Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?

“Life in a distant future as imagined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be, in many ways, like life today. People will socialise, commute to work and have weekends to rest. The only difference is that we will be living in huge spinning cylinders that closely mimic our planet, but are actually in orbit around it. The world’s richest man, according to Forbes, is one of several prominent people who are thinking seriously about what humans might do if they ever have to develop habitats beyond Earth….”
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"Humankind’s future is, indeed, beyond Earth, but not in the extraterrestrial sense.  Rather, we are evolving away from the physical realm of existence and into more subtle realms.  Realms such as computerization, where exponential intelligence can be encoded into a chip or even an invisible cloud.  Or an astral realm consisting entirely of the mind and its creations.  The trajectory of evolution is away from the physical world, and thus our future is likely in an entirely different dimension."

"We have already shown incredible promise in space exploration in just the last 60 years.  So much so that it’s hard to deny that we are on a trajectory to explore the galaxy at some point, potentially expanding our reach to another earth-like planet.  Yet the question is, if human-created Artificial Intelligence is responsible for finding and colonizing something beyond Earth, does our species get credit?  Do we get to go there?  Or will AI claim these new discoveries for itself?"

“Nuclear war. Runaway climate change. A global pandemic. Today our world faces all manner of existential threats. But scary possibilities like these are nothing compared to what astronomers say lies in store for Earth. Our planet’s ultimate destiny is to be baked, blasted, and eventually disintegrated. There’s nothing we can do to prevent this cataclysm. Yet according to scientists who study the far future, including Yale University astronomer Gregory Laughlin, the prospect for life is, oddly, rather bright. Given technological advances and the continuing evolution of our species, humans should be able to survive — in some form — long after Earth has ceased to exist. But our distant descendants are going to have to do some planet-hopping….”
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