How to Survive Technological Adolescence

How to Survive Technological Adolescence

Yes, civilizations would take billions of years of tortuous evolution to arise, and then snuff themselves out in an instant of unforgivable neglect. But let’s consider the alternative, the prospect that at least some civilizations learn to live with high technology. Just imagine that the contradictions posed by the vagaries of past brain evolution are consciously resolved and do not lead to self-destruction. Or, may be, even if major disturbances do occur, they are reversed in the subsequent billions of years of biological evolution.

Such societies might live to a prosperous old age, their lifetime measured perhaps on geological and stellar evolutionary time scales.

If only 1 percent of civilizations can survive technological adolescence, take the proper fork at this critical historical branch point and achieve maturity, then the number of extant civilizations in the Galaxy is in the millions. These estimates are stirring. They suggest that the receipt of a message from space is, even before we decode it, a profoundly hopeful sign which will mean that someone has learned to live with high technology and that it is possible to survive technological adolescence. This alone, quite apart from the contents of the message, provides a powerful justification for the search for other civilizations.

(Extract from The Rain, the famous SF novel by Elena and George B.)

Technological Adolescence. Photo by Elena