Who are you accusing of jumping to this conclusion? The Lifeboat people? Or the person you originally responded to?

Neither one said we _will_ have nanotech, they both just said it was a possibility, and that if there is, there's the chance it could become extremely dangerous. (I read the posters comment as "A possible flaw is... that nanotech will be available," ie a possiblity, not a definite thing)

Arguing that nanotechnology can mean any number of things is meaningless. They've specified what type of nanotech they're worried about, the kind that could be turned into grey goo. Clearly they're not worried about the entire world being electroplated ;)

The only thing i'd argue with is the assumption by the poster your responded to that if nanotech is developed, the lifeboat will be intercepted by near lights speed nanotech probes and therefore any disaster that happens to earth will happen to the lifeboat:

A: I suspect that the ability to create grey goo will occur before near light speed or beyond light speed travel is developed, so if a disaster happens, it's likely to happen before that point.

B: Even if it does happen afterwards, or the nanobots take a longer time catching up at sublight speeds, it's not likely the particular nanobots that are a threat will end up in space probes unless someone is intentionally trying to destroy all human life. The risk of grey goo is that it could be created by accident in an experiment, or be manufactured by (very, VERY insane) terrorists in a small lab. However building it with a time delay function and launching it into space would require both a lot of planning and a lot of resources.

C: As mentioned on the Lifeboat site, it's a lot easier to maintain security over a small area than a large one. Creating an active nanobot defense over the entire earth would be almost impossible, creating one in a spaceship/colony would be many orders of magnitude easier.

This kind of thing is a pretty typical response for a person who hears their questioning of a belief system questioned.

We could keep this up all day! :)

I don't know who said that first, but I read it here on Slashdot. I like Vinge's fiction, but the Singularity thing strikes me as an apocalyptic/transcendent/eschatological scenario for people who can't stomach the Book of Revelation.

What is also nonsensical about the singularity idea is it divorces scientific advancement from those responsible for producing it: humans. There is not an exponentially increasing number of scientists to keep up with the supposedly exponentially increasing level of tech and knowledge. You CAN'T get the amount of scientific advancement in a day that you get in a year unless there is a corresponding increase in the number of scientists doing the work AND they give up on the workday and go hellbent 24/7.

Naw. Science advances only as quickly as humans can do the grunt work. The rate of advancement has a rate wall that cannot be exceeded dependent on 1) number of scientists in each field, 2) the rate they can ingest and gain understanding of other's works and actually process the information into something useable - the larger the body of work, the longer it takes to reach understanding because there is so much more to take in), 3) productive hours in a day, 4) funding (science isn't free - it gets more and more expensive all the time, depending on the area).

I'm certain I'm leaving things out but science doesn't do itself. It is a human activity limited by the limits of the tool conducting it.

Captain: Make it slow.

i dont know if, or how much things will change in the future, but as it stands right now we seem to be on the path to self destruction, or at least earth destruction.

Within a 100 light-year radius, that will probably be five or ten.

I'd rather have one generation starship than a dozen LEO space stations.

If you have a space elevator [...] and the ground point of the elevator becomes un-teathered (e.g. no longer attached to earth) what happens?

Inevitably some group is going to oppose the elevator and attempt to use force to bring it down. Just look at the animal rights groups that blow up labs conducting animal research.

Why is it inevitable that someone will oppose a space elevator? I don't know of anyone who thinks that such a construction would be unethical, the way that many people think certain animal research is. The comparison doesn't seem to connect.

What you'd need to worry about more is anyone who saw it as a symbol of the US/Western Civilization/Whatever group some terrorists have a grudge again. I don't think the 9/11 terrorists thought that the WTC was inherently bad for being a very tall building or something like that.

What you'd need to worry about more is anyone who saw it as a symbol of the US/Western Civilization/Whatever group some terrorists have a grudge again. I don't think the 9/11 terrorists thought that the WTC was inherently bad for being a very tall building or something like that.

Note that the anchor point (the place it's built above) has to be on the equator as well.

There'd be quite a few oscillations: there'd be a natural oscillatory mode depending on the actual length of the elevator cable. These could be damped, however, so no, there doesn't NEED to be oscillations

I've seen a proposal for an elevator on Mars that was carefully oscillated to avoid the regular passage of an inconvenient moon.

since an elevator would be tethered, does this affect the minimum stable height?

that's what we've got deflector dishes for

I say we just offload all the extremists and morons onto Mars. We'll call it the "Get Off Of Our Planet" (GOOOP) project.

