From

"Visions: How science will revolutionize the 21st century"

by Michio Kaku

Henry Semat Professor of Physics, City College of New York

Chapter 1: Choreographers of Matter, Life, and Intelligence

THREE CENTURIES AGO, Isaac Newton wrote: ". . . to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on a seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." When Newton surveyed the vast ocean of truth which lay before him, the laws of nature were shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mystery, awe, and superstition. Science as we know it did not exist.

Life in Newton's time was short, cruel, and brutish. People were illiter¬ate for the most part, never owned a book or entered a classroom, and rarely ventured beyond several miles of their birthplace. During the day, they toiled at backbreaking work in the fields under a merciless sun. At night, there was usually no entertainment or relief to comfort them ex¬cept the empty sounds of the night. Most people knew firsthand the gnawing pain of hunger and chronic, debilitating disease. Most people would live not much longer than age thirty, and would see many of their ten or so children die in infancy.

But the few wondrous shells and pebbles picked up by Newton and other scientists on the seashore helped to trigger a marvelous chain of events. A profound transformation occurred in human society. With Newton's mechanics came powerful machines, and eventually the steam engine, the motive force which reshaped the world by overturning agrar¬ian society, spawning factories and stimulating commerce, unleashing the industrial revolution, and opening up entire continents with the railroad.

By the nineteenth century, a period of intense scientific discovery was well underway. Remarkable advances in science and medicine helped to lift people out of wretched poverty and ignorance, enrich their lives, empower them with knowledge, open their eyes to new worlds, and even¬tually unleash complex forces which would topple the feudal dynasties, fiefdoms, and empires of Europe.

By the end of the twentieth century, science had reached the end of an era, unlocking the secrets of the atom, unraveling the molecule of life, and creating the electronic computer. With these three fundamental dis¬coveries, triggered by the quantum revolution, the DNA revolution, and the computer revolution, the basic laws of matter, life, and computation were, in the main, finally solved.

That epic phase of science is now drawing to a close; one era is ending and another is only beginning.

This book is about this new dynamic era of science and technology which is now unfolding before our eyes. It focuses on science in the next 100 years, and beyond. The next era of science promises to be an even deeper, more thoroughgoing, more penetrating one than the last.

Clearly, we are on the threshold of yet another revolution. Human knowledge is doubling every ten years. In the past decade, more scientific knowledge has been created than in all of human history. Computer power is doubling every eighteen months. The Internet is doubling every year. The number of DNA sequences we can analyze is doubling every two years. Almost daily, the headlines herald new advances in computers, telecommunications, biotechnology, and space exploration. In the wake of this technological upheaval, entire industries and lifestyles are being overturned, only to give rise to entirely new ones. But these rapid, bewil¬dering changes are not just quantitative. They mark the birth pangs of a new era.

Today, we are again like children walking on the seashore. But the ocean that Newton knew as a boy has largely disappeared. Before us lies a new ocean, the ocean of endless scientific possibilities and applications, giving us the potential for the first time to manipulate and mold these forces of Nature to our wishes.

For most of human history, we could only watch, like bystanders, the beautiful dance of Nature. But today, we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. It is this tenet that forms the central message of Visions. The era now unfolding makes this one of the most exciting times to be alive, allowing us to reap the fruits of the last 2,000 years of science. The Age of Discovery in science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery.

Emerging Consensus Among Scientists

What will the future look like? Science fiction writers have sometimes made preposterous predictions about the decades ahead, from vacationing on Mars to banishing all diseases. And even in the popular press, all too often an eccentric social critic's individual prejudices are substituted for the consensus within the scientific community. (In 1996, for example, The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to life in the next 100 years. Journalists, sociologists, writers, fashion designers, artists, and phi¬losophers all submitted their thoughts. Remarkably, not a single scientist was consulted.)

