Hawking

I found it interesting moving directly from Swift to Hawking. Not that I found Hawking's proposal unbelievable, just how much the idea of population control (and means of accomplishing population control) have evolved. In Swift's time, there would never have been a second thought of transplanting people to another planet in order to even things out, weed out the upper and lower classes. Yet, with Hawking we are given that possibility. Now, I'm not saying that Hawking is proposing the idea of shipping the weak one place and the powerful to another, but if what Hawking says will happen here on Earth then we are presented with the possibility of controlling and aiding in the preservation of the human population. Now, I for one do not completely agree with Hawking on the time table presented for when this will all take place (like Sumner I found it to be a bit too pessimistic) but I do agree that at some point we will be left with the options of total annihilation or shifting to other worlds. With the rate in which our technology is progressing I find it hard to say that it will never happen. Going back to a Sumner article, I think that it will be at this point when the human race will have to convert back to a hunter-farmer civilization during this initial period of space relocation.