Just because an atmosphere is not breathable doesn't mean it does not exist. Take a seedy nightclub or pub as an example. Just because the cigarette smoke, BO and other such cruft makes it absolutely unbarable to breath doesn't make it a vacume.

Mars' atmosphere is mainly CO2 with a little N2 floating around so it would just be like a paper bag that has been breathed into and from for a while but with a little more CO2.

I guess you are right that someone would die after landing on Mars because it has no breathable oxygen. However they would live longer than you thought because they would not pop like one would on a planet totally devoid of atmosphere (at least not as fast). The temperature would not be as extreme either. I guess if you packed George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Areial Sharon, Yasser Arafat and anyone who supports these people into the rocket with a few scuba sets, some warm angora sweaters and some strong Burbon (for staying warm on the cold martian nights) they could form nice friendly community until they either run out of burbon/oxygen or renounce violence and we can fly them back home.

Come to think about it that is a pretty cool idea.

That depends, if there were less scuba sets than people it could get very interesting very fast.

Besides, the atmosphere on mars is very very thin, much lower than at the top of everest if I remmeber correctly. The problem with really low air presure (ignoring the lack of any o2) is that your lungs start to leak water ending in what is effectively drowning. Even with an o2 supply climbers effectively start dying once the air gets two thin. Exactly how long you could last in the open on mars with an o2 supply I couldn't tell you but I'm not sure I'd like to find out.

Well, if you gonna do it, you should do it with style! ;-)

I say we just offload all the extremists and morons onto Mars....That should help the longevity of the human race, although I can't speak for the "Mars colonists"

His mars colonists are lonely exiles, bored stiff and blasting their minds out on drugs to try to recall some better life (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch). They read old [read: 50s and earlier] pulp sci-fi about planetary exploration because it's so much more fun then their own experience (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). There's no glory. There's just a love and a longing for the earth, and a desire for the right to return to it.

It's certainly possible that humanity could destroy itself and/or the world with any one of hundreds of new technologies, but the odds are worse than they were in the days of the Cuban missile crisis, and we pulled through that one. Maybe you should check the Doomsday Clock [thebulletin.org] next time, folks.

Sci-fi's are often uncannily accurate at predicting the future.

Uhm. Jules Verne, yes, he did predict things that did happen - well, submarines, and we did go to the moon. We didn't go to the center of the earth. I don't care about Googling for his other books right now.

Then we get to HG Wells... Wars with aliens, time machines, anti gravity, ...

Since then... None of the 20th century SF seems to have gotten the world around the year 2000 right. Cell phones are everywhere, personal computing is cheap and used for games, there's the Internet, and maybe we'll even finish the current space station in ten years. There is some cloning and biotech and we use it for medicine. There have been a few terrorist attacks, and now the whole world is obsessed with them.

Now what did SF tell us... Rockets! Space colonies! World War Three! One World Government! Aliens! FTL travel! And of course, flying cars.

My first guess is that SF has been performing less (at predicting the future) than you would expect of pure chance. But there have been great books :-)

Since then... None of the 20th century SF seems to have gotten the world around the year 2000 right.

Read some of John Brunner's work, notably Stand on Zanzibar [scifi.com] and The Shockwave Rider [scifi.com]. Written in the 60s and 70s, it's scary how well they seem to be predicting the early 21st century.

• A world divided into regional coalitions that combine in shifting alliances. The portrayal of other cultures in simplistic black-and-white terms. Government efforts to downplay our previous relations with our current "friends" and "enemies".
• Perpetual war, mostly in far-away places, to divert attention from domestic problems. Lotteries and content-free televised entertainment to do the same.
• An anti-knowledge, anti-scientific mindset in popular culture and government, where knowledge and understanding are replaced by doctrinal belief systems.
• Increasing economic stratification in society, with institutions of power cooperating to place their inter-related self-interest over the common good.
• Popular music based entirely on rhythmic patterns, with no melody. Yes, in 1948 Orwell predicted rap.

