Homogenization of the Milky Way

It is possible to speculate on the very distant future of advanced civilizations. We can imagine such societies in excellent harmony with their environments, their biology, and the vagaries of their politics, so that they enjoy extraordinarily long lifetimes. Communications would long have been established with many other such civilizations. The diffusion of knowledge, techniques, and points of view would occur at the velocity of light. In time, the diverse cultures of the Galaxy, involving a large number of quite different-looking organisms, based on different biochemistries and different initial cultures, would become homogenized – just as the diverse cultures of Earth today are in the process of homogenization.

But such cultural homogenization of the Galaxy will take a long time. One round-trip communication by radio between us and the center of the Milky Way Galaxy requires sixty thousand years. Cultural homogenization of the Galaxy would require many such exchanges, even if each exchange involved very large amounts of information conveyed very efficiently. I find it difficult to believe that fewer than one hundred exchanges between the remotest parts of the Galaxy would be adequate for galactic cultural homogenization.

The minimum lifetime for the homogenization of the Galaxy would thus be many millions of years. The constituent societies must, of course, be stable for comparable periods of time. Such homogenization need not be desirable, but there are still strong and obvious pressures for it to occur, as is also the case on the Earth. If there exists a galactic community of civilizations that truly embraces much of the Milky Way, and if we are right that no information can be transmitted at a velocity faster than light, then most of the members – and all of the founding members – of such a community must be at least millions of years more advanced than we are. For this reason, I think it a great conceit, the idea of the present Earth establishing radio contact and becoming a member of a galactic federation – something like a bluejay or an armadillo applying to the United Nations for member-nation status.

Just as human culture is undergoing a process of homogenization, culture of the Milky Way will eventually undergo the same.