What ways are there to measure and compare the technology of different ET civilizations? One would be their computing power - how many bits of data they can process in a given length of time. What other ways are there to rank ET technology? The problem is that many of the benchmark achievements for advanced ETs would involve technology that would appear to us as "magic" (to quote Arthur C. Clarke). Any ideas on this?

:-) Dominic

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What ways are there to measure and compare the technology of different ET civilizations? One would be their computing power - how many bits of data they can process in a given length of time. What other ways are there to rank ET technology? The problem is that many of the benchmark achievements for advanced ETs would involve technology that would appear to us as "magic" (to quote Arthur C. Clarke). Any ideas on this?

:-) Dominic

The Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev.

There are no doubt many other methods out there, but I think this is the most famous one.


By the way, your book sounds intriguing.

:)

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Sometimes I think we are alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we are not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

[
The Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev.

There are no doubt many other methods out there, but I think this is the most famous one.

Hmmm, Hmmm...
I could make a technological progress on Kardashev's scale by trading in my straight-6 for a V-12 :o)

Regards Hans

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I'm not sure that I buy Kardashev's basic premise that energy consumption can be the sole measure of technological advancement.

As technology advances, we become more efficient in our use of energy to produce work.

I prefer the scale used by the RPG GURPS:

http://www.omnology.com/gurps-levels.html

I'm not sure if the scale is based on any academic work.

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