ignominy and disasters.
"Your race hasn't even reached Type 1 on the Kardashev scale. It doesn't control the resources of this one planet, let alone a solar system or a galaxy. The Time Lords were the Type 4 civilization. We had no equals. We controlled the fundamental forces of the entire universe. Nothing could communicate with us on our level. Most races pray to lesser beings than the Time Lords."
— Time Lord Marnal, Doctor Who: The Gallifrey Chronicles
Many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, and Gerhard Lenski, declare technological progress to be the primary factor driving the development of human civilization.
Morgan's concept of three major stages of social evolution (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) can be divided by technological milestones, like fire, the bow, and pottery in the savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture, and metalworking in the barbarian era and the alphabet and writing in the civilization era. Our next natural destination is leading us towards a 'Technological singularity' which refers to the hypothetical future emergence of a greater-than-human intelligence through technological means, very probably resulting in explosive super intelligence.
Juergen Schmidhuber calls it the Singularity Omega, referring to Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point (1916). For Omega = 2040, he says the series Omega - 2n human lifetimes (n < 10; one lifetime = 80 years) roughly matches the most important events in human history. Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving. In 1971, John David Garcia expanded on Teilhard's Omega Point idea. In particular, he stressed that even more than the increase of intelligence, the constant increase of ethics is essential for humankind to reach the Omega Point. He applied the term creativity to the combination of intelligence and ethics and announced that increasing creativity is the correct and proper goal of human life. He specifically rejected increasing happiness as a proper ultimate goal: when faced with a choice between increasing creativity and increasing happiness, a person ought to choose creativity, he wrote. But the two are exclusively connected to where human kind is always finding creative ways to be happy. Kurzweil illustrated his beliefs in several graphs concerning his justification for his Law of Accelerating Returns.
A scheme for classifying advanced technological civilizations was proposed by Nikolai Kardashev1 in 1964. He identified three possible types and distinguished between them in terms of the power they could muster for the purposes of interstellar communications.
A Type I civilization would be able to marshal energy resources for communications on a planet-wide scale, equivalent to the entire present power consumption of the human race, or about 1016watts. A Type II civilization would surpass this by a factor of approximately ten billion, making available 1026 watts, by exploiting the total energy output of its central star. Freeman Dyson, for example, has shown in general terms how this might be done with a Dyson sphere. Finally, a Type III civilization would have evolved far enough to tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy. This would give a further increase by at least a factor of 10 billion to about 1036 watts.
Presently the whole Earth, with a cross section of127,400,000 km2, the total energy rate is 174 petawatts (1.740×1017 W), plus or minus 3.5%. This value is the total rate of solar energy received by the planet; about half, 89 PW, reaches the Earth's surface. The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totalling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 1024J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuels range from 0.6 to 3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. The total energy flux from the sun is 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources.
The global economy consumes approximately 30 billion barrels of oil (1.2 trillion U.S. gallons or 4.8×109 m3) each year. Numbers of this magnitude are difficult to conceive by most educated people. Crane felt that a cubic mile would be an easier concept for the general public than a trillion gallons. The volume occupied by one trillion U.S. gallons is about one cubic mile. Proved oil reserves are those that can be extracted with reasonable certainty under existing conditions using existing technology. Global proved oil reserves are estimated at approximately 1,300 billion barrels (210×109 m3). This corresponds to roughly 43 cubic miles, or 43 CMO. At the current rate of use, this would last about 40 years. Technological advances, new discoveries, and political changes may lead to additional proved oil reserves in the future.
Michio Kaku suggested that humans may attain Type I status in about 100–200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about 100,000 to a million years.
Type I: "technological level close to the level presently [1964] attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec. Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "a level "near" contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 10 to the 16 power and 10 to the 17 power Watts."
Type II: "a civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star (for example, the stage of successful construction of a "Dyson sphere"); energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec. Lemarchand stated this as "a civilization capable of utilizing and channelling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4 x 10 to the 26 power Watts."
Type III: "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at≈4×1044 erg/sec." Lemarchand stated this as "a civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4 x 10 to the 37 power Watts."
Carl Sagan pointed out that the energy gaps between *Kardashev's three types were so enormous that a finer gradation was needed to make the scheme more useful. A Type 1.1 civilization, for example, would be able to expend a maximum of 1017watts on communications, a Type 2.3 could utilize 1029 watts, and so on. He estimated that, on this more discriminating scale, the human race would presently qualify as roughly a Type 0.7.
*Kardashev, N. S. "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations," Soviet Astronomy, 8, 217 (1964).
