[果壳中的宇宙pdf]-The_Universe_in_a_Nutshell_部分4.pdf

THE UNIVERSE IN A NUTSHELL
(FIG. ) GROWTH OF POPULATION
156
OUR FUTURE? STAR TREK OR NOT?
Newton, Einstein, Commander
Data, and myself playing poker in
a scene from Star Trek.
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
Copyright ©2001 by Paramount Pictures.
All Rights Reserved
HE REASON STAR TREK IS SO POPULAR IS BECAUSE IT IS A
T safe forting vision of the future. I'm a bit of a Star
Trek fan myself, so I was easily persuaded to take part in an
episode in which I played poker with Newton, Einstein, and
Commander Data. I beat them all, but unfortunately there was a red
alert, so I never collected my winnings.
Star Trek shows a society that is far in advance of ours in science,
in technology, and in anization. (The last might not be
difficult.) There must have been great changes, with their pa•
nying tensions and upsets, in the time between now and then, but in
the period we are shown, science, technology, and anization
of society are supposed to have achieved a level of near perfection.
I want to question this picture and ask if we will ever reach a
final steady state in science and technology. At no time in the ten
thousand years or so since the last ice age has the human race been
in a state of constant knowledge and fixed technology. There have
been a few setbacks, like the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman
Empire. But the world's population, which is a measure of our tech•
nological ability to preserve life and feed ourselves, has risen steadi•
ly with only a few ups such as the Black Death (Fig. ).
157
THE UNIVERSE IN A NUTSHELL
(FIG ) In the last two hundred years, population growth has e
Left: The total worldwide energy con• exponential; that is, the population grows by the same percentage
sumption in billions of tons BCU, each year. Currently, the rate is about percent a year. That may
where 1 ton ~Bituminous Coal Unit
= MW-hr not s