WEEKLY WHINE

Available technology

Some things that are available today are really available today. Others don't stack up so well.

For example, storing more than five gigabytes of information in a piece of plastic that measures twelve centimeters across is commonplace. You can acquire objects that use lasers to measure how far they travel, and in which direction, when you push them across a table. Flat things that are not much bigger than the aforementioned DVDs can produce arbitrary distortions of air, better known as sound. [Or, as the neighbors would have it, noise.] A few chunks of glass and a tiny cut of semiconductor can, when arranged properly, capture evidence of events occurring hundreds, thousands, or millions of light years away, in a form that can be passed conveniently to all your friends in seconds.

But that 12cm bit of plastic still only has enough stuff on it to keep you occupied for a couple of hours or so. The laser-containing odometer is necessary because the only thing that can fully comprehend the speech and gestures of a human is a human. The flat things can only make sets of predefined noises, rather than dynamically generated conversational tones. And the events occurring hundreds, thousands, or millions of light years away are well beyond the reach of any person living today no matter what the next century brings.

Yes, this is a fun planet. But it's also a neurotic planet. One reason for this is that it's the only one where people are right now. Despite the effort by some of the smartest and most dedicated people who have ever lived, Earth is unique as the only place where people live.

That's not to say that we don't know how to change that. We do. There is a great variety of plans, grandiose and small alike, that will result in full time colonies on the Moon, Mars, and even on asteroids. For the most part, they will work splendidly. However, one problem remains.

Nobody wants to be first. Even though the individual steps of technology that are required to make this happen are ready now, it would still need to be put together, and so far, no organization has been willing to stick its collective neck out for the general good. This is mostly because few organizations have the resources necessary to do so, and the ones that do are more concerned with keeping the roads in good shape and preventing wars.

Making the jump from unavailable technology to available technology has proven worthwhile over and over again. The introduction of machinery is clearly the only way that the needs and desires of six billion individuals can be handled on a daily basis. Equipment that looks down on our planet is the most practical way of identifying the largest natural threats to any given area, as well as the large scale effects that threaten to make the whole issue moot before we can deal with them. Equipment that looks down on other planets or even lands amongst the dirt of other planets can show us what has happened elsewhere, what we should or should not concern ourselves with, and how we can deal with the things that should concern us.

Technology should be faster.