Visions of the Future (81 page)

Kurzweil has also proposed the Law of Accelerating Returns, as a generalization of Moore’s Law to describe the exponential growth of technological progress. Kurzweil extends Moore’s Law to include technologies from before the integrated circuit to future forms of computation. Whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, he writes, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He predicts that such paradigm shifts will become increasingly common, leading to “technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” Kurzweil explains that his Law of Accelerating Returns implies that a technological singularity will occur around 2045:

An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21
st
century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The ‘returns,’ such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to the Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and non-biological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

In 2008, English gerontologist Aubrey de Gray developed the idea of the “Methuselarity.” According to de Gray, the Methuselarity is the “biogerontological counterpart of the singularity” and it corresponds to the point at which medical technology improves so fast that expected human lifespan increases by more than one year per year. He considers the rate of improvement in rejuvenation therapies that is sufficient to outrun the problem of aging: to deplete the levels of all types of damage more rapidly than they are accumulating, even though intrinsically the damage still present will be progressively more recalcitrant. In his writings, de Gray has named this required rate of improvement as the “longevity escape velocity” or LEV. Therefore, “the Methuselarity is, simply, the one and only point in the future at which LEV is achieved.”

Based on similar ideas to the technological singularity and the Methuselarity, I have created the term “Energularity” in order to convey the notion of an exponential growth in our energy and power consumptions. For this, I use the Kardashev scale and I then define the “Energularity” as the time when humanity becomes a Type I civilization. Nikolai Semenovich Kardashev is a Russian astrophysicist who in 1964 proposed a scale to measure the level of technological progress in an advanced civilization. His scale is only theoretical and highly speculative in terms of an actual civilization; however, it puts the energy and power consumptions of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective. The scale has three designated categories called Type I, Type II, and Type III. These are based on the amount of usable energy that a civilization has available at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization as well. In general terms, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy.

Table 2 shows the Kardashev scale within the context of different powers from the smallest to the highest values. In fact, the numbers correspond to power levels instead of energy levels, but remember that power is the amount of energy per unit of time: one Watt (or W, the standard SI unit of power) is defined as one Joule (or J, the standard SI unit of energy) per second. Therefore, as long as we are clear about the timespan being considered, there should be no problem using power or energy values consistently. Conversely, the “Energularity” could also be considered as a “Powergularity,” but the first term is actually preferred and used here.

Table 2: Energy Scale and Kardashev Civilization Types (Power in Watts).

Source: Based on Cordeiro (2011)

A Type I civilization is one that is able to harness all of the power in a single planet (in our case, planet Earth has about 174 × 10
15
W in available power). A Type II civilization is one that can harness all of the power available from a solar system (approximately 385 × 10
24
W for our Sun), and a Type III civilization is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy (approximately 5 × 10
36
W for the Milky Way). These figures are extremely variable since planets, solar systems, and galaxies vary widely in luminosity, size, and many other important parameters. As a general reference, and using very round numbers, we could say that a Type I civilization can harness about 10
16
W, a Type II about 10
26
W, and a Type III about 10
36
W, all of these figures plus or minus one or two orders of magnitude. In fact, astrophysicist Carl Sagan preferred to use a logarithmic scale instead of the orders of magnitude proposed by Kardashev. Thus, our human civilization is currently at about 0.72 in a logarithmic scale before reaching 1.0 corresponding to Type I status. Such a logarithmic scale indicates a clear exponential growth for energy consumption. Our prehuman ancestors started harnessing fire about half a million years ago, and we should reach Type I status in about one or two centuries, according to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. This exponential growth is also explained by Kaku, who talks about different propulsion systems available to different types of civilizations: