When memes collide

[Responding to DAve on Sff.net] Dave, I think most of the people at the conference would agree that building a machine that could deliver a group of humans to another star system is just an engineering problem, which can be solved with will and time and money. Most would concede that the social and philosophical problems presented by the voyage are at least as profound, and perhaps less amenable to solution. Certainly less amenable to a simple unambiguous approach.

Building the machine itself would present a huge sociological problem. The magnitude of the problem is on the order of "All the work done by all the people on the planet for one year." Try to get eight or ten billion people to agree to do that.

I suppose it would take a generation or so to prepare a population for that year of work, as well.

No wonder the concept has fueled several sf novels. As a ten-year-old I was thrilled by J.T. McIntosh's One in Three Hundred and Philip Wyle's When Worlds Collide, book and movie. (Spielberg is doing a new version in 2012.) I've used the trope myself in a couple of stories.

Good to be back in Cambridge, though one could wish it were not so drippy. Ah well. Up with the umbrella and over the bridge.

Joe