One question that strikes me from time to time, when watching science fiction movies, is how similar the worlds depicted seem to ours. Yes, there are walking and talking robots, hyperspace travel, laser guns and all kinds of scientific development. But the fundamental societal structure seems very indifferent. It seems plausible to me, that given millions of years of development, many alien civilizations ought to look very different.

The scientific development could (and I am assuming wildly) be described as exponential, like the chart on the right. It depicts where we are today; as more and more scientific discoveries are made, further scientific possibilities emerge at an exponential rate. The advancements during the last centuries seem to confirm this.

If this development were to undergo unchecked, we would very rapidly become transformed into an extremely advanced society of such magnitude that very few science fiction movies would be made about this. Indeed, scientific endeavors in the Star Trek time would be orders of magnitude faster and greater than depicted.

There is a possibility, however, that the hypothetical scientific development is represented better by an S-curve, than an exponential curve. If so, then there might be a particular timeframe (at least one) in which the entire scientific community take great strides in development. Once an arbitrary point has been reached – say, for instance, warp drive – the scientific growth slackens again, and it becomes more and more costly and complicated to discover further scientific advancements. There is, so to say, a leap which every planet has to go through; once this upper plateau has been reached, the development stagnates again.

It is not unlikely that there may be similar levels of exponential growth beyond this stagnation again, leading to yet undiscovered levels of technology – the Star Trek “Q” may be one civilization that has passed through several of these stages. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, as Arthur C. Clarke reportedly said.

This may be an explanation of why all movies look about the same. Once we have phasers and space ships, and a few oddball robots, much of the excitement may be gone, and we’ll all sit back and remember the good old days of the gold rush.