Drake's Equation The Drake's Equation and Fermi's Paradox are intertwined. Fermi's Paradox asks "where are they all?" based on the numbers churned out by Drake's Equation. Michael Shermer has his own hunch-and posits that one parameter L, the lifetime of a civilization, is generally overestimated. Perhaps. It seems to me likely that there is some sort of inflection point beyond which our species will start manipulating our own genome, and memome (is that a word?). Perhaps we will transform into pure minds in some form that we can't even imagine, and explore universes of our own creation-or calmly extinguish ourselves in a science-fictional nirvana. But before this inflection point will be a period of instability-when big precocious apes have their finger's on the doomsday machine. Perhaps the dumb ape can never resist pushing that bright tempting red button-so like a sweet nutritious fruit of old. For an interesting hard science-fiction rumination on this issue-check out Stephen Baxter's Manifold series. He's an Arthur C. Clarke for our times.