Kardashev Civilization Scale. What about our tiny humanity?

We have always theorized LGM, or Little Green Men when we fantasize about confronting the aliens. Theorist however thing a little different than most of us, Nikolai Kardashev from Russia have been famous for inventing the "Kardashev" scale. It tells us that there are three types of civilization, and it goes as follow

TYPE 1

This type of civilization is modern enough to harness all the energy available from its home planet, and is able to manipulate the planet structure. Theoretically, this kind of civilization is able to suppress earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disaster. They harness and control energies ranging from wind power to fusion reactor. Such civilization might also have the technology to manufacture anti mater in large or industrial quantities.

They overcame the political and monetary crisis and has achieved a central unitary or federal government that governs the entire planet, it is also widely possible that countries/states might have been abolished altogether in favor of a stronger bonds between humans.

Thus with a strong unitary home planet, such civilization may start to harness the energy and resources of its star system. They may poses technology to mine the asteroid and establish colonies on other planet in the solar system. Massive solar farm in outer space is also a renewable way to create infinite energy from the sun.

TYPE 2

This kind of civilization has gone stellar. After exhausting the resources of its home planet, it looks to the stars for more planets. The kind of technology that they poses is as foreign to us, a
s our technology to a prehistoric humans.

They control their home star energy output with huge a huge sphere that swarms the star with solar panel, effectively harnessing the power of an entire star. Type II play with fire on the atomic scale, they may be able to manipulate stars, and might be able to develop a wormhole for faster space travel.

The kind of government for such civilization is unknown, with severe technological advances, it is unknown whether such civilization would be 100% organic.

A Type II is also immune to extinction, as they can bag their civilization and move it elsewhere should something go bad. This is a kind of civilization that can manipulate an entire star, so a comet hitting their home planet would be the least of their concerns.

TYPE 3

Type I control their planet, Type II control their neighboring star systems and Type III has colonized of has controlled the entire galaxy.

Harnessing the energy from a galaxy is quite a feat, it is unknown how civilizations such as this might fare. Type III probably has the power to control a supermassive blackhole to their advantage. Capturing the energy from quasar, neutron stars and gamma ray burst are technically possible for this kind of civilization.

What kind of life form after this is totally unknown, as cybernetics is getting better and better, it is not clear whether a Type III civilization is biological or not.

TYPE 4

We barely know what kind of technology a type 3 civilization can possess, a Type IIII would be unimaginable to us. This kind of civilization probably has the power and technology to colonize their local galactic cluster.

Unknown "Dark Energy and Dark Matter" would probably be their main source of energy, since normal matter and anti matter are soooo 30,000 AD. They might see normal matter and anti matter as how we look at wood. "We still use it, but there are better things out there."

Where are we on this scale then?

"Correction", we don't actually belong anywhere, we barely have control over our planet. Natural and man made disasters are still a huge problem for us, but we are getting better at minimizing it, at least... So in short, I would say that we are around 0,75 on the scale. As Michio Kaku said, we would reach Type I in around 100-200 years, assuming we have not killed our self with a nuclear war or other kind of WMDs.

War, the dark side of humanity

With the insane brutality of ISIS continues, the Palestinian and Israeli continues their fight and the Russians are invading Ukraine, does that make you uncomfortable?

Well, don`t, if you look it out death by war has drastically dropped, while the global population is at an all time high, it now seems that we life in the most peaceful period of human existence. How is all of this possible?

As you can see, the amount of people killed in a war has drastically decreased since the 1950s, this is part due to a more internationalized world and fighting is now so 19 century. 

While the fighting drops, the human population is at an all time high.

On the left is the major conflicts of the world that has taken 5000+ lives, while on the right is the ongoing conflict that has killed at least 100 lives. Not exactly peaceful, but consider this. Out of all the conflicts in the world today, none are an active war between countries. Instead they are civil war between factions or local conflicts. 

Although we have seen in Syria that civil war is indeed ugly and nasty, their impact is usually smaller than a war between two nations. A war between two states means that both states can mobilize all of their much bigger armed forces, have access to all the states resources and logistic and almost all of the population. The result would be a full blown war and might start the bridge for another world war.

But why has it gone from state vs state war to civil war?

Two words, the cold war and colonization.

As the world grew more and more humanized, colonialism was seen as a bad thing, and countries that had many colonies were forced to give them independence, either by force or diplomacy.

As the cold war dictatorships ended, this removed the only barrier from the point where old ethnic tension was hidden. With the dictator regime gone, the old "ethnic" tension appeared again. This has been seen in Yugoslavia, as Tito died, the strong central government of Yugoslavia got weaker and weaker, to the point where a civil war has sparked.

This is the same with "decolonization", as the "imperialist" government has been removed, old ethnic/religious tensions start again as may spark a civil war. So we can say that most conflict today are in countries, where 60 years ago, they were under foreign control.

But things are getting better!

Back then, a single side victory was much more common, now after 1990, negotiated ending has increased from 10% before 1990 to 60% after 1990.

Suddenly, why have nation states stop attacking each other?

I guess we can say that there are three major reasons for this.

1. Developement from Autocracy to Democracy

Democracies hardly fight each other and there is one simple answer to that, they both want to get reelected, and starting a war is probably not going to get you reelected. Out of all the state vs state wars after 1900, only a very small minority were two democracies fighting each other.

2. Globalization

For the first time ever in human history, people are worth more alive than dead. War is no longer as effective as achieving economic goals now as it has been in the past. Instead of wasting countless of lives and a war that will ravage both economies, it is now better to simply buy the resources from the global market than seizing it by force. People from other states are suddenly more valuable alive than dead, because then they can trade.

3. War was a part of humanity

War was usually the only thing before world war 1 that countries could use should diplomacy and negotiation fail. Today we have multinational treaty that declare all form of aggression illegal and 

armed forces are only legal to be used in self defense, or with permission from the UNSC.

These rules are still broken, but it is now harder to start a war without sparking an international opposition and discontent.

Picture taken from Kurt Gezagt and Wikipedia.

Why you should reconsider your purchase on Apples new MacBook

Foto: Thomas Marynowski

We all know how intimidating it is when Apple releases a new product, whether it is a new iPhone or a new Mac. The new MacBook is of course very elegant and it looks very pretty with its 12 inch screen instead of the standard 13 inch that is adapted by both the Macbook Air and Pro. Apple claims that the new MacBook is a the start of a whole new Ultrabook generation.

Here are 3 reasons why I feel that the new MacBook is a turn off for consumers.

Foto: Thomas Marynowski

Reason 3

The biggest turn on with the product is that it is “revolutionary”, but has Apple gone a step back with only one USB-C input? With only one input, expensive Apple dongles might be needed for adequate amount of connection. Not only the price is the matter, but having dongles also compromises the total portability of the notebook.

Reason 2

Both the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro are powered by dual core Intel Core i5/i7, but the new Macbook is powered by an Intel M CPU that is fanless, but we all know how it goes in terms of performance. Fanless are almost always slower than their fan cooled CPU counterpart, but at least fanless design offer better battery life? With 8GB RAM and 256 GB Flash storage, the CPU is no doubt the weakest part of the system

Reason 1

Why buy the Macbook when Apple has a much cheaper and better alternative? Apple own Macbook Air is cheaper, has larger screen, more powerful processors and better graphics. But its port are also complete with two USB 3 and one Thunderbolt port.