People are starting to get quite excited about extrasolar planets – no surprise among the science fiction community, perhaps, but an interesting sea-change in a general population that seemed quite cynical about space just a few years ago. The news just keeps coming, too – the first primitive ‘mapping’ of an exoplanet’s surface has just been performed.

One person who’s less than bothered by it all is transhumanist philosopher Michael Anissimov, who points out that if we become cyborg beings with accelerated relative brain speeds, the subjective distances involved in interstellar travel will render it even more implausible and unappealing than it is today. And if you think the notion of mind uploading is so implausible as to render his argument worthless, just remember that not so long ago we’d have treated the idea of travelling to other planets with just the same sort of dismissal.