Or perhaps it would just be the system of propulsion, which just happens to obliterate whatever we happened to be around at the time as part of day to day operations :)

Either that, or hope that when we go bye-bye, the next smart Earth race brings us back Jurassic Park style in hopes there's a storm and we escape our cages.

Why not shoot our DNA off into space...

C.F. "The Great Space Fuck" by Kurt Vonnegut? :-)

I'm not sure running away is the right answer, but I would be cautious in calling the technological singularity a "good thing." Those who are a product of it will likely consider it one, but those of us who precipitate it likely will not, and will long for the "good old days" from before the singularity.

Anyway, the guy in the article isn't afraid of the singularity, as such, he's afraid of the dangers that might arise (accidentally or through terrorism): grey goo from nanotech, killer diseases from bioengineering, Terminators from AI, and so forth. The singularity will simply accelerate development of these technologies (and hopefully, ones to counter the dangers, too).

> Huh, I'm not sure it's a GOOD thing. Isn't the idea that it's an unpredictable thing? As I understand it,
>the theory is that beyond the technological singularity, human society (if it even exists)
>will be radically transformed. So, as a person born before the singularity, I probably wouldn't like it.

The reason this singularity is bad (according to the lifeboat people) is that it will cause several inventions that we will not be able to handle correctly. More importantly they talk about 'gray goo', a kind of nano-robot that instantly eats all living organisms and would kill of the entire planet once it is invented. The lifeboat people claim that this grey goo will be invented BEFORE we are able to cope with it. Additionally they also talk about artifical black holes and other calamities that will be invented before mankind is capable of properly controlling that stuff.

Greetings,

Perhaps you missed out on Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime"? :)

In that book humanity reached a point in time equivalent to the Singularity... and all disapeared. There's a lot of theorizing about what eactly happened to them, and only _some_ of the ideas were good.

Vinge's essay is presenting what _he_ thinks the Singularity would be like, but he can't _know_ by definition. Maybe it will involve us downloading our brains into genetically created intelligent goo a la Greg Bear's "Blood Music."

And maybe it will be something bad. When you hit the singularity every single human will have the power of a god. Maybe one of them will go insane and blow up the entire species. Or that could happen while we're on our way to the singularity. All the Singularity means is that at some point in the future, we will literally have more technology than we can comprehend (at the moment at least.) Which would be more than enough technology to save the enviroment, explore the stars, and make life easy for every human in existance, and more than enough to kill us all too.

Are people still coming up with silly definitions like this? It's been, what, a hundred years since G.E. Moore and the "open question argument"...

See here Vernors Take [caltech.edu]

This has been a Borg Production

--

--

umm, that line sort of made me a bit wary of your otherwise insightful comment...

;)

Of course, we can do our best to save Earth also in the meantime, we're not like some video game where you can only research one thing at a time. If you're going to critisize wasted effort, i think there's a long list of trivial and useless stuff you'd have to go through before getting to spaceflight. Then entire entertainment industry for example is a much bigger was of energy than researching space colonies. If the amount of effort being put into spaceflight was enough to solve world hunger, don't you think we would have managed to dix that problem by now?

I'm not the one without a fire, those guys over there don't have a fire. I'll tell them how to make a fire, i'll try to help them out if i can, but in the long run i'm going to take my fire with me and move south to where it's warmer.

Why do you care about your heirs (or the heirs of mankind) 5 billion years from now? Even if they exist, they don't care about you...

If all there is to your life is "getting off the planet" for some distant descendant, then God help you; your life is meaningless.

duh. Doesn't the Government of the United States count as a "small group of people"? There's been "small groups of people" who have the capacity to wipe out the planet for many decades now.

The crimes commited by states every day dwarf the crimes commited by "terrorists" by several orders of magnitude.

Even if we did have the required technology (we don't), what would be the point? Those generation ships would never return. We might not even find out what their fate was.

Colonizing other planets is of no value to us here on earth, unless it's possible to set up some sort of regular trade (in goods or knowledge) between ourselves and the colonies. Given the limitations that our current understanding of physics puts on effective communications over such distances (much less actual transportation) that isn't going to happen. Our understanding of physics might change, but it would be stupid to spend time and energy on sending out those ships when we don't know what the future holds, technologically.

