Big Ideas: What is Post Scarcity?

The money of tomorrow may be no money at all. 

April 19, 2016 | ProgressTH The science fiction series Star Trek shows us a future in which no money exists. “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity,” said Captain Picard while trying to explain this world to an outsider. And while Star Trek is indeed a science fiction fantasy where elements are added to storylines to make them more interesting, relevant, or poignant, there could be some interesting interpretations of just how and why a moneyless society came to be in the 24th century.

 
Post-scarcity is defined by Wikipedia as “a theoretical economy in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely,” and many may already be able to think about a few examples of this sort of trend already emerging.

In the Star Trek universe, physical goods are created by energy-matter conversion in a futuristic version of a modern-day 3D printer. Virtually anything can be copied or designed and created through replication, and thus the need for money is minimal to nonexistent.

Big Ideas: Castles in the Sky

Our path among the stars is paved with asteroids.  

July 31, 2015 | ProgressTH Humanity moving out among the stars is not only the ultimate fulfillment of everything that makes up the best of humanity, it is the only way humanity and the many organisms and natural wonders we inhabit Earth with can ultimately survive. Whether an asteroid smashes into our planet and strips all life from its surface, or our sun goes supernova and consumes the planet in its entirety, hedging our bets by bringing life off-world will be both our greatest adventure and our only insurance policy.

Science fiction today, worlds like this might be a reality tomorrow, and the key to establishing permanent settlements beyond Earth. The space habitat featured in the movie Elysium was an example of what is called a Stanford Torus. 

We often talk about our first steps off-world being on the moon or on Mars. While we will undoubtedly return to the moon and one day set foot on Mars, perhaps the most important step we must make is onto worlds of our own creation. These "castles in the sky," more technically would be the Stanford Torus, Bernal Sphere, and O'Neill Cylinder habitats of NASA's 1970's Summer Studies where engineers and designers worked out just how to construct such worlds.

These habitats could be put in orbit around the Earth, around the sun, around Mars, Jupiter, or anywhere we prefer. Their strengths include this ability to precisely position them, as well as control both their climate and gravity, something that will be impossible on the moon or on Mars, barring something like science fiction-style terraforming technology and gravity plating. The fact that both the moon and Mars lack these features makes permanent settlement of either a challenge.

The ring-shaped Stanford Torus configuration.

While we are confident in theory, for the longest time we have been confounded on how to put into practice the construction of these habitats. Of course the idea of using asteroids as construction material, rather than launching hundreds of tons of construction material into space from Earth, has been on the drawing board for the longest time, but progress toward realizing it has been slow. 

Big Ideas: The Potential Problems With AI

March 14, 2016 | ProgressTH Artificial intelligence (AI) is, simply put, intelligence exhibited by software and machines. Intelligence itself could be defined as the ability to learn and solve problems. In nature, evolution has endowed many species with intelligence, and human beings in particular with a relatively formidable ability to learn and solve problems.

IBM's Watson can be posed questions in natural human language to which it can answer by "reading" amassed knowledge such as encyclopedias.    

Human intelligence has allowed our species to diverge from evolutionary and natural environmental constraints, giving us mastery for better or worse over the planet and all other life upon it. We have done this through technology which includes the simplest forms of tool-making to the most complex machines we use to ply the seas, skies, and even outer space.

Our natural, human intelligence has given rise to exponential technological progress, and amid that progress, we have begun to create an artificial intelligence through computer science unconfined by natural evolution, biological limitations, and thus able to accelerate exponentially faster than our own intelligence has developed.