Imagine having the ability to live forever,
travel anywhere in the Universe,
and harness enough power to create wormholes.
Well, if you're part of the ultra-exclusive
Type III civilization club,
these are just some
of the everyday luxuries available.
So, how could feeble Earthlings
get to this level of power?
But more importantly,
should we even try?
On the Kardashev scale,
which measures a civilization's
technological ability to harness energy,
we're stuck at Type 0.
To graduate to Type I,
we'd have to take full advantage
of all of the Earth's energy
and any energy that comes our way,
such as sunlight.
According to physicist Michio Kaku,
we'll get there in a century or two.
But to get to Type II,
where we're able to harness
all the energy of our Sun,
Dr. Kaku estimates
we're a few thousand years away.
Which is, frankly, pretty optimistic.
To reach Type III,
where a civilization harnesses the power
of its entire Galaxy,
Michio estimates that
we're looking at anywhere from
100,000 to 1,000,000 years.
If we managed to fast forward
1,000,000 years into the future,
what would our lives look like?
With the ability to harness
nearly limitless energy
from any planet or star within sight,
we could live anywhere we wanted.
Maybe we could build an even better Earth
or an entirely new solar system from scratch.
Looking for a tropical beach planet?
It's all yours.
Or how about a Mushroom Planet?
Sure, we can do that.
Earth,
Mars,
and every planet in our Solar System
might just be husks at this point.
We would have mined them
of all their resources
to build Dyson swarms.
I'm not talking about a swarm of fancy vacuums,
but millions of energy collecting satellites
that could swarm around a star
and turn it into one big battery.
But to truly become a Type III civilization,
we'd need SWARMS of Dyson swarms,
collecting an unfathomable amount of energy
from all of the stars in our entire Galaxy.
At this point,
humans would have harnessed
biotechnology to its fullest,
and we would likely become
a race of cyborgs so advanced
we'd be indiscernible from robots.
Our new favorite dance move
might be called The Human.
Over the past decade,
we've already developed electrode implants
that allow amputees
the ability to control artificial limbs
with their brains.
We have brain implants
that allow us to hear and perceive color.
And Elon Musk is working on
melding AI with the human brain
with his company, Neuralink.
Just imagine where this
techno-evolution will take us
in a million years.
To survive warp speed travel,
we may very well have to modify
our flesh and bone bodies
into something more resilient.
This is all wishful thinking, though.
As AI improves exponentially,
robots will rapidly outsmart
and outnumber humans.
They might consider us
to be too useless,
whiny,
and, well, obsolete.
If we're lucky,
they'll keep us around as pets
or wildlife.
Or we may have to start acting more like them,
ridding ourselves of any emotion
or moral conscience.
At this point,
AI would be self-replicating
on an exponential scale
and could strip a planet with little remorse
for whatever creatures live there.
I'm sorry, guys, but you all know our slogan,
"we are the Borg, and resistance is futile."
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With almost limitless resources
as a Type III civilization,
we would have enough power
to harness Planck energy,
the energy of space-time.
Physics at this level
would be vastly different
from what we know today.
According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity,
our ability to travel
faster than light is impossible.
But at the Planck-scale,
we could build a wormhole to get around.
As a Type III civilization,
with an almost infinite energy supply,
we would not need resource management.
At this point, we'd be god-like
with enough biotech to make us immortal
and nearly indestructible.
If anything stood in our way,
we could snap our fingers and call it a day.
Over time, we would eventually exhaust
our entire galaxy's resources.
In this case, we’d need to advance
to become a Type IV or V civilization
to explore and harvest energy
from the rest of the Universe.
Without a resource limit
as a Type IV civilization,
we’d have no reason
to value the Universe around us
beyond our own technological gains.
In other words, we'd get pretty bored,
like getting 100% completion
in your favorite video game
on the most challenging setting.
So, what now?
Don't worry.
We've got a lot more in store
before the robots take over.
As always, that's a story for another What If.