I grapple with the thought experiment (grandiose term), what would a million year old civilization be like? Here are some basic parameters I've thought of.
1.
Technology will flatten out. Eventually technological innovation will
be so gradual that it will not be thought of as something that is
occurring in perceptible time.
2.
Biological manipulation will become internalized and routine. Denizens
of the civilization will not be immortal, because, well, entropy. But
they will be tremendously long lived, reproduce extremely infrequently,
and will probably have divided into separate civilizations, those that
embrace cybernetics, meaning the actual physical melding of
living organism with technology, and those that prefer to remain wholly
biological. There might even be purists who want to retain the essential
form that they had when they emerged from animal nature into sophontism.
But these distinctions may be somewhat academic, because it seems to me
that the ability to control living systems will be near total. Not only
the intelligent creatures (who will come to have many different forms),
but other life, will be planned, not left to random events or natural selection. Much
of what we use technology for, they will use living organisms to do,
including maintaining the environment in optimal status. But perhaps
there will also be an interest in preserving wildness too, so that will be a countervailing force.
3.
Even without magic (such as FTL), a million year old civilization will
necessarily be space faring. It will occupy its home star system, and
will most likely have seeded its form of life to other star systems. The
gradual spread of purposeful intelligent life in and throughout the
civilization's home galaxy will, if they survive a million years, be
virtually inevitable (which is prima facie evidence that this hasn't
happened yet, at least not in this Galaxy. Maybe we'll be the first).
Eventually, the entire universe will be permeated with intelligent life.
At 13.7 by old, the universe is still in its infancy; this hasn't
occurred yet. But that doesn't mean it won't.
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