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Michio Kaku, professor of Theoretical Physics, City University of New York, spoke at the Tamkang University conference on Global Soul, Global Mind, Global Action (Taipei November 5-7, 2005)
No-one can predict the future, but perhaps the most authoritative and authentic description of the future comes from interviews with the world's leading scientists. I have interviewed the 150 top scientists who are inventing the future, in three areas: life, the mind, and matter, which are the three pillars of science.
The next 20 years
Moore's Law says computer power should double every 18 months for the next 15 years. In 2020 computer chips will cost about a penny [and] will be everywhere and nowhere, hidden by the billions in the environment, our clothes, the walls, the furniture, even our bodies. The destiny of the computer is to become invisible. Even the word will gradually disappear from the English language. Computation will be quiet, seamless and invisible, the internet following us unnoticeably as we move from house, to car, to office and back.
The future will resemble a fairy tale. The internet will become the Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A friendly face will emerge from our walls, wristwatches, mirrors, glasses, rings, to answer all our questions. As in Pinocchio, our toys will become animate, with chips placed inside, so we can communicate with them. As in Pocahontas, we will talk to the trees and plants and they will talk back to us. As in Peter Pan, advances in biotech will enable us to slow down the aging process.
In biotechnology, we will be able to establish a 'human body shop' capable of replacing livers, hearts, skin, bone, etc. as they wear out, created by proliferating stem cells in a test tube. We will also gradually unlock the secret of the aging process at the genetic and cellular level. Already scientists can grow skin, ears, noses, cartilage, bladders and bone in the laboratory, but not much more. Soon, they will be able to grow livers and other simple organs, thereby curing many ancient diseases of the body caused by failing organs.
Artificial intelligence, however, will probably hit a stumbling block. Our current robots have the intelligence of a retarded cockroach. Perhaps in 2020 they will have the intelligence of a mouse. But after 2020 Moore's Law collapses. This means that humans will not be replaced any time soon by robots. We will not wind up as zoo animals behind bars, with our robot creations throwing us peanuts and making us dance.
Collapse of Moore's Law
The laptop on your desk contains a Pentium chip with a layer 20 atoms across. By 2020, it will be five atoms across and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle takes over, and the chip short circuits.... Silicon becomes unsuitable at the molecular level. The Age of Silicon will come to a close, and there could be large economic disruptions caused by this collapse.
Progress in artificial intelligence may come to a gradual halt around 2020. The two problems facing
AI are pattern recognition and common sense. This means that the jobs market of the future will be dominated by jobs involving common sense (e.g. leadership, judgement, entertainment, art, analysis, creativity) and pattern recognition (e.g vision and non-repetitive jobs). Jobs like brokers, tellers, agents, low level accountants and jobs involving inventory and repetition will be eliminated.
The world economy will change, from commodity-based capitalism to intellectual capitalism. Nations relying solely on commodities will find their economies slowly shrinking: commodity prices on average have dropped continuously for the past 150 years. Nations investing in intellectual capitalism (e.g. common sense and pattern recognition) will be wealthy. But by 2050 and beyond, advances in biotechnology may create an ethical crisis. By 2100 we may even be debating the merits of immortality, which is full of ethical and practical problems.
Four stages of technologies
All technologies move in four stages. Paper, for example, began as papyrus in the Nile communities around 2000 BC. In 1450 Gutenberg invented movable type and printing. The first mass production of paper around 1930 led to personal libraries. Today, at around one cent per sheet, paper is just a source of waste in any modern society.
Water distribution has followed the same steps. A single well would serve a community of 100 people. At stage two we have a faucet, a tap for each person. Stage three sees many taps available to each person, while at stage four water is free, anywhere and everywhere. It has become invisible. (Other participants challenged a worldview which could produce such a statement. - Ed.)
Finally we see the four stages in computing, where in the 1950s, with mainframe computing, up to 100 scientists would share one computer. By 1985, with the arrival of the personal computer, one human would use one computer. Around 2000 one human had access to one million computers. By 2020, with 1c chips, computers will "disappear", becoming embedded in our environments.
Four types of civilisation: Beyond 2100 - Type 1
To analyse civilisations beyond 2100 we may have to use the Kardashev classification of civilisations in space. Each Type is separated from the next by a factor of 10 billion in terns of energy consumption.
A Type 1 civilisation harnesses the power of an entire planet. They can use 100 per cent of the light which reaches them from the sun. In principle, they would be able to modify the weather, altering the course of hurricanes. All planetary forces might gradually be under their control.
A Type II civilisation harnesses the power of an entire star. They control 100 per cent of the output of their mother sun.
A Type III civilization harnesses the power of an entire galaxy, consisting of 10 to 100 billion stars.
By comparison, we use the power of dead plants (oil and coal) and qualify for a Type 0 civilisation. (More precisely, we are a Type .7 civilisation). But we can calculate that we are about 100 to 200 years away from attaining Type I status. We are privileged to be alive to witness the greatest transition in human history, the transition from Type 0 to Type I.
Described as a co-founder of string theory, Dr Kaku's goal is to help complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything, a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long, that will unify all the fundamental forces in the universe.
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