I think as a species we're hardly on the most efficient path...

Its strange how the fastest way to get new technology developed is by convincing the military that they can benefit from the end-result...

Its also quite illogical that the powers taht be dont notice or dont care that the current economic structure favors exponential profit growth over innovation and sustainability... The value of profit is entirely imaginary... The only thing that gives profit any value is the knowledge that you're more or less expected to make a profit in before others will even start to consider evaluating your performance at whatever it is you're doing.

Finally, the powers that be are too pressured by this flawed economic system... This results in the exploration of rediculously inefficient and possibly futile paths for future technological development.

 

Take fusion research for example:

Imagine that we as a species, starting right now, spend half a century working on the development of efficient fusion reactors. Imagine we invest some of the smartest minds on the planet for half a century into creating a power source of unimaginable capacity. A powersource neccesary to solve our energy consumption problems. A powersource that is simply required if we wish to elevate mankind to a star faring civilization... Sounds like a marvellous plan to help mankind forward right?

Then snap back to reality, and realize we have already spent more then half a century trying to develop this technology, imagine the billions upon billions we have invested in this.

The focus of most of this expense? Fusion reactors of toroid design.

How is this a problem you ask? Well, we already know now for half a century that the electric field generated in this toroid design is actually an extremely inefficient means of compacting matter to the densities required to create fusion. It takes tremendous amounts of energy to create fusion with a toroidal reactor design, because the electric fields meant to compress the fuel to the point of nuclear fusion spend most of their energy doing anything but compressing the fusion fuel.

Despite this knowledge we have spent are billions and billions worth of research on this known inherently inefficient design. So now that we have struggled for half a century to make this flawed design work, you would expect us to decide: 

 

"hey.. lets hold on for a minute, stop doing what we're doing and re-think this... Lets spend our time finding other more efficient means of compressing this fusion fuel."

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Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong...

We make up timelines that span across decades costing multiples of the billions already spent so far to build devices we already know wont work. Authorities try to justify the expense by claiming the production of this insufficient hardware is required as an intermediary stage towards building the final actually working fusion reactors. Authorities reason that too much money has already been spent on this type of reactors to stop trying to make them work.

Why do we do this? Well, we already invested so much, that we "cannot stop now". If we would stop, the money we spent would be "lost". But if we spend even more money.. it "might eventually become profitable".

 

But 60 years into the future, the energy crisis will be solved right?

Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong...

In 60 years we'll have huge bulky powerhungry monsters that require enormous amounts of energy to even get them up and running. Sure, once they'll run they'll produce a lot of energy, but they'll be big, bulky, and they'll still be inherently highly inefficient.

They'll be too large and too power-hungry to be of much use in early interstellar space travel. We still wont be any closer to having an efficiënt means of creating energy through fusion. We'll just have created the worlds most expensive ugly duckling. We'll still be earthbound, energy will still be very costly, and we'll have no choise but to utilize this futile piece of technology for decades to come in order to break even on our investments.

 

The same principles apply elsewhere:

New cheaper and/or more effective medicines, genetically modified crop, novel ways to collect water in deserts and convert them to farmland, alternative energy sources, alternative fuels, cross-disciplinary integration of various sciences, thoriumbased fission versus uraniumbased fission, international politics, humanitarian aid, etc. etc.

 

I hope we realize soon that progress is worth more then profit...

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