Rodney

Hey, the old Mayan calendar ends in 2012. Some believe that the Mayan astrologers foretold that the world would end in that year, and so found no reason to extend their calculations any further. That's about as good a prediction as Sylvia Brown's.

Frankly, I'm about 50 years old and I've been reading psychic predictions for most of that time. The end of the world, World War III, the collapse of California into the ocean, and various other icky things have been predicted by various media-connected psychics for 1970, 1980, 1990, and so on -- along with the coming of our Space Brothers from Alpha Centauri who would lead us to an earthly paradise. None of that has come true, though I'm kinda regretful about the Space Brothers.

As for Hawking: he's going on the supposition that as we continue to develop new technologies, the potential for one or more going seriously awry -- or being used to deadly intent in a war -- grows ever higher. In the next 50 or 100 years, man's technology may well give some of us the power of the gods -- but not necessarily the wisdom. This is what Hawking's talking about, and he's got a point.

Suppose somebody uses nanotechnology to make a deadly "plague" that spreads on the air and destroys human life -- or, say, only human life that has certain markers in its genome (certain racial or ethnic groups, for example.)

Suppose somebody tries to create a mini-black hole in the lab, it escapes, sinks to the earth's core, and gradually absorbs more and more of the mass until the entire planet collapses. Scientists at CERN, I believe, are set to try to make quantum black holes in the lab 2008 or so. They assure us that these holes will evaporate almost as soon as they're created. They assure us it will all be harmless. They're probably right. Probably...

Even what we've done already -- global warming -- has at least the potential for a worst-case scenario that would bring a very severe decrease in the carrying capacity of the earth for human beings, much less human civilization. If the ocean was to rise even 20 feet, watch a war or two break out. And that'd be only the beginning.

This, and much more, is what Hawking's talking about, and he's right as far as he goes. The only way to absolutely protect human life and civilization in one of these bad scenarios (and there seem to be more of them every year) is to plant it in several isolated places throughout space, away from earth, so that no possible holocaust would get them all.

There are several bits of hope, as far as I can see. One is that we'll get lucky, not create a disaster that's too big for us to handle, and group together in the crisis to solve the problem. The second is that we'll have a series of crises that won't disrupt the entire world, but will leave the survivors sadder and wiser, in a harsher environment that they know they must succor anew -- or die.

The last bit of hope is this: technology can be used to make us all wiser and more intelligent as powerful, through direct interfaces with machines, computers and eventually each other. Technology does have the potential to create a better human -- from the ground up, or from add-ons (my personal preference) who is much more capable of safely wielding the new powers he/she will gain.