Start with two. Double it and you have four. Double it again and again and that’s sixteen. Three more times and it is one-hundred-and-twenty-eight. Four more times and it is two-thousand-and forty-eight.

Exponential growth.

Now take 7.7 billion humans and do the same.

You see, the question isn’t as simple as if we are overcrowded. it is a tangled web of when we will become overcrowded, what it will look like, what will we do in our desperation, and ultimately... if we can ever again find equilibrium.

An author once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The implication being, that if it is beyond our understanding, it seems like magic. That is where he was wrong.

Magic is all around us if only we are willing to recognize it. We run an electric current through a wire to conjour light. We play in virtual reality created not by engineers but technomancers, eat crops engineered not by scientists but biomancers, take medicine not from pharmacists but alchemists. That is magic. Take a good, hard look and try to tell yourself it isn't.

You see, magic is not what is beyond our understanding but rather, the miracles that we choose not to see because they are so commonplace. When you get right down to it, technology and magic are not indistinguishable but inseparable.

Running down the hall on stubby legs squealing with delight, my dad chasing me, crashing down around me like an avalanche. I turn a corner and that's it. I don't remember the context or if I got caught. I don't remember the room I ran into. I barely remember the house. I just remember that when I ran and he chased.

I love it when it happens, the flying dream. I leap into the air and soar above the earth. My problems, my worries, and every doubt is melted away by the radiant sun as the clear blue sky embraces me. For a moment, I know the sweet taste of undiluted bliss.

Then it his me, I don't know how to fly. I have no wings. Humans can't fly.

So I fall, not a graceful dive, but a tumbling flail of limbs. Head over heels, I plunge. The ground races up and reality slams into me.

I wake with a start, heart hammering, and a helpless longing in my soul. That moment of bliss has faded and I don't know when or if it will ever return.