World’s largest heat pump under development in Germany

A dramatic new scale for a hydro-thermal project.

Struck by how deeply humanity’s growing economic power has transformed the “power economy” and “resource economy” of nature. Even in places we don’t consider the natural environment anymore we keep finding new levers to pull, fulcrums of leverage.

If we did it slowly, impacted life would evolve to be very dependent on our changes. Which might be precarious. But in terms of displacement, in speed, pervasiveness and relentlessness, nature doesn’t have much hope to adapt in any stable deeply optimized way any more.

Of course, zooming out, we are still part of natural life. The flurry of artifacts are still driven by survival, resource terrain exploration, selection, propagation. But it is a very different phase that nature is moving into.

Presumably in X years, terrestrial engineered resource use will exceed evolved resource use, and as that goes off planet, never look back. Extra-Earth “Life” is going to change and keep spreading at higher scales, of speed and pervasiveness.

Will the large heavenly bodies, or myriads of small orbital bodies see the most activity next? Where will the subsequent waves gestate and spread from? And go? Africa’s days of vibrant genesis have come full term. Will Earth retain anything like the macro biosphere we still have? Remain a cradle, a bread basket, become a backwater or desert?

We are all experiencing the uncertainty of how much of our economy will go self-designed in 10 years or 20. In 100 years? One small lifetime for some, a giant leap for Terrans. All we know is we don’t know what the brave new world will look like at all. No pundit or futurist has a clue.

I have experienced a life in which on personal terms, five years regularly exceeded my ability to predict major changes in my life. That has been a stable personal interval of “singularity” for me. As I write this, I am unsure of my own life’s trajectory beyond even one year any more. And that relative temporal “stability” is shrinking.

Life doesn’t just adapt. It adapts to adapt faster. And now, adapts, to adapt faster, faster. That may be a better universal definition of intelligence than many that have been proposed.

The genomic, epigenetic biosphere, and even the glacially emergent geo/hydrosphere, are quickly morphing into the increasingly frenetic self-designed intellisphere, physically manifested with its own mechasphere. Actively or by the accident of proximity.

Whether by gathering and concentrating the heat from colder substrates, or by creating a local galaxy of tiny artificial stellar fires, the glowing engines of life are just hitting ignition. How far and fast this new explosion?