if I consider the situation opposite, meaning that the further we advance, the worse we get, wouldn't it sound normal to you that I do NOT want what you call a "better" world ??? don't you think my judgement would rather stick to this stage rather than going downhill even more ? anyway, back on topic, Hi-Tech and shit :p

I thought water on Mars was already confirmed years ago.

LOL. I'm in my own private world xDDD

And things are going on before they happen in reality XDDD

Scientific development will effect all of that.
Just because you cant make a 1:1 link between things dosnt mean it dosnt.

Personaly, I find it rather horrible to only think of only things that effect yourself, and not worry about the future for your decendants.
Water on Mars is just one of many things that gives our species a chance in the long term, and greater understanding in the shorter term.

Second that!

In fact every country has built technology thinking in long terms.

The fathers and grandfathers of Computers aren't alive now, they couldn't see all the fruits of their labor but they worked knowing it would be a future :D.

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And for example wikipedia: it's planned for exist as much as electronics exist. And engineering tunnels, bridges, etc.

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And thinking about the future is one of the reasons we need to be ecologicals

You say that but would really like to live with the jobs, medicine,comminication and entertainment from 100 years ago?

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The Singularity;

Personaly, I dont view this as anything to do with A.I.
While artifial inteligence may develop, I see the singularity as mearly the therotical vertical line of infinite human technological development.

While thats impossible to reach in absolute terms, it is like one of those exponetial curves.
In terms of technology are rate of development has been increaseing by a mind-blowing rate.
A lot of technology we make, actualy increase the rate we can develope technologys. This is the key to the whole thing, imho.

Its like the invention of the microscope....sure, it was a cool thing in itself...but what it helped us learn elsewhere was even bigger.
Much the same goes for telescopes, or xrays, or all the other inventions that shows us new ways to look at our world.

Nowdays we not only have these inventions helping us study the universe in new ways, but we also have inventions (like the Internet) rapidly increasing our access to knowledge and ability to communicate. First mankind wrote the book....limited to a few individuals who could write....transcribed by a few...only available to the very very rich and the knowledge contained was limited in how it spread over the population. Then we had the printing press...making cheap books possible. Increasing the spread of knowledge. Giving the general man education. Now we have the internet. Which makes us all authors, and all readers whenever we want, for very little cost.
The skills contained in books and passed on ver forms other then word of mouth led to society's of sophistication enough to built a printing press. The printing press, likewise, advanced the average skill and knowledge of society enough to be ready for electronics, and eventually the internet.

Just think of a second how profound our power is;
Almost everyone in developed countrys now has access to..more or less...all of humanitys knowledge...almost instantly.

Thats utterly staggering, and I dont think as a species we fully grasp that yet.
The rate of change is increase.
THATS the singularity to me.

Its the curve, flying skywards.
We are the first generation really to have no idea what the would will be like in just a few decades. A few generations back, the world would be more or less the same over the course of a lifetime.
Nowdays? We havnt a clue!
Thats what makes this such an exciting time to live.

Water on Mars?
We actualy sent a probe, too mars, it dug up some ice, and we saw it without mere hours relayed to millions of people ver a network of computers spaning the world.

OMFG, come on, isn't that awesome?
Its even more incredible the fact we take this stuff for grantage.

Water on Mars?
Frecking excelent.
That makes a colony a thousand fold more likely.
Sure maybe not in our lifetime...but I dont care.
The fact its possible makes me happy for my species.
WE did this, WE found this out.
With all the other human shit in the world, its this stuff that makes me proud.

Heck, and water is really essential for life as we know it, so the chances of bacteria, or maybe even fossils on mars also skyrockets.

Thats because the aviation market is pretty maxed out.
The speeds havnt gone up, but costs have gone down.
We can go on hollidays for stupidly low prices...purhapes too low...theres no driving force to push the technology because (as far as the market goes) its saturated.

Thats why theres all this investment in spaceplanes, and upper-atmosphere aircraft.
We arnt achieving what we done 30 years ago because its been done.
We are achiveing, or trying too, new things.
Is this not development?: http://www.space.com/news/080620-vir...dventures.html
(of course, seeing Concord end for utterly stupid reasons was still sad :( )

Also, if you want to look at "years" after an invention as demostration of progress, then,bloody hell, it dosnt support your stagation view at all!

The time from technological invention, to mass market has never been quicker.
Your right to say the future has to be worked for,and especialy "minds in the clouds who always push the species further," but enough people are like that, and it is being pushed. Faster then ever. :)

Purhapes the only difference is its much harder to put a single persons face to an invention or discovery these days, but that dosnt mean they arnt being made.

sorry about the long post, btw, Its just I find human development in the last century compared to the last thousand years just staggering.

Well there isn't really anything to consider here, our society, our well-being(as a species) is the best since... ever. The more developed the science, the less damage to the environment to a point where there will be none.

The only thing you can try and argue is that you hate the species for some reason. Wich is entirely your own view, one wich I can't comprehend - and it has nothing to do with experience, treating a species as a whole like that is just, well, silly.

NO SORRY. Perfect post. I love it. Excellent. That's exactly my opinion also, I couldn't have said better.

I always say to people who can't appreciate the Internet:
Remember those 80's-90's sci-fi movies, where a man walks into a big room, and there's this gigantic brain lying there on the floor? And the brain says: "I know everything. Ask any question and I will give you the answer." (Lol what an idea, not in our lifetime!)
Well that didn't come true. Instead you just type what you want in Google, who doesn't even have lobes.

It's 3 in the morning, and ladies and gentlemen! We've got a little news piece here, that no one will see, cosue the morning news will be different...

Well no one except us vampires.

Vampires FTW!!!

IT's 1 in the morning :p

Back on topic

I really do think 200 years ago we were less of a danger to the environment than now ... not to mention 2000 years ago ;)

There was a heck of a lot less people then too though, remember.

