Diaspora

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Within my lifetime, the population of the USA has grown by 50% -- from 200 million to 300 million. That's alarming, and brings up an issue that I've only been faintly aware of, from various works of science fiction.


From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

diaspora

Pronunciation: dI-'as-p(&-)r&, dE-
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek, dispersion, from diaspeirein to scatter, from dia- + speirein to sow
1 capitalized a : the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile b : the area outside Palestine settled by Jews c : the Jews living outside Palestine or modern Israel
2 a : the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland b : people settled far from their ancestral homelands c : the place where these people live



There are close to 6.6 billion of us on this planet. Mother Earth can't take much more of this growth. Pretty soon we'll be forced to 'move out'.

* the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland *

How many generations will it be before we know Earth only as our Home Planet, and where will we have gone? Well, maybe not far...

If we can't all live on Earth, and since nearby planets and moons offer only a temporary solution (not an easy one at that), where DO we go?

For that answer we first have to think about what technology will do for us, and we have to admit to ourselves that there is much technology that has been kept secret. It is the stuff of science fiction, but imagine if you will a device that can create absolutely anything 'out of thin air'...

Now imagine that people would get bored with that. For some of us it will take longer than others.

Okay, so now we are a people who can make anything out of nothing, at no cost -- but for the most part we only make what we need, and 'vaporize' stuff we're done with. What do we need most? We need places to live. Those places should probably not be places at all, but mobile dwellings capable of sustaining us out in the vacuum of Space.

They might as well be full-fledged spacecraft, so that we can travel.

All of a sudden we not only have the means to save our planet from overpopulation, but the answer to the question of where to go -- which is, more or less, anywhere we want.


Then we limit the 'permanent' population of our home planet, letting much of it go wild again, assisting in its recovery where we can. We visit once in a while, but most of our time is spent in our 'flying Winnebagoes'.

After all, we'll have everything we need in those hyperhomes...


Phil Smith
October 27, 2006


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