Destruction and rebirth: three goals of human development

Where did humans come from and where are they going? These are two ultimate questions about the fate of mankind. Although the former can be explained by evolution, there are many doubts. The latter has many different speculations, including pessimism and optimism. Judging from the life history of the earth, disasters seem to be commonplace, and the extinction of dinosaurs is one of the most tragic examples. The recorded history of human civilization is only a few thousand years, accompanied by various natural and man-made disasters. Let's just say that these years are also thrilling. The fall of the meteorite in Chelyabinsk, Russia, is still worrying, and there are still thrilling incidents in which asteroids pass by the earth in space. All this seems to show that destruction is a very possible "option" facing mankind.

But the power of life is powerful. If mankind really goes to the point of destruction, it may be reborn in another way with tenacious vitality. The end of modern human development may be the dawn of the next human civilization. We might as well think about the various endings of the current development of human civilization and the hopes hidden in these endings.

When the end of the world comes, people's first thought is to emigrate to other planets, which is also the theme often used by many science fiction novels and Hollywood blockbusters. The upcoming domestic sci-fi movie The Wandering Earth is one of the representative works, which is adapted from Liu's science fiction novel of the same name. It's just that the wandering earth carrying human immigrants is not a spaceship common in Hollywood blockbusters, but the whole earth. This is just a manifestation of romantic spirit. In reality, it is more practical to use a spaceship.

However, interstellar space is so vast that the stars closest to the sun are all 4 light years away, and it takes 4 years to travel at the speed of light. According to the theory of relativity, we know that the speed of light can only be infinitely close, but it can't reach the speed of light and it can't exceed the speed of light. Moreover, the premise of immigration is to find a planet suitable for survival, and the distance from that planet may reach dozens of light years or even more. When mankind sets foot on the road of no return, it has to face a serious problem: the target planet may not be suitable for human survival. Humans who immigrate in a hurry may need to sleep in the spacecraft for a long time until the spacecraft's intelligent system finds a planet that is truly suitable for human habitation. And this process may take thousands of years to calculate. Humans who have lost the planet can only sleep in the sea of stars at this time, waiting for the awakening of fate.

Humans are an indomitable species, and the possibility of letting them sleep for a slim goal is slim. At least half of them will be reluctant to entrust their bodies to a coffin-like dormant cabin. When dealing with devastating disasters, people may be more willing to enhance their protective ability. A suit of armor, which can not only make people move, but also protect themselves from external shocks and filter harmful gases, should be the most desirable thing for human beings at this time. The mecha in Iron Man may become a reality in the future, but only a few people have it because of its high price. More people may live in such a huge robot as "Pacific Rim", and a robot can protect dozens or even more human beings.

The lasting disaster makes this way of living in the robot gradually become the norm, and the robot itself will become more and more intelligent. In the end, there may be such a scene-on the devastated earth, huge robots are engaged in labor activities, robots have replaced human beings as the masters of the world, and human beings are just a secondary life parasitic on robots. The ability of robots to cope with disasters and transform the earth is unmatched by human beings. At this time, human beings are dispensable to the world, and there is a danger of being completely eliminated by machine civilization as a cancer. I only hope that their ancestors have long realized this problem and added firm instructions to safeguard human rights and interests in robot programs.

Although people have the spirit of struggle, they also have the shortcomings of negative sinking. Not to mention the human beings who will face devastating disasters in the future, it is easy for us to indulge in a drunken life. One of the most representative is the game. Playing with things is the biggest side effect of the game, so many people lose the will to struggle. However, at some point in the future, games may save human civilization. An increasingly real game world may breed a "real" human world.

With the progress of quantum technology, combined with the increasingly mature cloud server technology and the development of 5G, 6G or even more advanced "NG" communication technology, the game world will be closer to the real world. In order to get a deeper sense of game addiction, there will be a game experience in which the human brain is connected with the computer. Gradually, technology will develop to make people's consciousness stay in the game world for a long time. At this time, people who play games will feel that their virtual world is the real world. Vernor Vinge's real name is the representative of this kind of science fiction. The matrix is a wonderful interpretation of the virtual world. Perhaps when the devastating disaster comes in the future, human beings who have no retreat have to turn the game world into the real world and let people's consciousness "immigrate" to the virtual world. At the same time, in order to protect the huge virtual world network, many servers are buried underground.

The history of mankind is neither long nor short. But from the scale of the universe, human beings seem to be just a passer-by. Living with fragile carbon-based organisms in the unpredictable universe for millions of years, they will eventually encounter irresistible devastating disasters. How to deal with the coming disaster and be reborn after the disaster is a problem that everyone should seriously think about. After all, we are not only ourselves, but also the endless descendants and the last generation that will face a devastating disaster.