Generaly speaking, more advanced science does do less damage too the enviroment (mainly thanks to increased energy efficiancy).
However, the problem is what the general population use's lags quite a bit behind whats possible scientificaly. Commercial, Encomics/Market and Population really effect the enviroment more negatively then scientific progress.
Allthough, it does work both ways. Certainly some scientific inventions have had negative impacts.

But even look at something so casual as portable games consoles;
Back in 1989 the GameBoy had 4 AA battarys, a Green/Yellow screen, and the power of a ZX Spectrum (litttarly).
The battarys lasted about 4-5 hours.

In 2004 the GameBoyAdvanced used just 2AA battarys, had a 16bit colour screen, and the power of a err...well, a bit more then a Snes.
The battarys lasted almost 15 hours.

Now, its a bit harder to compare the SP/DS/DSlite ect, as they have built in battarys. The backlit screens naturaly take more power too.
But you see the progression in efficiancy here.
We are getting more, for less.
And this is a general trend in all of science/technology. getting more, for less.

Unfortuntely, as a soceity,we are often purhapes demanding too much resources in many ways. But technology is at least helping us get the most from them.

Thats what YOU think :p
Google's a massive mother-brain.

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And now for something completely different;

http://nl.wannahaves.com/item/babefd...n-in-het-water

Dolphine Boot thingy.
I've seen it before, but this video makes it look soooo fun :)

I want one.

Life at earth did most likely at first began in water, probably in deep cracks inside craters.

Additionally (I'm not sure about this), I think it's easier for whole-cell lifeforms to live in water, due to the nutrition can just 'flow in', also movement possibilities can easily be achieved with a tail.

Also, I've never heard of cyan-bacterias live on land...

You're kidding right? I've heard all the time that water is making it a lot more possible for life to ever existed, from various sources. Plus the above mentioned arguments...

Water is certainly completely essential for live as we know it.
Every lifeform on earth needs water.

But we have such a limited sample range at the moment, its foolish to think life could only exist in conditions we know about.

I think all these fruits of technology are a two sided sword. And in absolute terms i think i will agree on beeing more of a "danger" now then ever.
Yeah, the "problem" is efficiency is often about short time profit and not at all by long time quality of life. Some very efficient inventions are kept away from the market and others are put to work to keep the whole greed and ignorance based machine running.

Life standard to a lot of people has gone up but nothing comes for free. In fact all the comfort we can live in now I belief to alienate us from the environment. It isn't because of technologie it is cause of how we use it and what we use it for.

thank you Odysseus :)

Not really, efficiancy is all about getting the result with the least effort.

While the intention of an increase in efficiancy in most cases isnt being better for the enviroment, the side effect is.
If it takes less energy, the customer saves money.
If it takes less resources to make, the manufacturer saves money.

Of course, this is a generalisation, but in most case's its true.

As for conspiracys, dont believe in them.
Except, that is, in case's where only one company would be controlling a product. Theres certainly dangers there. (Diamonds, for instance.)

If theres more then one company, its in their best interest to release a better product and outcompete the others. Like Philips with energy efficiant lightbulbs.
For the most part, its the consumer limiting uptake of new, better, technologys. Normaly for the most feable of reasons.
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Of course, another problem is when technology is so intergrated into society its hard to switch. Like oil-based cars.
Theres plenty of companys wanting to make decent electric cars (or hydrogen) but petrol stations dont support it because there isnt enough cars too....you get a loop thats hard to escape.

I just downloaded this:

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

It's pretty cool. It's kind of like Google Earth but for space. You can see the universe like telescopes can see it. Zoom into parts of space and get a higher resolution image of that part of space. Don't expect to travel through space though, it's as it's seen from earth by telescopes. Still very interesting to look through, especially the tours.

lol I knew this program when it was in its early development stages :D great to see it's finally out !!!

sorry about going off topic a bit, but referring to my previous posts, where I've stated that the present human being has devolved instead of evolving, I just wanna add something. Apparently, I'm not the only one believing in this ... here's what some ancient greek myths say: "There is a certain music of the spheres, out there ... it is the fundamental expression of certain acoustic, harmonic and divine feelings, which can be heard, but only by the primordial man. The ear of the modern individual, the degraded one, has lost this ability, but love and spirituality can help him regain it, it can transport him to a certain area, where the sphere melodies can be heard once more."

I don't wanna say this reveals anything, it's just that I find this little story fascinating, at least for me ... forget I even said this is an addon to my previous statement ... just enjoy it :) it's weird ... it's like I knew this all along. Don't know why, but there's something about that phrase "the music of the spheres" which reminds me of something, long since forgotten.

To start with, I'm not quite sure what ancient greek myths would know about evolution :p

But that aside, a species evolving dosnt mean it dosnt lose ability.
Merely that it gets better at fitting the enviroment.
I dont know about "music we cant hear", but we have lost much of our sense of smell.
Dosnt mean we havnt evolved, merely that we have adapted these days for other stuff :)

It was familer to me too, so I used Google.
The phrase is used a hell of a lot, and the route seems to be the old myth.

Result and less effort yes. Speeding up processes and more profit, yes.

I know for a fact some very "efficient" inventions are being hold back. It is not some made up conspiracy. It's just how it works. It is companies buying the rights to things and not producing it so their position is kept more stable. Really it is not some weird conspiracy it's just buisness as usual.

Efficiancy has a lot of different meanings in a lot of different fields. In the end it is not the possibilities it is just how they are used.

Yes, true. That's a crime against humanity. Intel for example, developed much more advanced CPU's than the ones they're selling today, but because of their monopoly the take the liberty of saving those up for when the CPU's they're currently selling aren't bringing them enough money.