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posted by mrpg on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the good-for-me dept.

Humanity is in the early stages of the most significant evolution in its history: learning to think as a species.

This is the linking of human minds, values, information and solutions at lightspeed and in real time around the planet, via the internet and social media, says science writer Julian Cribb.

Global thought is opening the way to solve some of humanity's greatest threats – including climate change, famine, global poisoning, weapons of mass destruction, environmental collapse, resource scarcity and overpopulation, says Mr Cribb, who is the author of 'Surviving the 21st Century' (Springer 2017), a new book describing the ten mega-threats and what can be done about them.

"Thanks to the internet and social media, people are for the first time communicating across the barriers of language, race, nationality, religion, region and gender. While the internet contains much rubbish and malignance, it also contains huge amounts of goodwill, trustworthy science-based advice, practical solutions to problems – and people joining hands in good causes."


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:22AM (5 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:22AM (#485707) Journal

    Once people go to space and become self sustainable. The actions of self destructive people on the mother planet will be of lesser importance (too them).

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  • (Score: 1) by Soylentbob on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:19AM (3 children)

    by Soylentbob (6519) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:19AM (#485762)

    I agree. Although, just for the purpose of dissent: when a species is split for long enough, each group will become a new species :-) (If the other group is still close enough for interaction on a regular base, we still have common interests on a larger scale. If there was a chance to predict / mitigate / evade a gamma-ray burst / black hole, we would still have reason to work together as a species.)

    People are not nice by nature, and won't become so. It takes work to be a nice person. Although I think it's totally worth it when you are lucky enough to encounter enough other persons who try as well.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:23AM (1 child)

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:23AM (#485765) Journal

      And when the common interests fail the colony says Boston Tea Party! ;-)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:23PM (#485866)

      Humans can't even get along with other humans who have a slightly different holy book. You think humans are going to get along with other humans who have become a different species? That's a laugh. There's a reason first contact hasn't been made yet.

  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:53PM

    by fritsd (4586) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:53PM (#485848) Journal

    Once people go to space and become self sustainable. The actions of self destructive people on the mother planet will be of lesser importance (too them).

    I think it will also be once people go to space and become self sustainable, but for a completely different reason:

    If e.g. the Chinese build a moon base, then all the Chinese school children will learn (and school children in most other countries probably as well) how extremely expensive, complicated, and delicate it is to construct a regenerative life support system and keep it running as if your life depends on it.

    think about it: there will be two extant regenerative life support systems: the tiny one attached to the chinese moon base, which clearly determines how long the base can remain occupied and how long the mission can last, AND ...
    the big one that we ALL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US lives in, that we're in the process of scraping off the quality control sticker "suitable for long-term human habitation".

    Buckminster Fuller and Sagan (Carl, not Françoise) have been dead for so long that I suspect their weirder ideas are slipping from the public memory and discourse.

    So I really believe that a moon base, no matter how expensive, will provide an interesting discussion topic for "thinking as a species".
    Plus for most earthlings an actual moon base is way more cool than the exhortations of Pope Francis ;-).