Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (60 page)

But where does wisdom come from? In part, wisdom comes from reasoned and informed democratic debate from opposing sides. This debate is often messy, unseemly, and always raucous, but out of the thunder and smoke emerges genuine insight. In our society, this debate emerges in the form of democracy. As Winston Churchill once observed, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”

So democracy is not easy. You have to work at it. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

Today, the Internet, with all its faults and excesses, is emerging as a guardian of democratic freedoms. Issues that were once debated behind closed doors are now being dissected and analyzed on a thousand Web sites.

Dictators live in fear of the Internet, terrified of what happens when their people rise up against them. So today, the nightmare of
1984
is gone, with the Internet changing from an instrument of terror into an instrument of democracy.

Out of the cacophony of debate emerges wisdom. But the surest way to enhance vigorous, democratic debate is through education, for only an educated electorate can make decisions on technologies that will determine the fate of our civilization. Ultimately, the people will decide for themselves how far to take this technology, and in what directions it should develop, but only an informed, educated electorate can make these decisions wisely.

Unfortunately, many are woefully ignorant of the enormous challenges that face us in the future. How can we generate new industries to replace the old ones? How will we prepare young people for the job market of the future? How far should we push genetic engineering in humans? How can we revamp a decaying, dysfunctional educational system to meet the challenges of the future? How can we confront global warming and nuclear proliferation?

The key to a democracy is an educated, informed electorate that can rationally and dispassionately discuss the issues of the day. The purpose of this book is to help start the debate that will determine how this century unfolds.

In summary, the future is ours to create. Nothing is written in stone. As Shakespeare wrote in
Julius Caesar,
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves ….” Or, as Henry Ford once said, perhaps less eloquently, “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”

So the future is like a huge freight train barreling down the tracks, headed our way. Behind this train is the sweat and toil of thousands of scientists who are inventing the future in their labs. You can hear the whistle of the train. It says: biotechnology, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and telecommunications. However, the reaction of some is to say, “I am too old. I can’t learn this stuff. I will just lie down and get run over by the train.” However, the reaction of the young, the energetic, and the ambitious is to say, “Get me on that train! This train represents my future. It is my destiny. Get me in the driver’s seat.”

Let us hope that the people of this century use the sword of science wisely and with compassion.

But perhaps to better understand how we might live in a planetary civilization, it may be instructive to live out a day in the year 2100, to see how these technologies will affect our daily lives as well as our careers and our hopes and dreams.

From Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, perfection meant wisdom rooted in experience and in the relationships by which the moral life is learned through example. Our perfection lies not in gene enhancement, but in the enhancement of character.
—STEVEN POST

JANUARY, 2100, 6:15 A.M.

After a night of heavy partying on New Year’s Eve, you are sound asleep.

Suddenly, your wall screen lights up. A friendly, familiar face appears on the screen. It’s Molly, the software program you bought recently. Molly announces cheerily, “John, wake up. You are needed at the office. In person. It’s important.”

“Now wait a minute, Molly! You’ve got to be kidding,” you grumble. “It’s New Year’s Day, and I have a hangover. What could possibly be so important anyway?”

Slowly you drag yourself out of bed and reluctantly head off to the bathroom. While washing your face, hundreds of hidden DNA and protein sensors in the mirror, toilet, and sink silently spring into action, analyzing the molecules you emit in your breath and bodily fluids, checking for the slightest hint of any disease at the molecular level.

Leaving the bathroom, you wrap some wires around your head, which allow you to telepathically control your home: you mentally raise the temperature of the apartment, turn on some soothing music, tell the robotic cook in your kitchen to make breakfast and brew some coffee, and order your magnetic car to leave the garage and be ready to pick you up. As you enter the kitchen, you see the mechanical arms of the robotic cook preparing eggs just the way you like them.

Then you put in your contact lenses and connect to the Internet. Blinking, you see the Internet as it shines onto the retina of your eye. While drinking hot coffee, you start scanning the headlines that flash in your contact lenses.

• The outpost on Mars is requesting more supplies. Winter on Mars is fast approaching. If the settlers are going to complete the next stage in colonization, they need more resources from earth to handle the freezing-cold weather. The plan is to start the first phase of terraforming Mars by raising its surface temperature.

• The first starships are ready for launch. Millions of nanobots, each about the size of a pinhead, will be fired from the moon base, whip around Jupiter using its magnetic field, and head off to a nearby star. It will take years, however, before a handful of these nanobots reach their destination in another star system.

• Yet another extinct animal is going to join the local zoo. This time, it’s a rare saber-toothed tiger, brought back via DNA found frozen in the tundra. Because the earth has been heating up, DNA from more and more extinct animals has been recovered and then cloned to fill zoos around the world.

• The space elevator, after years of hauling freight into space, is now allowing a limited number of tourists into outer space. The cost of space travel has already plummeted in recent years by a factor of 50 since the space elevator opened.

• The oldest fusion plants are now almost fifty years old. The time is coming to begin decommissioning some of them and building new ones.

