Automation
Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is performed without human assistance. Automation or automatic control is the use of various control systems for operating equipment such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention. Some processes have been completely automated.
Electronics
Electronics is the discipline dealing with the development and application of devices and systems involving the flow of electrons in a vacuum, in gaseous media, and in semiconductors. Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes, integrated circuits, optoelectronics, and sensors, associated passive electrical components, and interconnection technologies. Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements; such a circuit is described as an electronic circuit.
Space
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework.
Space
Kant's attitude toward Newton's absolute space is somewhat confused. At times he defends the absoluteness... At other times he presents his own arguments in favor of the relativity of space and motion. ...At any rate the problem of the absoluteness of space and time in classical science refers not to the essence of space and time (a problem which would degenerate into one of metaphysics, hence would be meaningless to the scientists), but solely to a discussion of those conceptions which are demanded of the world of experience. Hence we may realise that a man ignorant of mechanics is in no position to pass an opinion one way or the other. And Kant's knowledge of Newtonian mechanics was extremely poor, to say the least.
A. D'Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein (1927) footnote, p. 417-418
Space
Without space, there is no time.
Dejan Stojanovic in “A Star Deep in the Mind”
Space
Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction of space itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth.
Martin Rees, Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning, New York: Basic Books, 18 March 2003, LCC CB161.R38 2003, ISBN 9780465068623