The point here is that predictions about the future made by profes¬sional scientists tend to be based much more substantially on the realities of scientific knowledge than those made by social critics, or even those by scientists of the past whose predictions were made before the fundamen¬tal scientific laws were completely known.

It is, I think, an important distinction between Visions, which concerns an emerging consensus among the scientists themselves, and the predic¬tions in the popular press made almost exclusively by writers, journalists, sociologists, science fiction writers, and others who are consumers of tech¬nology, rather than by those who have helped to shape and create it. (One is reminded of the prediction made by Admiral William Leahy to Presi¬dent Truman in 1945: "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. . . . The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I will speak as an expert in explosives." The admiral, like many "futurists" today, was substituting his own prejudices for the consensus of physicists working on the bomb.)

As a research physicist, I believe that physicists have been particularly successful at predicting the broad outlines of the future. Professionally, I work in one of the most fundamental areas of physics, the quest to com¬plete Einstein's dream of a "theory of everything." As a result, I am constantly reminded of the ways in which quantum physics touches many of the key discoveries that shaped the twentieth century.

In the past, the track record of physicists has been formidable: we have been intimately involved with introducing a host of pivotal inventions (TV, radio, radar, X-rays, the transistor, the computer, the laser, the atomic bomb), decoding the DNA molecule, opening new dimensions in probing the body with PET, MRI, and CAT scans, and even designing the Internet and the World Wide Web. Physicists are by no means seers who can foretell the future (and we certainly haven't been spared our share of silly predictions!). Nonetheless, it is true that some of the shrewd observations and penetrating insights of leading physicists in the history of science have opened up entirely new fields.

There undoubtedly will be some astonishing surprises, twists of fate, and embarrassing gaps in this vision of the future: I will almost inevitably overlook some important inventions and discoveries of the twenty-first century. But by focusing on the interrelations between the three great scientific revolutions, and by consulting with the scientists who are ac¬tively bringing about this revolution and examining their discoveries, it is my hope that we can see the direction of science in the future with considerable insight and accuracy.

Over the past ten years, while working on this book, I have had the rare privilege of interviewing over 150 scientists, including a good many Nobel Laureates, in part during the course of preparing a weekly national science radio program and producing science commentaries.

These are the scientists who are tirelessly working in the trenches, who are laying the foundations of the twenty-first century, many of whom are opening up new avenues and vistas for scientific discovery. In these inter¬views, as well as through my own work and research, I was able to go back over the vast panorama of science laid out before me and draw from a wide variety of expertise and knowledge. These scientists have graciously opened their offices and their laboratories and shared their most intimate scientific ideas with me. In this book, I've tried to return the favor by capturing the raw excitement and vitality of their scientific discoveries, for it is essential to instill the romance and excitement of science in the general public, especially the young, if democracy is to remain a vibrant and resonating force in an increasingly technological and bewildering world.

The fact is that there is a rough consensus emerging among those engaged in research about how the future will evolve. Because the laws behind the quantum theory, computers, and molecular biology are now well established, it is possible for scientists to generally predict the paths of scientific progress in the future. This is the central reason why the predic¬tions made here, I feel, are more accurate than those of the past. What is emerging is the following.

The Three Pillars of Science: Matter. Life. The Mind.

These three elements form the pillars of modern science. Historians will most likely record that the crowning achievement of twentieth-cen¬tury science was unraveling the basic components underlying these three pillars, culminating in the splitting of the nucleus of the atom, the decod¬ing of the nucleus of the cell, and the development of the electronic computer. With our basic understanding of matter and life largely com¬plete, we are witnessing the close of one of the great chapters in the history of science. (This does not mean that all the laws of these three pillars are completely known, only the most fundamental. For example, although the laws of electronic computers are well known, only some of the basic laws of artificial intelligence and the brain are known.)

The first of these twentieth-century revolutions was the quantum revolution, the most fundamental of all. It was the quantum revolution that later helped to spawn the two other great scientific revolutions, the biomolecular revolution and the computer revolution.