• Scientists are carefully monitoring a new lethal virus that suddenly sprang out of the Amazon. So far, it seems confined to a small area, but there is no known cure. Teams of scientists are frantically sequencing its genes to learn its weak spots and how to fight it.

Suddenly, one item catches your eye:

• A large leak has unexpectedly been detected in the dikes surrounding Manhattan. Unless the dikes are repaired, the entire city could be submerged, like scores of other cities in the past.

“Uh-oh,” you say to yourself. “So that’s why the office called and woke me up.”

You skip breakfast, dress, and dash out the door. Your car, which drove itself out of the garage, is waiting for you outside. You telepathically order the car to take you to your office as quickly as possible. The magnetic car instantly accesses the Internet, the GPS, and billions of chips hidden in the road that constantly monitor traffic.

Your magnetic car takes off silently, floating on a cushion of magnetism created by the superconducting pavement. Molly’s face suddenly appears on the windshield of your car. “John, the latest message from your office says for you to meet everyone in the conference room. Also, you have a video message from your sister.”

With the car driving itself, you have time to scan the video mail left by your sister. Her image appears in your wristwatch and says, “John, remember this weekend we have a birthday party for Kevin, who is now six. You promised to buy him the latest robot dog. And, by the way, are you seeing anyone? I was playing bridge on the Internet, and met someone you might like.”

“Uh-oh,” you say to yourself.

You love cruising in your magnetic car. There are no bumps or potholes to worry about, since it’s hovering over the road. Best of all, you rarely need to fuel it up, since there is almost no friction to slow it down. (It’s hard to believe, you muse to yourself, that there was an energy crisis in the early part of the century. You shake your head, realizing that most of that energy was wasted in overcoming friction.)

You remember when the superconducting highway first opened. The media lamented that the familiar age of electricity was coming to a close, ushering in the new age of magnetism. Actually, you don’t miss the age of electricity one bit. Glancing outside, seeing sleek cars, trucks, and trains whizzing past you in the air, you realize that magnetism is the way to go, and saves money in the process.

Your magnetic car now cruises past the city dump. You see that most of the junk is computer and robot parts. With chips costing almost nothing, even less than water, obsolete ones are piling up in city dumps around the world. There is talk about using chips as landfill.

Finally, you reach your office building, the headquarters of a major construction company. As you enter, you hardly notice that a laser is silently checking your iris and identifying your face. No more need for plastic security cards. Your identity is your body.

The conference room is nearly empty, with only a few coworkers sitting around the table. But then, in your contact lens, the 3-D images of the participants begin to rapidly materialize around the table. Those who cannot come to the office are here holographically.

You glance around the room. Your contact lens identifies all the people sitting at the table, displaying their biographies and backgrounds. Quite a few big shots here, you notice. You make a mental note of the important people attending.

The image of your boss suddenly materializes in his chair. “Gentlemen,” he announces, “as you’ve probably heard, the dikes around Manhattan have suddenly begun to leak. It’s serious, but we caught it in time, so there is no danger of collapse. Yet, unfortunately, the robots we have sent down to repair the dikes have failed.”

Instantly, the lights dim, and you are completely surrounded by the 3-D image of the underwater dike. You are completely immersed in the water, the image of the dike with a huge crack staring you in the face.

As the image rotates, you can see precisely where the leak has occurred. You can see a large, strange gash in the dike that catches your attention. “Robots are not enough,” your boss continues. “This is a type of leak that is not part of their programming. We need to send experienced people down there who can size up the situation and improvise. I don’t have to remind you that if we fail, New York could suffer the same fate as other great cities, some now underwater.”

A shudder goes through the group. Everyone knows the names of the great cities that had to be abandoned as sea levels rose. Although renewable technologies and fusion power displaced fossil fuels many decades ago as the main source of the planet’s energy, people are still suffering from the carbon dioxide that was already released into the atmosphere in the first part of the last century.

After much discussion, it is decided to send the human-controlled robot repair crew. This is where you come in. You helped to design these robots. Trained human workers are placed in pods, where electrodes are fitted around their heads. Their brain signals allow them to make telepathic contact with robots. From their pods, the workers can see and feel everything that the robots see and feel. It’s just like being there in person, except in a new superhuman body.

You are justifiably proud of your work. These telepathically controlled robots have proven their worth many times over. The moon base is largely controlled by human workers, who lie comfortably and safely in their pods on earth. But since it takes about a second for a radio signal to reach the moon, it also means that these workers have to be trained to adjust for this time delay.

(You would have loved to put your robots on the Mars base, too. But since it takes up to twenty minutes for a signal to reach Mars and twenty minutes to come back, communicating with robots on Mars would be too difficult, it was decided. Alas, for all our progress, there is one thing you cannot adjust: the speed of light.)

But something is still bothering you at the meeting.

Finally, you summon the nerve to interrupt your boss. “Sir, I hate to say this, but looking at the leak in the dike, the crack looks suspiciously like a mark left by one of our own robots.”