Our society will expand and explore. Our explorers will be machines who report back to us. Latency is irrelevant -- humans will continue doing our thing here while our machines reach out. We'll adjust our actions depending on what our machines tell us when they return.

And if real VR is possible, future humans won't be like us. They'll be hybrids, pure machines, or software. They'll be able to multiprocess in ways that make time lapses irrelevant. Latency may be abhorred, but it will also be bypassed.

If there's nothing worth going out there for, we won't go. If there is, we will.

Our galaxy is only 100,000 light years in diameter. With advanced sub-light speed technology (consistent with SR but not yet created), we may be able to explore the whole galaxy in a bit over 100,000 years (50,000 to reach the outskirts, 50,000 to get back). But we'll learn a lot well before then. That's a long time for us and even longer for our descendants. But they'll have a lot more time than we do.

If we can survive, we'll do that. Because we're human and we're curious. And because what we learn may become crucial to our continued existence.

Don't underestimate us.