The growth in total vehicle-kilometers-traveled in the U.S. has continued unabated for decades, far exceeding the growth in population. The U.S. is clearly the most auto-dependent society on earth, but other parts of the world are catching up.Source: http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=318

Not just distance traveled in cars, but other forms of transportation as well. No doubt we spend increasingly more time and resources not simply moving, but also keeping in touch with other people at a distance. Increases in interconnected communication are accelerating.

Kurzweil’s expectation leads to a point where we can stop moving huge masses around. Space exploration for everyone, something accepted as obvious in so much science fiction up through the 60s and 70s, would then follow, but not necessarily as faster-than-light craft taking enormous masses through deep space. Instead, in the current metaphor, we would use updated computing machinery, nanotech fabricators, everything rugged, dormant behind ramjets at near light speed between stars or even galaxies.

No need for oxygen tanks and terraforming. When this wave of traveler arrives at your world, you may well fail to notice. A nanotech fabricator dropped onto a planet grows the machinery to investigate, recycles, literally returns itself and materials to the environment following investigation, leaving only long-term transmission equipment. No consciousness would want to be exiled at the bottom of a gravity well, now would it?

Would there even be a motivation to visit other planets? Hard to tell, but probably, yes. After all, like mountains, other planets are there. Though why not use the same take only pictures, leave only footprints agreement we currently use in shared parks?

Perhaps explorers seed suitable planets with life, once they can build simple, stable life from blueprints. What would those following the explorers expect to harvest?

Could life on earth be a laboratory experiment? Perhaps a sort of  kid’s science fair exhibit? That might explain the apparent pointlessness of the whole endeavor. The Creator’s homework, which He didn’t want to do, but His mom made him.

One book of essays I have not managed to finish was written by George Steiner, who did research in comparative literature. George argues that language and thought lie inextricably close together. He fills his argument with eloquence and carefully chosen words.

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must not write. Whereof we can speak and write, thereof we should no doubt also be quiet. All the force of thought disappears in the mouth, in print. Language can express classification, logic, analysis. It is a great tool that just about everyone can use.

Very good writers can craft poetry, which I am told can convey nets of meaning to careful readers. How many of us have a difficult time even understanding poetry, let alone producing it?

Some writers can tell stories. Stories amaze me. Even poorly finished stories, stories that wake disbelief repeatedly, are nevertheless astonishing. To what extent is story writing a craft?

At about 3:30 a.m. the other day, depression seemed nature’s way of saying that I should not have been born, that rationalization works as self-protection.

The notion also arose that words function often as a way to hold other people at arm’s length, or to manipulate them.

Words can be used to hold ourselves at arm’s length and to manipulate ourselves.

Chemical reactions happen when the energy of activation is sufficient to push substances into reacting with each other. Energy of activation is a way to explain why reactions do not just happen, instead often requiring significant oompf to get going, even when the resulting state is more fitting than the current state.

At a high enough level of abstraction, people can be seen to behave as a substance. The energy of activation moves them into reaction and through to a new state.

It is usually easier to set up energy of activation for a chemical reaction than for a human reaction, however.

An interesting property of chemical reactions is that at the level of individual atoms or molecules, certainly of electrons around nuclei, considerable uncertainty reigns. Many motions may be going on inside the most straightforward chemical reaction.