The Odds of Contacting ET Are Nil, Despite That They Are Already Watching (cont.)
By Jim Elvidge

There is no reason to suspect that Moore's Law wouldn't hold for any high tech civilization. It has held steady over the past 40 years, for some of the technology trends identified above. So, anything one hundred or more years beyond our own technology would certainly be extremely advanced compared to where we are today. Taking Moore's law out another hundred years could have us increasing various aspects of our technology by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000 (a million billon). Considering that high technology civilizations could last millions of years, or billions once they learn to avoid regional cosmic cataclysms, their technology would be unimaginable. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."5

So, back to the idea of what I meant by "well beyond our own"...

Even considering what we are working on now - what we consider "on the horizon," let's do just a little bit of extrapolation.

• Nanotech is in its infancy.  We will soon be able to create matter in any form we want.  Want a steak for dinner?  Just program the molecular assembler.  Want to redecorate?  Molecular assembler.  Create an arbitrarily complex rocket engine?  You guessed it - molecular assembler.  Atomic assemblers, string assemblers (assuming that theory gets legs) will be right around the corner.

• Nuclear power.  Fission will be obsolete.  Fusion will be obsolete.  Matter-antimatter reactions will be routine.  Perhaps even tapping into that zero point energy created by quantum fluctuations.  At any rate, energies capable of traveling the universe should be attainable.

• Teleportation.  Yesterday was particles, then atoms.  Today molecules.  Tomorrow macroscopic objects.

• Invisibility and Cloaking.  For decades, we have been able to cloak our spy planes to the point of being impervious to radar, our submarines to be impervious to sonar.  Now we can bend light around objects so that they appear impervious to visible light.  It will not be long before it is a simple matter to become completely invisible.

• Bending space at will in order to exceed the speed of light.  Estimates of the levels of energy need to do this have already been drastically reduced and should be well within the exponentially advancing technologies achievable in hundreds or thousands of years.  And even if that doesn't happen, there are plenty of other cracks in relativity to exploit.

• The power of consciousness.  The Princeton PEAR research proved the power of mass consciousness.  Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake and others have scientifically proven the existence of consciousness effects currently unexplained (aka paranormal, e.g. telepathy).  We will learn to tap into these, focus them, and exploit them.  At that point, we will not even need the high energies or space bending technologies mentioned above.

• Brain Computer Interfaces.  Researchers can already accurately determine what people are looking at by analyzing brain waves.  Today’s artificial retinas are at the infancy of brain enhancement technology.  Scientists have demonstrated the ability to selective erase memories in mice.  We will soon be able to enhance human brain function significantly, selectively erase memories, selectively inject memories, and create fully immersive simulations indistinguishable from reality.

• Artificial Intelligence.  Even if humanity doesn't develop the power to communicate remotely at instantaneous speeds, the combination of AI and entanglement will.  Computers will pass the Turing test within a few years.  Transhumanists believe that we will merge with machines within just a few decades and effectively become immortal (reference “The Singularity”).  While I acknowledge the inevitability of these trends, I disagree that AI will be sentient in the same sense that we are.  But it doesn’t really matter, because I believe that our souls will not mind occupying highly advanced cybernetic machines at first, and pure AI later on.