Yeah, it would give a few people like yourself warm fuzzies if we did it, because it fulfills a deep need to see yourself as a participant (however minor) in some grand narrative. But without some sort of economic upside, not enough people will be willing to commit the funds to send out the ships. They'd rather fulfill their need for a narrative through religion, which can be much cheaper, when properly implemented.

If we kill ourselves all off, we're a failure as a species. If we manage to colonize other planets, then we're a sucess by the only measure that Mother Nature really cares about.

That of course doesn't mean that there aren't other worthwhile endeavors, but it's pretty extreme to say that spreading out the species so we don't all go extinct has no value. It's like saying there's no value in a parent dying to save their children, or soldiers dying to save their nation.

How have i anthropomorphized Mother Nature into a judge? Things can be successes or failures without a judge. You set up the rules beforehand, and the things that are the best according to the rules "wins" at the end.

Scientists created the theory of evolution to explain the way life works to the best of our knowledge. Things that pass on their genes "win," things that don't lose and die.

This isn't a certainty of meaningfulness. Is an intelligent species that dies out but leaves behind works of art and knowledge for another intelligent species to find a sucess? Not really according to evolution/mother nature/whatever you want to call it, but in another sense maybe they are.

Of course even just going by the criteria of species survival there are issues to work out. Every species dies off eventually, so is sucess a relative thing, based on how long they lasted before the went? Or maybe we're playing against almost impossible odds, and the only "winners" are those that make it to the end of the universe or beyond, which of the species we know of, only humans have even the remotest chance of doing.

It's all very subjective, and different people can accept different definitions, but i fail to see how believing that being alive is a good thing is a "cobbled-together belief system." Presumably if you didn't think the same thing, you would have removed yourself from the equation already.

We currently have the technology (assuming big bucks) to send multi-generational colonies to other star systems.

Sorry, but claims like this are based on wild-ass extrapolation. We have just about zero experience in creating a self-sustaining ecosystem such as would be required; no experience in long-term (multi-year) space habiation; no experience in build large structures in space (sorry, ISS is too small to count). To say that we "currently have" sufficient tech is like Ben Franklin projecting from Leyden jars to electric cars and supercomputers on the basis that he currently (no pun intended) has the technology to tame electricity.

Given what I call the "Moores Law of Terrorism" [1], eventually it will be possible to for a small group of people to wipe out the entire human species (via nukes, biokillers, nanokillers, etc.)

Which is why we ought to get to work on ending the brutality and repression that breeds terrorism.

(Note: It probably will not be me in the tin can.)

That's part two of the problem. Any such project is going to need a substantial part of the planet's resources. Given the choice between spending dollars sending someone else to safety, or working on defenses that might have a change save my own personal ass - or on eliminating the motivation for someone to threaten my ass in the first place - where do you think I'm going to logically direct my ducats?

A zillion dollars split between efforts towards peace, stability, and relief (on the political, ecological, and economic fronts) in the Middle East and Africa, and efforts to develop defenses againt bioweapons and grey goo (a nuke or two could kill a lot of people, but it would take a full-scale exchange to be a threat) to our species is a better investment than a zillion dollars towards a long-shot lifeboat for someone else.

Gigantic brains improving what we've got is what brings the Singularity on!

The difference between cult and respectable religions are just the size of membership. Example: Eating the body of Christ, handed to you by a priest! Imagine the reaction if someone came up with this POS today. Doesn't get more "Cult'ish" than that.

Just because your are not paranoid doesn't mean your are not being followed!

Danish by Nationality not by Name by the way.

It's frustrating that /. posts this sort of thing, but never touches on serious stuff dealing with the Singularity. Bah to the moderators.

For example, the Singularity Institute [singinst.org] has a vast array of comp-sci-related interesting stuff about General Artifical Intelligence and its role in the Singularity. The institute and volunteers are working on Flare [sourceforge.net], a programming language for GAI development.

Then we have the Foresight Institute [foresight.org] who have a bunch of scholarly, serious things to say about nanotechnology and its implications.

Just for starters, of course. Then we have a million other resources out there, such as:

KurzweilAI.net [kurzweilai.net]
Extropy Institute [extropy.org]

at which one can learn about the Singularity and associated topics in context.

But no, we get trash like the spaceship guy. Bah, bah, bah. Reason

Exponential progress is a fact, and we're currently on the knee of that tech curve, but it's simply too hard for many people to accept how fast things are going to change in the near future, since our minds like to extrapolate linearly and futilely resist change...