THE QUANTUM REVOLUTION

Since time immemorial, people have speculated what the world was made of. The Greeks thought that the universe was made of four elements: water, air, earth, and fire. The philosopher Democritus believed that even these could be broken down into smaller units, which he called "atoms." But attempts to explain how atoms could create the vast, wondrous diver¬sity of matter we see in Nature always faltered. Even Newton, who dis¬covered the cosmic laws which guided the motion of planets and moons, was at a loss to explain the bewildering nature of matter.

All this changed in 1925 with the birth of the quantum theory, which has unleashed a thundering tidal wave of scientific discovery that contin¬ues to surge unabated to this day. The quantum revolution has now given us an almost complete description of matter, allowing us to describe the seemingly infinite multiplicity of matter we see arrayed around us in terms of a handful of particles, in the same way that a richly decorated tapestry is woven from a few colored strands.

The quantum theory, created by Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg, and many others, reduced the mystery of matter to a few postulates. First, that energy is not continuous, as the ancients thought, but occurs in discrete bundles, called "quanta." (The photon, for example, is a quan¬tum or packet of light.) Second, that subatomic particles have both parti¬cle and wavelike qualities, obeying a well-defined equation, the celebrated Schroedinger wave equation, which determines the probability that certain events occur. With this equation, we can mathematically predict the properties of a wide variety of substances before creating them in the laboratory. The culmination of the quantum theory is the Standard Model, which can predict the properties of everything from tiny sub¬atomic quarks to giant supernovas in outer space.

In the twentieth century, the quantum theory has given us the ability to understand the matter we see around us. In the next century, the quan¬tum revolution may open the door to the next step: the ability to manipu¬late and choreograph new forms of matter, almost at will.

THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION

In the past, computers were mathematical curiosities; they were su¬premely clumsy, messy contraptions, consisting of a complex mass of gears, levers, and cogs. During World War II, mechanical computers were replaced by vacuum tubes, but they were also monstrous in size, filling up entire rooms with racks of thousands of vacuum tubes.

The turning point came in 1948, when scientists at Bell Laboratories discovered the transistor, which made possible the modern computer. A decade after that, the laser was discovered, which is essential to the In¬ternet and the information highway. Both are quantum mechanical de¬vices.

In the quantum theory, electricity can be understood as the movement of electrons, just as droplets of water can make a river. But one of the surprises of the quantum theory is that there are "bubbles" or "holes" in the current, corresponding to vacancies in electron states, which act as if they are electrons with positive charge. The motion of these currents of both holes and electrons allows transistors to amplify tiny electrical sig¬nals, which forms the basis of modern electronics.

Today, tens of millions of transistors can be crammed into an area the size of a fingernail. In the future, our lifestyles will be irrevocably changed when microchips become so plentiful that intelligent systems are dis¬persed by the millions into all parts of our environment.

In the past, we could only marvel at the precious phenomenon called intelligence; in the future, we will be able to manipulate it according to our wishes.

THE BIOMOLECULAR REVOLUTION

Historically, many biologists Were influenced by the theory of "vital¬ism"-i.e., that a mysterious "life force" or substance animated living things. This view was challenged when Schrodinger, in his 1944 book What Is Life?, dared to claim that life could be explained by a "genetic code" written on the molecules within a cell. It was a bold idea: that the secret of life could be explained by using the quantum theory.

James Watson and Francis Crick, inspired by Schrodinger's book, eventually proved his conjecture by using X-ray crystallography. By ana¬lyzing the pattern of X-rays scattered off a DNA molecule, they were able to reconstruct the detailed atomic structure of DNA and identify its double-helical nature. Since the quantum theory also gives us the precise bonding angles and bonding strength between atoms, it enables us to determine the position of practically all the individual molecules in the genetic code of a complex virus like HIV.

The techniques of molecular biology will allow us to read the genetic code of life as we would read a book. Already, the complete DNA code of several living organisms, like viruses, single-cell bacteria, and yeast, have been completely decoded, molecule for molecule.

