May 21, 2005

The Star Wars Myth

It seems to me that the current fascination with Star Wars makes a very good subject for analyzing our attitudes about the future. Most works popular science fiction, from Star Wars to Star Treck to almost anything written by Isaac Asimov, share a few common elements:


  • transportation across galactic distances takes place at speeds which are far beyond the speed of light. Without that, there is no story.

  • communication is likewise possible at speeds which make human communication conversational.

  • the creators, from Asimov to Lucas, were telling stories with broader intent than just the gee whiz technobabble; good and evil (Star Wars); what happens to society when people begin to live for hundreds of years with robot workers (Asimov's Robot Series).

  • none of them really dealt with the vast energy sources required to accomplish what they assumed to be real.

Experiments in quantum physics require the in put of vast amounts of energy to achieve very small scale results. Inter-stellar travel may take a lifetime to reach the closest destination and it might take another lifetime to find out whether that happened or not.

There may, in fact, be some very real limits to what we humans are going to be able to do with the energy sources that we have available to us. We had better learn to use it wisely.

Posted by Wes at May 21, 2005 07:58 AM