Thiel , the Plane and the Caveman
The best way technology can serve our future is by avoiding the stupid now.
Every time I board a plane, a peculiar sensation overtakes me. I can’t help but envision how a caveman might react upon witnessing this colossal “iron bird” soaring effortlessly through the skies.
I imagine the poor fellow would likely lose his mind — or perhaps just faint — considering that, since the dawn of civilization, the heavens have been the exclusive domain of mythical creatures, angels, gods, and of course, birds.
For millennia, the sky remained the one frontier humankind had yet to conquer truly.
My next musing usually revolves around how we, the people of this era, would react to technology from a thousand years ahead. Would we be as bewildered and awestruck as that hypothetical caveman gawking at a flying machine? Or worse, how would we cope with encountering something as foreign as the International Space Station?
I suspect the latter scenario is more likely, and that’s both exhilarating and terrifying. If our species manages to avoid self-destruction — either through our folly or some divine intervention — within the next millennium, the daily existence of an ordinary person would likely be beyond even the wildest imaginings we entertain today. Fusion power, interstellar travel (and possibly even temporal journeys), along with advanced AI and robotics, could be as commonplace as our current knives and forks.
But what lies beyond the mastery of infinite energy? Or achieving the speed of light? The humans of that distant future, with their vastly extended lifespans and technologically enhanced bodies, would make even icons like Robocop or Ironman seem as primitive as tin toys.
The more I attempt to envision it, the more I collide with the limits of my imagination. Science may have hinted at possibilities, but even those speculations feel constrained.
Peter Thiel, in his manifesto on the future, famously remarked, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” With all due respect to Thiel, I must ask — who truly needs a flying car? Such an invention would likely be as pointless as the 140-character tweet, resulting in more accidents and a marginal shift in the way we live.
Let’s be candid: a scaled-down, private-jet-like flying vehicle, with limited autonomy and road capability, would hardly revolutionize the world. It would remain a “toy” for children of the ’70s and ‘80s — those who, grown up and affluent, might indulge in such a novelty, just as they might indulge in its bigger, more expensive counterpart.
But teleportation…oh boy! That would be the real deal 🙄
Bringing the discussion back to more pragmatic grounds, I believe that in our tumultuous world, true innovations must serve us here and now. Chasing immortality is a futile endeavor, driven by selfish minds paralyzed by the fear of the unknown. Instead, our focus should be on ensuring a decent quality of life for everyone — a life free from the unnecessary, the “stupid,” as I like to call it.
A decent life means eliminating the stupid work — through automation, improved efficiency, and technical advancements.
It means eliminating the stupid death — by enhancing security and medicine.
It means eliminating the stupid suffering — by providing clean water and sufficient nutrition.
And most importantly, it means eliminating the stupid life — by eradicating ignorance through education.
As Albert Einstein once said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
Maybe it’s about time to stop passive spectators of our own show?
Of course, not everyone is cut out for serious work on serious issues. There will always be those who dream of beating death or designing flying cars, and that’s fine, as long as there’s room for diverse dreams.
My own? Well, I lean more towards anti-gravity cars and jet-propelled exoskeletons. But at the end of the day, I’m just another ’90s kid raised on visions of time-traveling DeLoreans and flying robots 😬
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Up Next: Let’s Break The Energy Idler Wheel
Next week I will explore this strange irony of energy generation
despite the technological leaps we’ve made, we’re still stuck in the age-old logic of the steam engine.
An article inpired by the recording the first episode of our podcast We CTRL ENERGY with my co-founder Adlane and this video:
Stay tuned!
