Since then to space

On social and technological development, man's relationship with the earth, and a look to the future

Written by: Dr. Netzah Farbiash, Young Galileo

When we look back in the mirror of human history, and not even the one that is thousands of years away from us but the one that is only a few decades or hundreds of years back, we experience a deep shock from phenomena that we did not intend to endure in our time. The reference here is not to the extreme events such as the world wars in which the unimaginable wickedness of tyrants led to horrific atrocities, but rather to things that were completely routine, that once seemed reasonable and logical, but in the mirror of time they really are not.

At the time when I was a child, there were signs on buses forbidding spitting and exploding nukes (because people did that), smoking was allowed on airplanes, there were no seat belts in the back seat in cars, there was no telephone available in many cases and when we wanted to meet we would just go to each other's house , there were no air conditioners, no computers, no internet, no cell phones and television was a device that broadcast programs of one and only channel in black and white. 

Over time things have changed and they seem to us today not reasonable at all. On the other hand, in a few years or decades, someone will be able to write a similar article and tell about what crazy things humans did in 2020. We will try to be ahead of the curve and identify what things we are doing today that may not be entirely correct and what should be changed. In a particularly strange way, the one who helps us stop for a moment and look deeply, is actually a cursed disease, which is ended by a tiny virus.

Robots instead of slaves

Rightly, we assume that every person has the right to be free, equal before the law (regardless of religion, race or gender) and deserves an equal opportunity to realize his own potential. But you don't have to go far in time to discover that until 155 years ago, slavery was accepted in the USA! That is, a person could legally purchase other people and treat them as property (just like you own a computer or a dishwasher at home). Even after slavery was abolished (following the US Civil War), the treatment of man remained racist and discriminatory, both towards minorities and women. In Switzerland, for example, only 49 years ago all women won the right to vote in elections. Incomprehensible! How good that today it seems inconceivable to us!

In the more distant past, most of Ham's sons were engaged in food production. Small-scale agriculture was very widespread, most of the inhabitants of the earth were rural and raised plants and animals for their living. With the development of technology, many moved to cities that kept growing and today only about 2% of the population is engaged in food production. And yet the amount of food produced is the highest ever produced. How did it happen?

To understand what is happening in agriculture, let's look for a moment at roles and professions that were and are no longer. Have you ever seen "elevator driver"? There will be those who will say that there was never such a thing as an "elevator driver" because he was called an "elevator boy", but the idea is the same. The elevator boy would stand on duty in the elevator and drive the passengers between the different floors of the building (and these were not skyscrapers at that time). Sounds very strange when all we do today is press a button and the elevator "knows" itself to drive its way to the right floor without a problem. So why does it make sense to us to drive cars?

Already today there are autonomous cars, which know how to drive wherever we want, they have sensors much more sophisticated than our eyes, they are not limited by this or that weather, they do not get tired, and then the driver can be freed and engage in other things while driving. In agriculture, there are tractors that drive autonomously across huge areas in countries like Australia, with satellites helping to direct them along a precise route. The new agriculture also provides growing solutions inside buildings, growing plants without soil (hydroponic growing) and other methods that can be applied in places that were previously impossible, including the space station.

As the world of employment changes there are many people who fear their financial fate. But reality teaches us that alongside professions that are disappearing, especially those that can be replaced by machines and robots, new, exciting and fascinating professions are being created. What they all have in common is the need for creativity. This phenomenon greatly challenges the public education system that was born, as we know it today, during the industrial revolution and it must adapt to the new world.

Communication and the loss of privacy

When I was a child in school and assigned a school assignment where I was required to bring sources of information, I had to take the bus to the city library, find a thick volume of an encyclopedia and summarize in handwritten form. If we wanted to send a letter to a friend, we would write on paper and send the letter by mail. The letter was put in a sack, loaded on a plane or ship and after days or weeks it arrives (and sometimes does not arrive) to the person to whom it was sent. How much effort, raw materials (wood for making paper, fuel for transportation, etc.) was invested to send someone a happy holiday greeting! How simple it is today when you can send a message via SMS and even include a nice illustration of a bouquet of flowers or something similar.

Today the web is full of photos of every kind and in every form - stills, video of any quality, slow and fast photography and different wavelengths that allow us to identify phenomena that cannot be seen with the naked eye. But this is a very new thing. When the Twin Towers fell in the series of horrific attacks in the USA 19 years ago, it took many hours for photographs from the scene to arrive. There were already digital cameras, there was already internet, it was one of the most visited and photographed places in the entire world, but the most common use today, cameras that are an integral part of the cell phone device, hardly existed.