It's easy to be cynical about the future though, after all, "where's my flying car dammit?!" is a free pass to make fun of any wild prediction, because of famous bad ones.

--

You misunderstand the singularity. It doesn't have to come about because of AI. It can also come about because of human augmentation with computers, let me give you some examples.

A smart person connected to the internet can research a problem faster than one in a library. As the software for research on the net gets better and better more research can be done. Hence better software and hardware can be made and people can study previous research.

This doesn't mean we will increase forever but that at the current rate we are increasing exponentially. Also the singularity is not judgment day. Some people see it that way because they don't understand. We will not be enslaved or lose our souls any more than we do so today.

Found the next day...

Date> 1997 March 21 2245
Subject> URGENT NOTICE: SCHEDULE CHANGE

An electrical failure aboard HG-HB1 (Heaven's Gate - Hale Bopp) currently located in close proximity to Comet Hale-Bopp has disabled our vessel. We believe that the problem is related to our closeness to the comet. As a result we will be unable to make contact with earth as scheduled. We will keep you informed as to our new schedule.

DO NOT TAKE THE PUDDING AT THIS TIME

REPEAT

DO NOT TAKE THE PUDDING AT THIS TIME

We regret the inconvenience.

That sounds a little extreme to me, although i'm sure Stirling has done _far_ more research into the issue than i have. Off the top of my head, the two major factors that i can think of contributing to this figure, that the US is far more dependant on foreign oil than we like to think about (which would not necessarily be relevant in a space colony) and that the US is far more dependant on cheap overseas (or overborder) labor that we like to think about (which could very well be relevant in a space colony.)

That being said there's a lot of difference between the US suddenly being on it's own, and a colony that was designed from the begining to be self-sufficient.

And given the recent "success" of Armadillo Aerospace, I'd be a little hesitant to fund a private space program, especially with live people on board.

You know, I wish people would quit harping about that. Do you think NASA just started building flawlessly-operating Saturn Vs from scratch back in the 60s?

The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser. That could not even melt steel at the frigate's range. No matter, the laser was aimed, civilly on the retreating warship's receiver. No acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser light flickered here and there across the hull, lighting smoothness and inactive sensors, sliding across the ship's ultradrive spines. Searching probing. The Power had never bothered to sabotage the external hull, but that was no problem. Even this crude machine had thousands of robot sensors scattered across its surface, reporting status and danger, driving utility programs. Most were shut down now, the ship fleeing nearly blind. They thought by not looking that they could be safe.
One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar saftey.
The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far below ... a backdoor into the ship's code, installed when the newborn had subverted the humans' groundside equipment....
...and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents -- not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the ship's automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Cameras in the ship's bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second.

How do they know the singularity society won't go after them?

Presumably "the vertical part" was a reference to that section of the graph, as opposed to the "flat" part at the begining or the "bend" in the middle, middle being defined here as the part between the vertical part and the horizontal part =)

Random evolution won't bring it about : creating better intelligence will require a vast organized effort, whether it be designing circuitry or modifying the genetics of existing people.

• We identify better humans (gee, that's us!)
• We produce more of them (us)
• We eliminate inferior humans (them)

Presumably if all turns out for the best, the people on the lifeboat can join in afterwards. They don't need to be cut off totally from the rest of humanity, they just need to have a big enough buffer to control what enters their enviroment.

Instead of trying to save our species, why not try and make sure that other species remember us.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." - Woody Allen

In retrospect, the biggest problem concerning The Atlantis Project was lack of interest. Lack of interest and the fact that its precepts were based in Libertarian politics.

The two problems concerning the Project were lack of interest and the fact that its precepts were based in Libertarian politics. And a lack of funding.

The three problems concerning the Project were lack of interest, the fact that its precepts were based in Libertarian politics, and a lack of funding. And an almost fanatical devotion to our cause.

The four... no. Amongst the problems... amongst the challenges... are such factors as a general lack of interest....

I'll come in again.

More to the point of the article, we can probably establish settlements like this now, with current level of technology. Then in future a space settlement will only need to get in space and deal with problems unique to being there. Other problems that a domed settlement on Mars might face - creating a self-sustained biosphere, making repairs using only material inside and so on - will already be solved on Earth.

