[PieterCasparzen]

These technological revolutions brought steam powered trains and boats, telegraphs, and later planes cars telephones and what not. The effect of these traveling and communications revolutions was to collapse the traveling and communications distances between things.

I assert that computers are doing the same thing. That by increasing the speed of their calculations they are effectively collapsing time—and therefor space.

The amount of work we can do per unit of time increases; the units of time are still the same. Space is certainly not affected.

Various things that were not practical then become practical.

That the faster the computers go—the nearer the nearest planet becomes. The faster the computers go —the nearer the nearest star becomes.

We had the computing capability required for space travel in the 1960s; it doesn't take much computing, relatively speaking.

Computing is not the major barrier to space travel.

Space travel is a romantic idea and has been heavily promoted to young men and boys as such for decades. Thus we have a scientific community today that assumes that space travel makes sense for society at this point in time, both economically and scientifically.

[ckilmer]

Space travel is a romantic idea and has been heavily promoted to young men and boys as such for decades. Thus we have a scientific community today that assumes that space travel makes sense for society at this point in time, both economically and scientifically.
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My favorite technological beef is that less resources are being investing in killing the cost of water byo desalination. Kill the cost of desalination and it becomes possible to farm the deserts, turn the deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth. To kill the cost of water you also have to kill the cost of energy. Killing the cost of energy will have millions of knock on effects including increasing the total wealth of the world many times over while impoverishing the Arab gulf states and defunding al Qaeda and the Russians.

The cost of desalination is falling. Its cut in half about once a decade. So we will arrive at a place where desalinized water can be used for agriculture. But at current rates of change—that time won’t arrive for three decades. With a concerted effort that time could arrive in one decade.