Now, I'm not suggesting we're going to wait 40 years or even four years, but I think we have to put in perspective the fact that we've come quite a distance. We have quite a distance to come - go, as well.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If we can come up with a way of backing up my brain into another that I have in my back-pack, we'll do it. People talk themselves out of things very easily. Things that they think are a million years away, or never, are actually four years away.
In terms of the history of a far reaching movement, 20 years is not that long.
I've always liked to think ahead. Not stupid-far ahead. A hundred years doesn't interest me. But 20 years interests me, and more for what happens to humans as opposed to things.
We can take some gratification at having come a certain distance in just a few thousand years of our existence as language users, but it should be a deeper satisfaction, even an exhilaration, to recognize that we have such a distance still to go.
The future for us is the foreseeable future. The South Asian, however, feels that it is perfectly realistic to think of a 'long time' in terms of thousands of years.
Do we need distance to get close?
Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.
Some day we'll move into space and start ensuring the survival of our species beyond Earth, whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand.
And the reason for focusing on that time frame is that it's going to take us a considerable period of time to develop the new capabilities, processes and organizations that will be needed.
We're just moving along as quick as possible.