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A review by noragracereads
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku
5.0
**5 stars**
Consider me inspired.
Not only is Michio Kaku an engaging writer, he possesses a mind beyond impressive. I cannot agree with all of his philosophy, a philosophy shared by a great many scientists, but I admire his creativity and theorizing based on decades of scholarship. Perhaps the part of reading The Future of Humanity that brought me the most joy was my constant disagreement with its proposals. I found dangerous fault with many ideas about how we conquer the stars, how we bend the universe to our will to survive, yet the intellectual stimulation that such disagreement generated felt good rather than dreadful.
The scope of this book spans trillions of years. The answers to all of Kaku's questions may take billions. Such an expanse of time is intimidating but pondering "the future of humanity" using physics and philosophy does provide a sort of hope and opens millions of doors to new science fiction, which, as we have seen with Star Trek, Foundation, etc., has guided us in solving real-world questions about the advancement of our species.
But even just that last sentence plagues me... We may be the only beings on Earth and in our solar system with advanced cognitive abilities, but what about our intelligent primate cousins? What about the rest of the planet, with its thousands of life forms all depending on Earth's prolonged existence to survive? As environmental activists say nowadays, "There is no Planet B." We aren't yet Michio Kaku's Type III civilization on the Kardashev scale. Perhaps we would be wise to focus on taking care of the billions of people and all of our natural relatives still living on the Earth today before we begin trying to carry out the dreams of billionaires and strictly Western (predominanly male) thinkers. In doing so we may find peace with our planet and with ourselves, and in the end discover that the inevitable death of life that comes with the end of all things in the universe in trillions of years won't be such a bad thing, but part of a cycle that we look forward to as we do the beginning of each season, of each year, and of each millennia.
If you choose to read The Future of Humanity, which I highly recommend that you do, I would encourage you to be skeptical of the billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. that Kaku praises extensively in the first half of the book. It is quite upsetting and frightening that it is the mega-rich at the forefront of space exploration. As you will surmise from the quotes from each of them that Kaku cites, all of them have a god-complex motivation and have elitist ideas about who gets to go to the stars. In fact, much of the philosophy of this book and of this interstellar utopia that physicists are reaching for is elitist. From what I've gathered from their theorizing, the plan is to send those who can afford and have access to insanely advanced technology to our new homes in the heavens, whilst we leave behind everyone else to perish on our dying planet instead of just solving our climate and humanitarian problems. I long for the day when these people consider the poor and oppressed in their romantic theorizing and dreaming.
Consider me inspired.
Not only is Michio Kaku an engaging writer, he possesses a mind beyond impressive. I cannot agree with all of his philosophy, a philosophy shared by a great many scientists, but I admire his creativity and theorizing based on decades of scholarship. Perhaps the part of reading The Future of Humanity that brought me the most joy was my constant disagreement with its proposals. I found dangerous fault with many ideas about how we conquer the stars, how we bend the universe to our will to survive, yet the intellectual stimulation that such disagreement generated felt good rather than dreadful.
The scope of this book spans trillions of years. The answers to all of Kaku's questions may take billions. Such an expanse of time is intimidating but pondering "the future of humanity" using physics and philosophy does provide a sort of hope and opens millions of doors to new science fiction, which, as we have seen with Star Trek, Foundation, etc., has guided us in solving real-world questions about the advancement of our species.
But even just that last sentence plagues me... We may be the only beings on Earth and in our solar system with advanced cognitive abilities, but what about our intelligent primate cousins? What about the rest of the planet, with its thousands of life forms all depending on Earth's prolonged existence to survive? As environmental activists say nowadays, "There is no Planet B." We aren't yet Michio Kaku's Type III civilization on the Kardashev scale. Perhaps we would be wise to focus on taking care of the billions of people and all of our natural relatives still living on the Earth today before we begin trying to carry out the dreams of billionaires and strictly Western (predominanly male) thinkers. In doing so we may find peace with our planet and with ourselves, and in the end discover that the inevitable death of life that comes with the end of all things in the universe in trillions of years won't be such a bad thing, but part of a cycle that we look forward to as we do the beginning of each season, of each year, and of each millennia.
If you choose to read The Future of Humanity, which I highly recommend that you do, I would encourage you to be skeptical of the billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. that Kaku praises extensively in the first half of the book. It is quite upsetting and frightening that it is the mega-rich at the forefront of space exploration. As you will surmise from the quotes from each of them that Kaku cites, all of them have a god-complex motivation and have elitist ideas about who gets to go to the stars. In fact, much of the philosophy of this book and of this interstellar utopia that physicists are reaching for is elitist. From what I've gathered from their theorizing, the plan is to send those who can afford and have access to insanely advanced technology to our new homes in the heavens, whilst we leave behind everyone else to perish on our dying planet instead of just solving our climate and humanitarian problems. I long for the day when these people consider the poor and oppressed in their romantic theorizing and dreaming.