Cato speculate?

Hi all

Very interesting discussion. There have been some excellent points made.

I'd like to add a couple of considerations:

Have you considered talking to members of the World Futures Society about
this subject? I'm thinking that as the primary focus of the World Futures
Society is on the effect that science and technology will have on society,
that they would have useful insights. May I suggest Joseph Coates as a
first point of contact? Dr Coates is a practitioner of science and
technology foresight, which as a field of science has an established track
record.

Have you considered expanding the discussion in your paper to the forms of
human knowledge that do not include science? I assume from the discussion
so far that human knowledge only equals the physical sciences. Please do
let me know if this has been an assumption on my part. An example of the
social impacts on humanity might be found in Frank White's book "The
Overview Effect" (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1987). From the cover
blurb: "Using interviews with and writings by 24 astronauts and cosmonauts,
Frank White shows how experiences such as circling the Earth every ninety
minutes and viewing it from the moon have profoundly affected our space
travelers' perceptions of themselves, their world and the future. He shows
how the rest of us, who have participated imaginatively in these great
adventures, have also been affected psuchologically by them."

Another way of looking at how space development has affected human
knowledge, would be to look at how three commonly-used metaphors of the
space age have affected human aspirations. I'm thinking of the metaphors
of:
1) Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth"
2) the Easter Island metaphor, which draws links to the Easter Islanders
cutting down all their trees, so that they couldn't build boats to escape
their "tragedy of the commons" crisis.
3) The Cheng Ho 15th century China metaphor, which supposes that if the
Chinese emperor hadn't curtailed naval expenditure, then China would have
colonised America before Spain.

Has anyone considered that the sorts of scientific advances that might
eventuate depend on the the people who are paying for the research? For
example, NASA or the NSF would be paying for basic research, whereas SSI
will be paying for research that has a direct commercial benefit. Compare
the budgets of the NSF and SSI, and you'll see that advances in basic
research will far outnumber those in commercial applications, based solely
on the amount of dollars invested. As assessment of the excellence of the
science will also be needed to evaluate how quickly advances might be made.
For example, if defense research has the best researchers, it may well be
that even if they were operating on a shoestring budget, they might produce
better results.

Regards
Andrew Wynberg