As long as any human needs or wants are unfilled, there's infinite potential for people to do work. We can always be healthier, have lower infant mortality, make knowledge easier to diffuse, and make products cheaper. Nowdays, we can eat peanut sauce made in Thailand, tea from China, beef from Nebraska, chocolate from Belgium, coffee from Brazil almost anywhere in the world.
Philosophically, how much of this is "important"? I think overall, looking at the world in big chunks of time, things have been and will continue to get better. I talked with a PhD Physicist friend of mine recently for a while, and he sold me on how awesome the world is going to be when the cost of electricity approaches zero - without getting into a ton of details, it's going to be a massive party. Battery and transistor advancements meaning running a 1 pound, high powered laptop for weeks without charging it, free internet throughout the entire globe even in the most remote places, and a hell of a lot of human knowledge freely available to everyone in all of the major languages.
I'm pretty psyched for humanity, and think there's a hell of a lot to be done. We're not perfect, but we're generally trending upwards with a few blips here and there.
That is neat, how does your friend foresee free electricity coming about? Something specific like "alternative energies," fusion, etc.? Or just the general trend of people trying to develop and diversify sources of energy?
He was talking fusion, but I don't have enough background in the hard sciences to really make sense of the nuances of personally. He did give me some impressive general numbers about how a single reaction could power New York City for something like 10 years. Maybe fusion will happen, or perhaps something else, but a lot of the most talented people on the planet are working on more/cheaper power so I'd bet on something breaking through.
I always thought our current problem is not really producing energy but rather transporting it? So if you have a reactor in New York City it'll be rather useless for the people in, say, Moscow. That's the reason nobody is doing this power the world by establishing solar power plants in the Sahara project. Could someone clear this up?
Philosophically, how much of this is "important"? I think overall, looking at the world in big chunks of time, things have been and will continue to get better. I talked with a PhD Physicist friend of mine recently for a while, and he sold me on how awesome the world is going to be when the cost of electricity approaches zero - without getting into a ton of details, it's going to be a massive party. Battery and transistor advancements meaning running a 1 pound, high powered laptop for weeks without charging it, free internet throughout the entire globe even in the most remote places, and a hell of a lot of human knowledge freely available to everyone in all of the major languages.
I'm pretty psyched for humanity, and think there's a hell of a lot to be done. We're not perfect, but we're generally trending upwards with a few blips here and there.