The complete human genome will be decoded by the year 2005, giving us an "owner's manual" for a human being. This will set the stage for twenty-first century science and medicine. Instead of watching the dance of life, the biomolecular revolution will ultimately give us the nearly god¬like ability to manipulate life almost at will.

From Passive Bystanders to Active Choreographers of Nature

Some commentators, witnessing these historic advances in science over the past century, have claimed that we are seeing the demise of the scien¬tific enterprise. John Horgan, in his book The End of Science, writes: "If one believes in science, one must accept the possibility-even the proba¬bility-that the great era of scientific discovery is over. . . . Further re¬search may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incre¬mental, diminishing returns."

In one limited sense, Horgan is right. Modern science has no doubt uncovered the fundamental laws underlying most of the disciplines of science: the quantum theory of matter, Einstein's theory of space-time, the Big Bang theory of cosmology, the Darwinian theory of evolution, and the molecular basis of DNA and life. Despite some notable excep¬tions (e.g., determining the nature of consciousness and proving that superstring theory, my particular field of specialization, is the fabled unified field theory), the "great ideas" of science, for the most part, have proba¬bly been found.

Likewise, the era of reductionism-i.e., reducing everything to its smallest components-is coming to a close. Reductionism has been spec¬tacularly successful in the twentieth century, unlocking the secrets of the atom, the DNA molecule, and the logic circuits of the computer. But reductionism has probably, in the main, run its course.

However, this is just the beginning of the romance of science. These scientific milestones certainly mark a significant break with the ancient past, when Nature was interpreted through the prism of animism, mysti¬cism, and spiritualism. But they only open the door to an entirely new era of science.

The next century will witness an even more far-reaching scientific revolution, as we make the transition from unraveling the secrets of Na¬ture to becoming masters of Nature.

Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Laureate in physics, describes this differ¬ence metaphorically when he tells the story of a visitor named Arthur from another planet meeting earthlings for the first time:

"Arthur [is] an intelligent alien from a distant planet who arrives at Washington Square [in New York City] and observes two old codgers playing chess. Curious, Arthur gives himself two tasks: to learn the rules of the game, and to become a grand master." By carefully watching the moves, Arthur is gradually able to reconstruct the rules of the game: how pawns advance, how queens capture knights, and how vulnerable kings are. However, just knowing the rules does not mean that Arthur has become a grand master! As Glashow adds: "Both kinds of endeavors are important-one more 'relevant,' the other more 'fundamental.' Both rep¬resent immense challenges to the human intellect."

In some sense, science has finally decoded many of the fundamental "rules of Nature," but this does not mean that we have become grand masters. Likewise, the dance of elementary particles deep inside stars and the rhythms of DNA molecules coiling and uncoiling within our bodies have been largely deciphered, but this does not mean that we have be¬come master choreographers of life.

In fact, the end of the twentieth century, which ended the first great phase in the history of science, has only opened the door to the exciting developments of the next. We are now making the transition from ama¬teur chess players to grand masters, from observers to choreographers of Nature.

From Reductionism to Synergy

Similarly, this is creating a new approach in the way in which scientists view their own discipline. In the past, the reductionist approach has paid off handsomely, eventually establishing the foundation for modern phys¬ics, chemistry, and biology.

At the heart of this success was the discovery of the quantum theory, which helped to spark the other two revolutions.

The quantum revolution gave birth to the computer and biomolecular revolutions via the transistor, laser, X-ray crystallography, and the theory of molecular bonds.

But since the quantum theory helped to initiate these other revolutions in the 1950s, they have since matured and grown on their own, largely independent of physics and of each other. The watchword was specializa¬tion, as scientists probed deeper and deeper into their subdisciplines,

smugly ignoring the developments in other fields. But now the heyday of reductionism has probably passed. Seemingly impenetrable obstacles have been encountered which cannot be solved by the simple reductionist ap¬proach. This is heralding a new era, one of synergy between the three fundamental revolutions.

