*Reflections on the Kardashev scale — plus references/links
- Arnold Hermann
- Jul 2, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 10, 2024
Kything 002
Dyson Sphere. Image credit: Kevin Gill
The Kardashev scale is a means for approximating the level of a civilization’s technological advancement, with special focus on energy harnessing and consumption. Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev developed the scale in 1962, for the purpose of estimating the amount of energy required to transmit information through interstellar space. And whether we could detect such transmissions. Accordingly, his initial work on the matter is titled: “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations.”
The study postulates three types of civilizations, or stages:
I. A civilization capable of utilizing energy on a planet-wide scale.
II. A civilization capable of directly harnessing the energy of its star.
For example, through a hypothetical megastructure surrounding its sun
known as a Dyson Sphere.
III. A civilization which harnesses the energy produced by its galaxy.
Kardashev continued to update his estimates in subsequent publications. (For a list of references, see below.)
The physicist/futurologist Michio Kaku fleshed out what it means to attain Type 1: A civilization capable of controlling the weather—including hurricanes—as well as volcanoes, earthquakes, etc., plus the inhabiting of oceans. This level of planetary control could be achieved not only by utilizing the Earth’s resources, but also all the sunlight reaching our planet, plus cosmic rays/radiation.
Indeed, some have argued that Type I civilizations have the power to restructure entire planets (David Lamb and John D. Barrow).
Projections—reaching Type I:
Most contemporary studies agree with Sagan’s 0.7 estimate, placing us presently between 0.72 and 0.73—almost three-quarters of the way to the next level.
According to Kaku’s optimistic take, we may attain Type I status in one hundred years, provided we continue to increase our energy consumption at an average rate of 3 percent each year. Type II could be reached in a couple of thousand years. Kaku places the Star Trek continuum at the beginning of Type II. While galaxy-spanning civilizations like the Borg, or Star Wars, are categorized as Type III.
A recent study employs two machine-learning models—random forest (RF) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)—to simulate and predict energy consumption on a global scale. The estimate is that 0.7474 will be achieved by 2060 (“2060: Civilization, Energy, and Progression of Mankind on the Kardashev Scale,” see reference below).
A different effort, relying on Kaku’s values and using linear regression, concluded that human civilization would reach Type 1 by mid-24th century—in the year 2347 to be specific.
I am taking the liberty of reproducing the authors’ calculations here:
A. Namboodiripad; C. N. Nimal, “Predicting the Timeline for Earth Achieving Kardashev Scale Type 1 Status,”
page 151. See also below.
A third, fairly elaborate study—which took the transition from fossil fuels to nuclear and renewable energies into account—projects that a Type I civilization could be achievable by 2371, or “within the common calendar year range of 2333 to 2404” per their best estimates (“Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization,” see reference below).
As a side note, the events dramatized in the OC’s Book 2 (Soul Engineer) and partially in Book 3 (Brotherhood of Shadows) take place in the year 2349. The timeline was developed independently of Kardashev scale estimates. Other factors were taken into account, such as climate change fallout (known in the OC as the Storm Age), the marriage of cloning and genetic coding for adapting human organisms to their environment (instead of the other way around); advanced hard-simulation technologies capable of replacing all nonrenewable or harmful products and industries, a globalized quantum information system run by satellite-based bio-computing hubs—featuring time-crystal storage and OI (organoid intelligence) integration—called the ORB, and similar developments. (I plan to write a separate abstract on the technological/sociological makeup of Book 2’s civilization, a.k.a., CoMonia.)
Making it to Type II and III
As for reaching the levels of the Type II and III civilizations, the available predictions vary in terms of timeline. If I understand Kardashev’s original forecasts correctly, then we should achieve Type II in less time it took us to get from Homer’s Troy to now. And Type III in about half the time we needed to get from Göbekli Tepe to the present. I quote:
Others postulate a longer trajectory. For example, Michio Kaku estimates between 100,000 years to 1 million for attaining Type II (which is at odds with his placing of Star Trek on that level), and millions of years for achieving a galaxy-spanning Type III (which is likewise in conflict with Kaku’s classification of the Borg as a Type III. Per Star Trek lore, the Borg existed for hundreds of thousands of years at best, not millions—though the Enterprise’s bartender Guinan, whose race encountered the Borg, is vague on this point. Yet according to Gedrin of the Vaadwaur [Voyager episode, “Dragon's Teeth”], the Borg were only a minor factor in the Delta Quadrant in his time—892 years earlier—having only assimilated a handful of colonies. This would suggest that the Borg achieved Type III in less than a thousand years).
Universal and Omega Civilizations:
Two additional levels have been added to the Kardashev scale by theoreticians:
IV. A civilization that harnesses the energy produced on a universal scale.
V. A civilization that harnesses the energy of the multiverse—and that may be capable of creating universes, also known as Type Omega.
