Coda
We humans are unable to predict the future, and we always will be. With an appeal to this observation that, like so many paradoxes, is only seemingly paradoxical, I shall end this chapter with a brief speculation.
We have today a rapidly developing World Wide Web of Information, which was never planned as such, but is the unforeseen result of a multitude of planned human actions and interactions. Reflecting about a possible scenario for a next stage in the history of human use of fire and fuel, it seems reasonable to suppose that, unless very drastic changes happen, we will continue to need large supplies of extra-somatic energy, probably even a great deal larger than today. We shall have to restrain our habitual tendency to rely on fire and fuel; instead, we may turn our efforts to a more direct and efficient use of sunlight than we have been able to achieve until now. If technologists could succeed in meeting this challenge, they could help build a World Wide Web of Energy, connecting the Northern and Southern as well as the Eastern and Western hemispheres, creating a network in which it would always be summer and the sun would never set.
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