That sounds...optimistic to me, and prompts the question, "Then what?"
Here's a technological feat that I don't think will be possible to achieve in the "next few hundred years," but maybe afterwards -- cleaning up the mess frm the 20th and 21st Centuries. I expect that's a multi-century task, even given much better technology than the current state of the art, and much better politics than the current art of the state.
Then again, I never really liked Clarke, so I'm liable to want to find the holes.
The solutions to today's problems will generally inspire new ambitions and therefore new problems after that. I think most people would say the pressing problems of (say) 16th century Europe have been extremely well solved, but now we've gone on and have new Inevitable Conflicts.
Four hundred years from now, people are going to have a hard time understanding what precisely we were all worked up about.
(no subject)
Here's a technological feat that I don't think will be possible to achieve in the "next few hundred years," but maybe afterwards -- cleaning up the mess frm the 20th and 21st Centuries. I expect that's a multi-century task, even given much better technology than the current state of the art, and much better politics than the current art of the state.
Then again, I never really liked Clarke, so I'm liable to want to find the holes.
(no subject)
The solutions to today's problems will generally inspire new ambitions and therefore new problems after that. I think most people would say the pressing problems of (say) 16th century Europe have been extremely well solved, but now we've gone on and have new Inevitable Conflicts.
Four hundred years from now, people are going to have a hard time understanding what precisely we were all worked up about.