Colonial empires have risen and fallen over the years, but those empires have been limited to the current planet they were on Earth. Now, a new colonial empire will soon rise, starting with the colonization of Mars and soon, we can and will become a type III civilization, that is a galactic civilization. You may have heard about types of civilizations, like type I, II, or even III. Those types are from the Kardashev scale, which is a method of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy available at its disposal, and was proposed by Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev. With this in mind, we can and will become a type III civilization by half a million years, if we all work together. This would be
To begin with, we have and still are advancing our technology exponentially. For example, in the mid-20th century, computers and mainframes took up the space of entire rooms. Nowadays, any modern phone that came out in the last 10 years is equivalent to an ‘80s supercomputer. In other words, the technology we have today is generally hundreds or thousands of times better than what we had half a century ago. Secondly, we are moving toward more clean and efficient forms of energy and transportation. Specifically, as we move towards clean energy, we need to research more on how we can maximize our energy gains and how we can make it more efficient. For example, as we are developing solar panels, we are attempting to convert the light coming from the sun into electricity, but by doing so, we wouldn’t turn all of the light into power as some of the energy would go away as heat since everything can’t be 100% efficient. In conclusion, as we rapidly advance technologically, it’s almost no surprise we will become a type III civilization eventually, provided we don’t kill ourselves in the