There is this assumption that the ambition of humanity should be to physically expand far into space. But why exactly? Spanning large distances isn't a very interesting goal per se. We will learn a lot of cosmology and physics in the process, but I would imagine that once you've seen a few thousand stars, nebulae, and black holes up close, you've pretty much seen them all.
The idea of building a giant computer (or turning into one) seems a lot more interesting. If that's what we're doing, then those people making social networks and video games are on the right track. In this case, we probably wouldn't expand physically until we run out of energy for computation, and our own sun has enough of that to last us a long time.
The idea of building a giant computer (or turning into one) seems a lot more interesting. If that's what we're doing, then those people making social networks and video games are on the right track. In this case, we probably wouldn't expand physically until we run out of energy for computation, and our own sun has enough of that to last us a long time.