Readers of the OC are free to speculate whether the Ouranians—respectively the First Selves—of the Ouranian Chronicles belong to a Level III, IV, or even V type of civilization. Or something else entirely. (Won’t say more. The answer is in Book 4, The Palace of Regret.)
Speaking of Star Trek, the entities associated with the “Q continuum” would presumably represent a Type V or Omega civilization.
But we too can dream, can we not?
Conclusion:
Whether we are assuming somewhere between one to three centuries for reaching the next level, or a couple of thousand years for Level II—as in, complete control of the sun and our solar system, or even a hundred thousand years—frankly, this is neither here nor there as predictions go, especially if we focus only on energy harnessing. It is important to note that our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer and settler took far longer than it will take to achieve complete mastery of our world. And when I say “mastery” I do not mean subjugation and exploitation of our planet, but mastery of ourselves, of our anti-social, pre-Göbekli Tepe, impulses. When we were still going around bashing each other’s heads in for no good reason other than filling our bellies for an additional day. Have we truly forsworn those days, those deadly inclinations? That is the question. As the biologist E.O. Wilson famously declared:
“The real problem of humanity is the following:
We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
Yet if all goes well, we will make it. Make it to the other side of chasm separating us from Type I. We have achieved so much already. The way was long and arduous, yet there is so little left to go. Perhaps less in terms of time than the years separating us from Mozart, let’s say, or Thomas Jefferson, Prince Hall, Goethe and Voltaire. And if Michio Kaku is right, perhaps less than what separates us from World War I.
Lastly, we should keep in mind that, as a species, we will achieve the equivalent of “godhood” far sooner than attaining it on an individual level. This realization should wake us up. Indeed, it should shock us into seeking to collaborate with one another as a species, a.s.a.p. And not only on the grandest of scales but also as individuals in everyday life.
The wonderful mystery of who we are, and what we are becoming, began on that fateful day when we refused for once to bash our neighbor’s head in, and instead stretched out our hand. Civilization only became possible when we started caring for strangers—for people we did not know—yet we recognized something of ourselves in them.
——————–––––––––
Resources and References on the Kardashev scale:
Nikolai Kardashev:
“Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations,” 1964.
“Strategies of Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Fundamental Approach to the Basic Problem,” 1980.
“On the Inevitability and the Possible Structure of Supercivilizations,” 1985.
“Cosmology and Civilizations,” 1997
Carl Sagan:
“On the Detectivity of Advanced Galactic Civilizations,” 1973.
The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, 2nd Edition, 1973.
Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future. New York: Doubleday, 2011.
“The Kardashev Scale With Michio Kaku: Can We Become a Type 1 Civilization?”
M. A. Garrett: “Application of the mid-IR radio correlation to the Ĝ sample and the search for advanced extraterrestrial civilisations,” 2015.
A. Namboodiripad; C. N. Nimal:
“Predicting the Timeline for Earth Achieving Kardashev Scale Type 1 Status,” 2021.
Journal of Science and Technology 6, 2456-5660.
Jonathan H. Jiang, Fuyang Feng, Philip E. Rosen, Kristen A. Fahy, Prithwis Das, Piotr Obacz, Antong Zhang and Zong-Hong Zhu:
“Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization,” 2022.
Antong Zhang, Jiani Yang, Yangcheng Luo, Siteng Fan:
“2060: Civilization, Energy, and Progression of Mankind on the Kardashev Scale,” 2022
On Type IV and V, respectively, Omega:
Michio Kaku proposes a Type IV that harnesses extragalactic radiation, as well as “dark energy.” Physics of the Future, 2011.
Zoltan Galantai, “Long Futures and Type IV Civilizations,” 2003.
Zoltan Galantai, “After Kardashev: Farewell To Super Civilizations,” 2006.
John D. Barrow, Impossibility: The limits of science and the science of limits. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Jolene Creighton, “The Kardashev Scale - Type I, II, III, IV & V Civilization,” 2019.
J. N. Nielsen, “What Kardashev Really Said,” 2023.
J. N. Nielsen, “SETI: Musings on the Barrow Scale,” 2023.
General reading, link and sites:
E.O. Wilson, on the “problem of humanity” quote:
Debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History; Cambridge, MA, USA, 2009.
Jason T. Wright, “Strategies and Advice for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” 2021.
David Lamb, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Philosophical Inquiry, Routledge, 2001.
James Felton, “On The Kardashev Scale Of Civilizations Humanity Hasn't Even Reached Type I.”
Christopher Lovell, “Classifying Civilisations: An Introduction to the Kardashev Scale,” 2016.
Kardashev scale
Comments