Behind the Desk #3: Cryptozoology and the progression of technology
As requested by our community members, in this edition of Behind the Desk, we discuss the pseudo-science of Cryptozoology and the progression of technology that we expect to see.[display_podcast]
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bleachorange
April 15, 2012 @ 6:47 pm
as far as yetis and sasquatch resembling each other in ancient cultures, you have to remember where the native american population supposedly came from – and that’s the land bridge to asia. possible source there? possibly.
on the time travel note, it’s important to know that in most physics circles it’s discussed as space-time, as in space-time continuum. Think about black holes for a second here – they warp or affect light by their colossal mass, thereby affecting the hard number that limits all our current understanding of time and distance – the speed of light. light-years, anyone? so, you could even think of time as sort of a zz axis, on a mathematical chart.
as far as grays being time travelers, that would make me think time travel is possibly millions of years into the future, judging by what appears to be the relative pace of evolution. or not, maybe earlier tiem travelers weren’t interested in coming back this far. or maybe they built the pyramids. who knows? with time travel, you can’t think in chronological order anymore.
as far as technological breakthroughs there are only two that matter in human history – it’s shown over and over again. you got one, energy. the other is communications technology. these two things, whenever a truly revolutionary breakthrough occurs, it revolutionizes everything in human society. you see the comm. example everywhere – the written word, the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, television, computing and the internet. i mean, look how much these things affected their respective societies, and eventually, the world.
now, as far as energy, the same thing is true – waterwheels powered the vanguard of the industrial revolution, followed by coal and the steam engine, followed by oil and the combustion engine, natural gas, nuclear power, etc., you see my point. fusion, or a safer type of nuclear reaction is the power source of the future. we would run out of anything less efficient, and solar and wind power is intermittent at best – not suited for industrialized societies.
excuse me – transportation also revolutionizes society, but not as fundamentally as the other two.
space elevator – right on both counts. it would potentially bankrupt any one nation. and even carbon nanotubes withstanding hurricanes and tornadoes for all of forever? i mean, once something is so big, it has it’s own weather patterns. only time will tell, but unless it can withstand horizontal torques of 1.91 miles per second (speed of a geosynchronous orbit), it’s doomed to failure. it would also probably be built at the equator due to the planet’s rotation.
lasers are limited only by power sources. back to square one.
kinetic weapons are the efficient weapons of space conflicts.
remote aircraft should never entirely replace human fighters – cyber warfare is something to consider – you don’t want your enemy to turn your own weapons on you because they have better hackers…
overall, good podcast. *thumbs up*
as far as the next podcast, maybe you could talk a little about ancient myths – atlantis, pyramids, stonehenge, etc. stuff like that.
bleachorange
April 15, 2012 @ 6:53 pm
i have to add one other thing that revolutionizes human society in addition to the other 3 – materials science advancements. look how society progresses every time they discovered stronger metals, for instance.
the list could go on, but i’ll keep it at the big two(energy and communication) and the little two(transportation and materials), because we don’t need a list of every invention known to man – though i did forget fire and electricity as far as energy sources – maybe I should fail the class? eh, oh well.
Taylor Parolini
April 15, 2012 @ 11:26 pm
Thanks for the interesting read and the feedback, and I pretty much agree with every point you made. As you said, material advances are also a massive factor in technological progression. With any luck such innovations in the future will make the engineering challenges of something like a space elevator far more feasible in the near future.
I’d sure love to be able to just pay for an elevator ticket some day, rather than having to sit on Richard Branson’s lap on a Virgin Galactic flight.
hariseldon
April 16, 2012 @ 2:26 pm
Yeah nice podcast and thanks for following up on some of my suggestions. I agree with you about cryptozoology, most of the sightings can either be explained as the mind playing tricks or hoaxes. However, Mike had it right about there being the potential for other species out there in the relative remote areas of the planet (Congo basin, Himalayas, Antarctica, deepest parts of the ocean perhaps?). The most likely cryptid is probably the Mokèlé-mbèmbé in the Congo- extremely difficult to track animals in there, although it could potentially just be another case of mistaken identity.
Time travel is interesting. I’m no scientist so I don’t know if it’s even possible, but there do seem to be some logical problems with time travel (e.g. granfather paradox and why haven’t we been visited by travellers?). Perhaps it is a case of only being able to view the past (or future?) but not actually travel through time. In any event I think it’s more science-fiction than science-fact, but who knows.
Agree with bleachorange about the importance of communication-in fact I think one of the major breakthroughs will be some sort of universal translator device which will remove all language barriers. Such a device would completely transform the global community imo and bring us much closer together.
As you guys say, there have to be advances in energy for us to progress, but with the relative abundance of oil I just don’t see companies/researchers investing in alternatives.
I think the issue of military-led advancement is interesting, as quite a few of our breakthroughs have come through war (nuclear fission, gun-powder, synthesising existing materials like rubber ammonia etc.). But then we run the risk of creating weapons of such destructive power that we may destroy ourselves before we reap the benefits of any possible advancements…
Personally I see medicine and robotics/AI as being the fields which will surprise us in the near future. We are already living longer and this trend will continue. It will be interesting to see how far cloning progresses as I suspect that we may already have the ability to clone humans, but obvious ethical/moral issues prevent researchers from actually doing it. Similarly with robotics, Japan is so far ahead of much of the world in this department, it seems like they are staking their future of robotics, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they make some sort of breakthrough there.
Agree with the ancient Myths thing, interesting but I’m not sure Atlantis ever really existed tbh.
Btw, like the new thumbs up system. Are you planning on setting up a forums or something like that?
Taylor Parolini
April 16, 2012 @ 2:56 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, man. I agree with you and I totally didn’t even think of how incredibly useful a proper translation program could be. As we all probably know, Google Translator is more than a bit lacking, and the ability to perhaps just pop in a blu-tooth earpiece and run some translation software on your smartphone that allows you to communicate with anyone, anywhere in any language could be an incredible advancement for the entire human race. Very nice idea, and I’m glad you shared it.
As far as forums go, we’ve talked about it before and we’ll probably have one eventually as the community continues to grow.
bleachorange
April 16, 2012 @ 3:20 pm
Well, wars are usually fought over resources or idealogy. Both lead to the perpetuation of your civilization. Look what the Greeks did to the mighty Roman empire, with their culture. They essentially made them Greek.
Well, technology has always, since the sharpened stake and arrowheads, given one side a survival advantage over the other. Is it really so surprising to see that continue today? It’s about who lives and dies, literally or figuratively.