If the breathless speed at which things around you are changing worries you, please exercise caution while reading this book. The world will be a very different place a decade hence and the change will be a lot quicker than it was in the noughties. What makes this fascinating is that this change has been in the making for some time now. It is just that the technology’s “explosive growth” phase is set to arrive anytime now.
This is no idle speculation or crystal ball gazing. Michio Kaku is a trained and extensively published quantum physicist and the familiarity with the subject matter shines through. Kaku selects five technical areas – artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy and space travel – for their potential impact on how we live. The book’s strength lies in its clear elucidation of the history of development, technological nuances, obstacles to future development and potential applications. The opinions of expert practitioners in field enhance the book’s readability. Equally noteworthy are the extensive bibliography and notes at the end of the book.
The range of possibilities the book discusses is truly transformative and mind-boggling, even to those who have kept abreast of technologies. As history bears witness though, not all previous predictions have materialised in the manner predicted. For example, a “paperless office” that was seen as a natural progression to computerisation is nowhere close. Others like (the then) AT&T’s “picture phone” which would enable the conversationalists to see each other as they spoke, proved to be an expensive fiasco in 1964, only to reinvent itself as Skype. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon’s claim that artificial intelligence would render human intelligence redundant by the mid-1980s was (thankfully!) just another prediction.
There is a lot of real progress that has occurred which can be channelled for societal good. How great, for example, is an MRI machine the size of a coffee cup that is easy to use and which allows scanning in the privacy of one’s home? Or the ability to “move” atoms around to create new chemical compounds at will, as Richard Feynman had predicted way back in 1959? The battle to produce molecular transistors that would act as super-efficient switches has been won in the laboratory. Corporations are racing each other to commercialise the technology that would enable electricity to be transmitted with little loss. A caveat is in order: Superconductivity triggered similar optimism two decades ago after a slew of controlled experiments of virtually zero resistance losses heralded it as the technology of the 1990s. It was a different story when it came to mass production. The continuing rush for copper two decades later is a sad comment on that vision.
It is impractical to expect a completely “objective” response to the possibilities the book discusses. How comfortable would the average human being be in a world in which the average computer is a thousand times more intelligent than the human brain? That, according to the author, is just a decade away, with “non-linear” increases postulated thereafter. What exactly would a thinking computer with “emotional content” do? Genetic cloning can potentially do much with regard to disease prevention and cure, but what’s beyond that? These are disturbing questions.
To his credit, the author is well aware of the limitations of science as it exists. His admission that scientists “would not have found a cure to all diseases by 2100” reflects this knowledge. Despite this, the book’s treatment of the technical aspects of scientific progress is much richer than on the social impact. This is most visible in the last two chapters – “The Future of Wealth” and “The Future of Humanity” – where the treatment is superficial, especially in contrast to the more technical chapters.
The fundamental question of the relative importance of unbridled science (“science for science sake”) versus a more utilitarian view of science remains unanswered. Perhaps it is simply too complex to answer definitively even in a book of this scale and scope. As the author is quick to point out, much of the research that is currently being undertaken is with public money, while pressing immediate needs remain. With diseases like malaria and tuberculosis resurfacing over vast swathes of the tropical world, would an investment in finding a cost-effective treatment be money better spent than esoteric research in genomics? Who benefits from the ongoing research that the author so painstakingly details? What would be the nature of social engineering that would be needed to ensure that the benefits of this progress do not accrue to a select few?
Physics of the Future is a labour of love. A powerful treatise by its very nature leaves the reader restless with more questions and future possibilities.
PHYSICS OF THE FUTURE
Michio Kaku
Allen Lane, 2011
389 pages