This is the second main theme of this book.

The twenty-first century, unlike the previous ones, will be typified by synergy, the cross-fertilization between all three fields, which will mark a sharp turning point in the development of science. The cross-pollination between these three revolutions will be vastly accelerated and will enrich the development of science, giving us unprecedented power to manipu¬late matter, life, and intelligence.

In fact, it will be difficult to be a research scientist in the future without having some working knowledge of all these three areas. Already, scien¬tists who do not have some understanding of these three revolutions are finding themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

The new relationship between the three revolutions is an intensely dynamic one. Often, when an impasse is reached in one area, usually a totally unexpected development in another field is found to contain the solution. For example, biologists once despaired of ever deciphering the millions of genes which contain the blueprint for life. But the recent torrent of genes being discovered in our laboratories is being driven largely by a development in another field: the exponential increase in computer power, which is mechanizing and automating the gene-sequencing process. Similarly, silicon computer chips will eventually hit a roadblock as they become too clumsy for the computer of the next cen¬tury. But new advances in DNA research are making possible a new type of computer architecture which actually computes on organic molecules. Thus, discoveries in one field nourish and fertilize discoveries in totally unrelated fields. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

One of the consequences of this intense synergy between these revolu¬tions is that the steady pace of scientific discovery is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate.

The Wealth of Nations

This acceleration of science and technology into the next century will necessarily have vast repercussions on the wealth of nations and our stan¬dard of living. For the past three centuries, wealth was usually accumu¬lated by those nations which were endowed with rich natural resources or which amassed large amounts of capital. The rise of the Great Powers of

Europe in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century follows this classic textbook principle.

However, as Lester C. Thurow, former dean of MIT's Sloan School of Management, has stressed, in the coming century, there will be a historic movement in wealth away from nations with natural resources and capi¬tal. In the same way that shirts in the earth's tectonic plates can generate powerful earthquakes, this seismic shift in wealth will reshape the distri¬bution of power on the planet. Thurow writes: "In the twenty-first cen¬tury, brainpower and imagination, invention, and the organization of new technologies are the key strategic ingredients." In fact, many nations which are richly endowed with abundant natural resources will find their wealth vastly reduced because, in the marketplace of the future, commod¬ities will be cheap, trade will be global, and markets will be linked elec¬tronically. Already, the commodity prices of many natural resources plummeted some 60 percent from the 1970s to the 1990s, and, in Thurow's estimation, will plummet another 60 percent by 2020.

Even capital itself will be reduced to a commodity, racing around the globe electronically. Many nations which are barren of natural resources will flourish in the next century because they placed a premium on those technologies which can give them a competitive edge in the global mar¬ketplace. "Today, knowledge and skills now stand alone as the only source of comparative advantage," Thurow asserts.

As a consequence, some nations have drawn up lists of the key technol¬ogies which will serve as the engines of wealth and prosperity into the next century. A typical list was compiled in 1990 by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. That list included:

• microelectronics

• biotechnology

• the new material science industries

• telecommunications

• civilian aircraft manufacturing

• machine tools and robots

• computers (hardware and software)

Without exception, every one of the technologies singled out to lead the twenty-first century are deeply rooted in the quantum, computer, and DNA revolutions.

The point is that these three scientific revolutions are not only the key to scientific breakthroughs in the next century; they are also the dynamic engines of wealth and prosperity. Nations may rise and fall on their ability to master these three revolutions. In any activity, there are winners and losers. The winners will likely be those nations which fully grasp the vital impor-

tance of these three scientific revolutions. Those who would scoff at the power of these revolutions may find themselves marginalized in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century.