Today we live in a time where at any given moment human knowledge is just a touch away on the cell phone screen, a high quality camera is available for use at any moment and we can communicate very easily with anyone we want. On the other hand, our privacy is not what it used to be. The mobile device makes it possible to know where we were and what we did with it.

And what does the future hold? Already today, scientists around the world know how to detect electrical signals in the human brain and create dream images from them by connecting to a computer. Creating an interface that connects man and machine ignites the imagination. Implants of various types may eradicate phenomena such as blindness, deafness and other disabilities and give every person a high quality of life. Of course, as with any groundbreaking scientific or technological development, there are those who may make improper and dangerous use of it.

medicine

The corona virus that kept us busy this past year is not the first (and certainly not the last) that humanity has had to deal with. Leprosy, for example, is a disease that terrorized humans for hundreds of years until an effective cure was discovered. It may sound far away, but it was only 58 years ago that the last person left the leper colony of Spinalonga (near the Greek island of Crete). It is hard to believe that in the not so distant past medical services were far from people's reach and their quality was very low compared to the level of medicine we know today. This is of course reflected in the life expectancy that has increased greatly over a period of decades. Already today, advanced technological means, including robots and a fast internet network, allow doctors located on one side of the earth to perform complex surgery on a patient located on the other side. There is also hope in this for the treatment that will be required when humans live in extremely remote places, such as Mars for example.

energy sources

Driving a car, refueling at a gas station and pumping oil from the ground seem to us a natural and normal everyday thing. However, the profitable use of cars is a matter of about a hundred years in total, and so is the extensive use of oil. Other consumable fuels, such as coal for example, were not so widely used until the outbreak of the industrial revolution about 250 years ago. Today we are witnessing a growing environmental awareness on the one hand, but on the other hand hugely powerful oil corporations that deny the problems and push them towards future generations. History will eventually learn whether the widespread use of renewable energy sources was correct or not.

Besides fuel, oil is used as a raw material for the plastic industry. This has developed and accelerated greatly in recent years, especially the use of disposable tools. In practice, human use is single-use, but plastic remains as ever-growing garbage islands, mainly in the soil and sea. It is not difficult to assume that future generations will see the current period, in which the destruction of the environment and the heavy pollution we produce has reached unimaginable proportions, as a low point in everything related to the quality of the environment and our interaction with the planet. In any colony that will be established in space, whether on Mars or elsewhere, the issue of environmental quality and sustainability will have to be seriously addressed at the initial planning stage.

Animal food?

When we mention the issue of environmental quality and sustainability, one of the most important issues we deal with today and which has far-reaching effects on the future, we cannot ignore the meat industry. The diet of most people nowadays is based to one degree or another on the consumption of animal protein, that is, meat, dairy products and eggs. The breeding conditions of the animals create extremely difficult ethical issues and also have serious environmental consequences. Technology that enables the production of meat under laboratory conditions, of very high quality and without animals being involved in the process, already exists. It is very possible that in not many years we will be able to print a particularly high-quality hamburger at home, without having to raise a cow for it. Such technology would of course be very useful in extraterrestrial colonies, where raising animals would be considered impossible luxuries. It is very possible that even on Earth, already now, we should look at things this way.

And what about the future?

Elon Musk, a fascinating entrepreneur for whom the boundaries of the known have never been a stopping line, plans to establish a colony on Mars. Since many of the ventures he brought up in the past came to fruition, despite the abundance of people who doubted his abilities, it can be estimated that he is very serious about this matter as well. It is interesting to see that another aspect of our daily lives, related to law and order, takes an interesting turn when we leave the borders of the earth. Already, in the service contract signed by Elon Musk's company with Starlink (which will provide Internet services), it is written: "The parties recognize Mars as a free planet so that no government on Earth has authority or sovereignty over the activities on Mars. Disputes will be resolved through self-management principles, which will be written in good faith at the time of settlement on Mars."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" (Peter Drucker)

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The author is the CEO of Carso Science Park in Beer Sheva. Caruso Science Park is a leading interactive museum that awakens the "hidden delicacy" in visitors through play and experience. Look for Carso Park on Facebook or on the website www.sci-park.co.il