When will we advance our Kardashev scale?

We’re at Type I, and we’ll be lucky not to be extinct (Level 0) in the next 500 years, largely due to our failure to realize that side-effects of our ever-increasing energy consumption are about to make our planet uninhabitable for us.

Level II, especially the reference to a Dyson sphere, is silly.

Optimistically, we might realize this and maybe possibly not wipe ourselves out and develop more sustainable technologies. Some of that might include fusion power which might increase our energy available without destroying our planet. Let’s hope we can manage enough non-foolishness to at least stop fixating on suicidal deluded economic thinking (such as measuring success by increased consumption), in time to avert our self-destruction.

As Dyson Spheres require more material than our solar system has, and like Ringworlds such material would need to be stronger than our current understanding of physics deems possible, I must agree with @Zaku that we’ll never hit 2 on that scale as doing so would require ludicrous breakthroughs far beyond those required to make Man fly like a bird.

I wonder if the Dyson sphere was mentioned only as an example of a civilization that was literally capturing the entire energy of their local star, not that a Dyson sphere is the characteristic of that level, it’s the amount of energy mastered by the civilization ?

@dabbler That’s possible. However, I wonder what would really need or want that much energy. The whole idea of measuring “advancement” by amount of energy consumption, seems to me to be part of the pattern of thinking which omits the question of what one would actually want to do, assuming that ever-increasing energy consumption will always be a measure of progress. The group of beings that decides to consume entire star systems for energy seems unlikely to be very advanced in other ways that I would say matter far more than technological feats.

If energy consumption is a measure of progress, then a Pentium 4 would be more advanced than a Haswell i7. Therefore, I see the scale as… dubious.

I agree that consumption of power is flawed as a measure of civilization, or even of technical prowess.
On the other hand don’t all the theoretical FTL “warp-drives” require unprecedented amounts of power? The use of warp drive was among the requisite criteria for a Star Trek contact and this scale might make a similar assumption about sophistication of transportation technology.
I’m not really trying to defend this scale, but come up with possible explanations…

Lots of FTL technology uses a lot of power. To take your Star Trek example, IIRC they use antimatter reactors, which certainly is an advanced technology producing a lot of power, but not, I think, Kardashev scale II power, as they didn’t need particularly much antimatter, rarely really needed to refuel, and when they did refuel, they were more likely to be looking for fresh dilithium crystals™ than antimatter.

Moreover, Star Trek is a fairly good example of more advanced societies showing some restraint rather than trying to voraciously devour the universe following some bizarre hypercapitalist craze. Obsessed capitalists such as Harry Mudd tend to be identified as mentally unstable and somewhat hazardous, and treated accordingly. The invention of the Genesis Device is treated with great caution, and turns out to be more dangerous than good, even though it’s goal is to create Eden-like planets, not to generate uber-scale power generators. The needs of the Federation are amply served by powerful but limited-scale devices.

As you can see by the wiki for the Kardashev scale, level II gets into using planet-or-larger scale objects to generate massive amounts of power, which I can’t think of a Trek example of, though I haven’t watched much beyond the original Trek.

Doctor Who contains some examples of engineering on planetary and stellar scales, but in almost all cases, these tend to be pathological maniac projects which are highly immoral and require Time Lord intervention to prevent them from causing great grief to many.

@Zaku Well, Time Lords practically invented black holes… oh, wait, they did invent black holes!

@jerv Yes, well the Time Lords may have come up with justifiable reasons to work on Kardashev level II and III problems. :-) But for reasons other than energy-generating for its own sake. I don’t expect they’d choose that scale to rate themselves with, unless they were slipping into ill-conceived pridefulness.

@Zaku Time Lords prideful and arrogant? Impossible!~

To reply to Zaku on the top of all answers – I thought we were at Type 0.73 (or was it 0.83?) I read on Wikipedia or KurzweilAI long ago that Type 1 would mean having space elevators and meeting energy needs for the whole world.

Everytime we invent something to improve millions of lives, we inch closer to Type 1. Also, IIRC, Type 1 is where we have permanent colonies in space or other planets, and maybe FTL travel (or is that Type 2? Eh, I’d rather that be Type 1.)

@EgaoNoGenkiAB I was rounding to the nearest whole level, as the question was about “advancing our level”. If you measure by how much energy we **cough**waste**cough** consume, then it changes slightly all the time.

I was referring to the Wikipedia article definition, which the original asker linked in his question.

I would argue that that scale has NOTHING directly to do with improving anyone’s life. It’s about energy consumption. Many things that improve people’s lives use less energy than alternatives which use more energy and may cause misery or destruction.