Time Frames for the Future

In making predictions about the future, it is crucial to understand the time frame being discussed, for, obviously, different technologies will mature at different times. The time frames of the predictions made in Visions fall into three categories: those breakthroughs and technologies that will evolve between now and the year 2020, those that will evolve from 2020 to 2050, and those that will emerge from 2050 to the end of the twenty-first century. (These are not absolute time frames; they repre¬sent only the general period in which certain technologies and sciences will reach fruition.)

TO THE YEAR 2020

From now to the year 2020, scientists foresee an explosion in scientific activity such as the world has never seen before. In two key technologies, computer power and DNA sequencing, we will see entire industries rise and fall on the basis of breathtaking scientific advances. Since the 1950s, the power of our computers has advanced by a factor of roughly ten billion. In fact, because both computer power and DNA sequencing double roughly every two years, one can compute the rough time frame over which many scientific breakthroughs will take place. This means that predictions about the future of computers and biotechnology can be quantified with reasonable statistical accuracy through the year 2020.

For computers, this staggering growth rate is quantified by Moore's law, which states that computer power doubles roughly every eighteen months. (This was first stated in 196Xby Gordon Moore, co-founder of the Intel Corp. It is not a scientific law, in the sense of Newton's laws, but a rule-of-thumb which has uncannily predicted the evolution of computer power for several decades.) Moore's law, in turn, determines the fate of multibillion-dollar computer corporations, which base their future pro¬jections and product lines on the expectation of continued growth. By 2020, microprocessors will likely be as cheap and plentiful as scrap paper, scattered by the millions into the environment, allowing us to place intel¬ligent systems everywhere. This will change everything around us, in¬cluding the nature of commerce, the wealth of nations, and the way we communicate, work, play, and live. This will give us smart homes, cars, TVs, clothes, jewelry, and money. We will speak to our appliances, and they will speak back. Scientists also expect the Internet will wire up the entire planet and evolve into a membrane consisting of millions of com¬puter networks, creating an "intelligent planet." The Internet will even¬tually become a "Magic Mirror" that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race.

Because of revolutionary advances in our ability to etch ever-smaller transistors onto silicon wafers, scientists expect this relentless drive to continue to generate newer and more powerful computers up to 2020, when the iron laws of quantum physics eventually take over once again. By then, the size of microchip components will be so small-roughly on the scale of molecules-that quantum effects will necessarily dominate and the fabled Age of Silicon will end.

The growth curve for biotechnology will be equally spectacular in this period. In biomolecular research, what is driving the remarkable ability to decode the secret of life is the introduction of computers and robots to automate the process of DNA sequencing. This process will continue unabated until roughly 2020, until literally thousands of organisms will have their complete DNA code unraveled. By then, it may be possible for anyone on earth to have their personal DNA code stored on a CD. We will then have the Encyclopedia of Life.

This will have profound implications for biology and medicine. Many genetic diseases will be eliminated by injecting people's cells with the correct gene. Because cancer is now being revealed to be a series of genetic mutations, large classes of cancers may be curable at last, without invasive surgery or chemotherapy. Similarly, many of the microorganisms involved in infectious diseases will be conquered in virtual reality by lo¬cating the molecular weak spots in their armor and creating agents to attack those weak spots. Our molecular knowledge of cell development will be so advanced that we will be able to grow entire organs in the laboratory, including livers and, kidneys.

FROM 2020 TO 2050

The prediction of explosive growth of computer power and DNA se¬quencing from now through 2020 is somewhat deceptive, in that both are driven by known technologies. Computer power is driven by packing more and more transistors onto microprocessors, while DNA sequencing is driven by computerization. Obviously, these technologies cannot indef¬initely continue to grow exponentially. Sooner or later, a bottleneck will be hit.

By around 2020, both will encounter large obstacles. Because of the limits of silicon chip technology, eventually we will be forced to invent new technologies whose potentials are largely unexplored and untested, from optical computers, molecular computers, and DNA computers to quantum computers. Radically new designs must be developed, based on the quantum theory, which will likely disrupt progress in computer sci¬ence. Eventually, the reign of the microprocessor will end, and new types of quantum devices will take over.