The other point against it was that "Let's go live in space!" is a much better rallying cry than "Let's all go hide in a cave!"

What if the singularity really is the lifeboat of a higher race to save the universe from the human race?

I bet you never thought about that.

I don't know if this was already pointed out, but the author seems to be slightly unifomed about the properties of a vacuum. Since NASA has stated it would take 10-20 years at THEIR current level of funding to put a man on the moon again (let alone colonise), I wonder how the lifeboat will be ready in less than 18 years.

The predictions of Eric sound similar to another organisation... your favourite door-to-door salespeople [watchtower.org]. (And the History [observer.org] of the end of the world). Found on Google [google.co.uk].

In his story, a base was set up on the moon to awaite the destruction of earth (by asteriod or other disaster). Once the disaster happened (in their case, asteroid), the moon base would "wake up", create clones of people, raise them and educate them, then they would return to earth to rebuild. It's not the greatest read, but it is an interesting concept.

Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking

Something like the picture in close orbit and supplied by the earth is still a part of the ecosystem and far more vulnerable than a terrestrial installation built with a similar investment.

Making a fund for preservation of the species is a great idea though. Primarily it could be used to provide a "safety buffer" by recognizing the need for specific research and quickly funding it.

Ultimately we need vibrant colonies on other planets (presumably around other stars and not in contact with Earth) to be safe. It might be very difficult to guarantee the "not in contact with Earth" part, but at least a planet-killer meteor impact would no longer be a total loss.

It would be much better to take the money and invest in some targetted areas.

It is VERY CLEAR that a possible answer to the "where are all the radio signals from other civilizations" question is, "most of them killed themselves in a science accident soon after getting to the point where sending signals became economic".

I would off-hand humbly suggest investing in:
-Nanotechnology Research and related Safety Technology (defensive, maybe it will be possible to make mistakes in a safe environment before others in nonsafe environments).
-Astronomy and Astrophysics, in particular development of extremely high-power interferometers (to gain clues as to what distant catastrophes looked like).
-SETI, most bang for your buck and we might get a clue before killing ourselves off.
-Space construction research, not for colonies in space but for high energy research.(iffy, they'll probably build on Earth where the physicists are anyway).
-Risk Assessment and related research in biochemistry, nanotechnology, and particle physics. (Of course it is probably difficult to direct research just at risk assessment but at least to fund researchers so that it is something they spend brainpower on regularly).
-International collaborative research funding and coordination. Basically if all countries could be aligned then there might be less possibility of the defeatist "if we don't study it someone else will".
-Powerful, pragmatic projects to eliminate poverty, hunger, water shortages, and racial hate.
-Risk management programs in AI. Needed in the next 30 years apparently (cf. Kurzweil).
-Stabilization of world politics and maybe even the "War on Terrorism". Don't laugh but I expected this for years. Of course having thousands of people killed is a big impetus but I don't think that is the main reason behind the U.S. administration's actions.
Basically the world cannot afford "rogue states" or "terrorist cells" which as the years go by will gain progressively scarier weapons. War is perhaps not the answer and already I worry that centuries more of hatred could have been instilled in the middle east, but the fact is you just don't want pathological people to be in control of the real heavy shit. Of course we are a few definitions shy here still.. "what's 'pathological'?" :(
Still I cannot help but think about some scifi stories, which after all are exercises in imagination and extrapolation. Often a powerful, sneaky alien ship will land on the planet Earth and stop all war, disease, etc. with some strong arm tactics. (sorry can't think of which one now). I'm not advocating such tactics but if you think objectively, as if you were in the ET's place, how would you solve some of the problems you see? You could just let people fight over water, let them die if they have not enough food, create the food and water, or relocate populations. Some things might be solved by giving the UN a set of huge teeth and some imaginitive people. It seems that if the top ten or twenty countries (in money, prestige, population, or whatever) agree they can do most anything. They just never agree very much. So we need money to get researchers to work on how to align many countries on a certain issue. Think about WWII and how Japan was transformed overnight. Why do people think this can't happen in other countries? (No, it doesn't take a bomb!). Groupware and coordinated media might work to feed the same information to the entire world and get everyone literally on the same wavelength. It's just a little bitty world 8000 miles wide, folks!
Hope we make it. I wouldn't mind living forever..