When I picture an advanced civilization, it is easy to imagine enormous spaceships, cities spread across planets, and machines that make everything we have built look like a school science project. Bigger ships. Bigger power supplies. Bigger ambitions.

But what if that picture misses an equally important direction?

What if a civilization’s most impressive achievement is not the size of the things it builds, but how precisely it can control the things those structures are made of?

That is what makes the Barrow scale such an interesting idea.

What Is the Barrow Scale?

John D. Barrow proposed the scale in his 1998 book Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits. It classifies technological capability according to the smallest structures a civilization can manipulate, moving from ordinary objects toward matter’s smallest components and, ultimately, spacetime itself.

Think of it as a change in the question we ask about progress. Instead of only asking how much power a civilization has, we also ask how much precision it has.

There is a difference between having a bigger hammer and understanding how to rearrange the material you are hitting.

Barrow Scale vs. Kardashev Scale

The Kardashev scale focuses on energy use, commonly discussed at planetary, stellar, and galactic scales. Barrow’s scale focuses on increasingly fine control. They describe different dimensions of technological capability, so they can complement each other rather than compete.

I find that distinction useful. Imagine two societies with similar energy supplies. One mostly uses its energy to run larger versions of familiar machines. The other has learned to manufacture objects with extraordinary precision.

Their power bills might look similar. Their capabilities might not.

The Seven Levels of the Barrow Scale

The following progression uses the BI through BVI and BΩ notation summarized in researcher Clément Vidal’s discussion of the scale.

LevelWhat the civilization can manipulateBIObjects at its own physical scale, including ordinary structures and materials.BIIGenes and the biological information they carry.BIIIMolecules and molecular bonds.BIVIndividual atoms.BVAtomic nuclei.BVIElementary particles.BΩ, or OmegaThe fundamental structure of space and time.

The categories are not perfectly separate. Genes consist of DNA, so working with genetic information also involves working with molecules. That overlap is a good reason to treat the scale as a broad framework rather than a perfectly organized technology checklist.

Still, the overall question is compelling: How much control can intelligence gain over the physical world?

We Have Already Started Moving Inward

The atomic level is not entirely science fiction.

In 1989, IBM researchers Donald Eigler and Erhard Schweizer used a scanning tunneling microscope to position individual xenon atoms into the letters “IBM.” The work required carefully controlled conditions, including an extremely cold environment and an ultrahigh vacuum.

I love that example because it makes the idea concrete. They were not simply making smaller letters with a smaller pen. They were placing the atoms themselves.

IBM’s later research included carbon nanotube transistors and a single-molecule computer circuit. These developments illustrate how technological progress can involve gaining finer control over matter, not merely building larger equipment.

But there is an important distinction here: demonstrating control is not the same as making that control practical everywhere.

A research paper exploring the possibility of an “atom printer” identifies major obstacles, including processing time, resolution, and increasingly significant fluctuations at tiny scales. Positioning atoms in a carefully managed experiment is a very different challenge from manufacturing an everyday object with complete control over its atomic structure.

That gap is where the scale becomes more interesting than a simple list of achievements.

Where Does Humanity Fit?

I would be cautious about giving humanity a single neat label. Our capabilities overlap, and being able to do something under specific conditions does not mean we have complete mastery of it.

For example, nuclear power already depends on changes inside atomic nuclei. In a fission reactor, splitting nuclei releases energy that can be used to produce electricity. That is an established technology, not a prediction about a distant civilization.

Likewise, particle accelerators use electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles, and CERN’s facilities work with protons and atomic nuclei. We can investigate matter at scales far below what we can see directly.

Neither fact automatically means we can engineer anything we please at those scales.

My preferred way to think about the question is to ask what we can do reliably, repeatedly, and at useful scale. Can we observe something? Can we change it? Can we control the result? Can we turn that control into a practical technology?

Those are different achievements. A single civilization score can hide the differences.

The Top of the Scale Is Not a Promise

The Omega level is where I think we need the most restraint.

It is tempting to hear “control over spacetime” and immediately imagine time machines, shortcuts across the universe, or the ability to rewrite reality. Those make entertaining thought experiments. Naming a level, however, does not provide an engineering method for reaching it.

Our understanding of fundamental physics also remains incomplete. CERN explains that the Standard Model describes elementary particles and three fundamental interactions, but does not incorporate gravity into that framework.

For me, that makes the upper end of the Barrow scale a question worth exploring, not a list of technologies we should assume are inevitable.

There is also a basic distinction between manipulating something according to physical laws and changing those laws. The first does not automatically imply the second.

Why I Like the Barrow Scale

What appeals to me most is that it challenges my instinct to equate technological achievement with size.

A huge machine is easy to admire. Precision can be harder to appreciate, especially when the work happens at a scale we cannot directly see. Yet I would rather judge a technology by what it enables than by how impressive its building looks.

Imagine a future civilization that invests heavily in making its tools more precise, its manufacturing more capable, and its use of materials more deliberate. It might still build enormous structures. It might still explore other worlds. But those would not necessarily be its most remarkable accomplishments.

The Barrow scale also leaves room for a question no technology ranking can answer: What does a civilization choose to do with its abilities?

Greater control would not automatically produce greater wisdom. Being able to manipulate matter would tell us something about a society’s tools, but much less about its judgment.

I still like the idea of giant spaceships. I am not giving those up.

But I also like a framework that reminds me to look beyond them. The future might involve reaching farther into space while learning to work more carefully with what is already in front of us.

The biggest technological leap might come from learning to control something smaller.