If these difficulties in computer technology can be overcome, then the period 2020 to 2050 may mark the entrance into the marketplace of an entirely new kind of technology: true robot automatons that have com¬mon sense, can understand human language, can recognize and manipu¬late objects in their environment, and can learn from their mistakes. It is a development that will likely alter our relationship with machines forever.

Similarly, biotechnology will face a new set of problems by 2020. The field will be flooded with millions upon millions of genes whose basic functions are largely unknown. Even before 2020, the focus will shift away from DNA sequencing to understanding the basic functions of these genes, a process which cannot be computerized, and to understand polygenic diseases and traits-i.e., those involving the complex interaction of multiple genes. The shift to polygenic diseases may prove to be the key to solving some of the most pressing chronic diseases facing humanity, in¬cluding heart disease, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, schizophrenia, and the like. It may also lead to cloning humans and to isolating the fabled "age genes" which control our aging process, allowing us to extend the human life span.

Beyond 2020, we also expect some amazing new technologies germinating in physics laboratories to come to fruition, from new genera¬tions of lasers and holographic three-dimensional TV to nuclear fusion. Room-temperature superconductors may find commercial applications and generate a "second industrial revolution." The quantum theory will give us the ability to manufacture machines the size of molecules, thereby opening up an entirely new class of machines with unheard-of properties called nanotechnology. Eventually, we may be able to build ionic rocket engines that may ultimately make interplanetary travel commonplace.

FROM 2050 TO 2100 AND BEYOND

Last, Visions makes predictions about breakthroughs in science and tech¬nology from 2050 to the dawn of the twenty-second century. Although any predictions this far into the future are necessarily vague, it is a period that will likely be dominated by several new developments. Robots may gradually attain a degree of "self-awareness" and consciousness of their own. This could greatly increase their utility in society, as they are able to make independent decisions and act as secretaries, butlers, assistants, and aides. Similarly, the DNA revolution will have advanced to the point where biogeneticists are able to create new types of organisms involving the transfer of not just a few but even hundreds of genes, allowing us to increase our food supply and improve our medicines and our health. It may also give us the ability to design new life forms and to orchestrate the physical and perhaps even the mental makeup of our children, which raises a host of ethical questions.

The quantum theory, too, will exert a powerful influence in the next century, especially in the area of energy production. We may also see the beginnings of rockets that can reach the nearby stars and plans to form the first colonies in space.

Beyond 2100, some scientists see a further convergence of all three revolutions, as the quantum theory gives us transistor circuits and entire machines the size of molecules, allowing us to duplicate the neural pat¬terns of the brain on a computer. In this era, some scientists have given serious thought to extending life by growing new organs and bodies, by manipulating our genetic makeup, or even by ultimately merging with our computerized creations.

Toward a Planetary Civilization

When confronted with dizzying scientific and technological upheaval on this scale, there are some voices that say we are going too far, too fast, that unforeseen social consequences will be unleashed by these scientific revolutions.

I will try to address these legitimate questions and concerns by care¬fully exploring the sensitive social implications of these powerful revolu¬tions, especially if they aggravate existing fault lines within society. In addition, we will address an even more far-reaching question: to where are we rushing? If one era of science is ending and another is just beginning, then where is this all leading to? This is exactly the question asked by astrophysicists who scan the heavens searching for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations which may be far more advanced than ours. There are about 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and trillions of galaxies in outer space. Instead of wasting millions of dollars randomly searching all the stars in the heavens for signs of extra¬ terrestrial life, astrophysicists engaged in this search have tried to focus their efforts by theorizing about the energy characteristics and signatures of civilizations several centuries to millennia more advanced than ours. Applying the laws of thermodynamics and energy, astrophysicists who scan the heavens have been able to classify hypothetical extraterrestrial ,*, civilizations into three types, based on the ways they utilize energy. Rus¬sian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev and Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson label them Type I, II, and III civilizations.

