[Paracelsus]

(01-21-2015 08:57 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

We probably live in out the boonies. Bum Fuck Egypt in the Milky Way. The distances between solar systems alone is ridiculous. Planets like Kepler 22B are just too far away. No one would live long enough to get to it, even if you could technically. Other systems have more earth like-ish planets in their same solar system but we are too far from even the closest one, it basically becomes futile.

That actually is a really interesting thought. In Freakonomics, the authors argue that technological advancement is heavily correlated with urbanisation for no other reason than that the people with the constituent ideas and resources to build a given technology are closer together, so the chances of their meeting and the means with which to make the advancement happen are much greater and much more easily assembled, respectively.

Admittedly the distances between stars even in the heavily-packed centre of the Milky Way are gargantuan, but note how on Earth the cultures and civilisations that were in contact with several others thrived via trade and exchange of ideas (see: most of the Mediterranean and throughout Central Asia) while rough monocultures that were geographically isolated (Aboriginal, Indian, South American to some extent) stagnated and died out. Perhaps we're disadvantaged by living out in the boonies; we've not encountered any other civilisations because who could be bothered to come out here to the edge of the galaxy when they probably have abundant resources closer to the centre?