Assuming a modest yearly increase in energy consumption, one can extrapolate centuries into the future when certain energy supplies will be exhausted, forcing society to advance to the next level.

A Type I civilization is one that has mastered all forms of terrestrial energy. Such a civilization can modify the weather, mine the oceans, or extract energy from the center of their planet. Their energy needs are so large that they must harness the potential resources of the entire planet. Harnessing and managing resources on this gigantic scale requires a so¬phisticated degree of cooperation among their individuals with elaborate planetary communication. This necessarily means that they have attained a truly planetary civilization, one that has put to rest most of the factional, religious, sectarian, and nationalistic struggles that typify their origin.

Type II civilizations have mastered stellar energy. Their energy needs are so great that they have exhausted planetary sources and must use their sun itself to drive their machines. Dyson has speculated that, by building a giant sphere around their sun, such a civilization might be able to harness their sun's total energy output. They have also begun the explo¬ration and possible colonization of nearby star systems.

Type III civilizations have exhausted the energy output of a single star. They must reach out to neighboring star systems and clusters, and even¬tually evolve into a galactic civilization. They obtain their energy by har¬nessing collections of star systems throughout the galaxy.

(To give a sense of scale, the United Federation of Planets described in Star Trek probably qualifies for an emerging Type II status, as they have just attained the ability to ignite stars and have colonized a few nearby star systems.)

This system of classifying civilizations is a reasonable one because it relies on the available supply of energy. Any advanced civilization in space will eventually find three sources of energy at their disposal: their planet, their star, and their galaxy. There is no other choice.

With a modest growth rate of 3 percent per year-the growth rate typically found on earth-one can calculate when our planet might make the transition to a higher status in the galaxy. For example, astrophysicists estimate that, based on energy considerations, a factor of ten billion may separate the energy demands between the various types of civilizations. Although this staggering number at first seems like an insurmountable obstacle, a steady 3 percent growth rate can overcome even this factor. In fact, we can expect to reach Type I status within a century or two. To reach Type II status may require no more than about 800 years. But attaining Type III status may take on the order of 10,000 years or more (depending on the physics of interstellar travel). But even this is nothing but the twinkling of an eye from the perspective of the universe.

Where are we now? you might ask. At present, we are a Type 0 civiliza¬tion. Essentially, we use dead plants (coal and oil) to energize our ma¬chines. On this planetary scale, we are like children, taking our first hesi¬tant and clumsy steps into space. But by the close of the twenty-first century, the sheer power of the three scientific revolutions will force the nations of the earth to cooperate on a scale never seen before in history. By the twenty-second century, we will have laid the groundwork of a Type I civilization, and humanity will have taken the first step toward the stars.

Already the information revolution is creating global links on a scale unparalleled in human history, tearing down petty, parochial interests while creating a global culture. Just as the Gutenberg printing press made people aware of worlds beyond their village or hamlet, the information revolution is building and forging a common planetary culture out of thousands of smaller ones.

What this means is that our headlong journey into science and technol¬ogy will one day lead us to evolve into a true Type I civilization-a planetary civilization which harnesses truly planetary forces. The march to a planetary civilization will be slow, accomplished in fits and starts, undoubtedly full of unexpected twists and setbacks. In the background always lurks the possibility of a nuclear war, the outbreak of a deadly pandemic, or a collapse of the environment. Barring such a collapse, however, I think it is safe to say that the progress of science has the potential to create forces which will bind the human race into a Type I civilization.

Far from witnessing the end of science, we see that the three scientific revolutions are unleashing powerful forces which may eventually elevate our civilization to Type I status. So when Newton first gazed alone at the vast, uncharted ocean of knowledge, he probably never realized that the chain reaction of events that he and others initiated would one day affect all of modern society, eventually forging a planetary civilization and pro¬pelling it on its way to the stars.