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

by Michio Kaku

We have a great advantage that Verne and Leonardo da Vinci did not have: a solid understanding of the laws of nature.

The first force to be explained was the force of gravity. Isaac Newton gave us a mechanics that could explain that objects moved via forces, rather than mystical spirits and metaphysics.

Similarly, scientists were able to use the quantum theory to unlock the secret of the DNA molecule.

There will always be totally unexpected, novel surprises that leave us speechless, but the foundation of modern physics, chemistry, and biology has largely been laid, and we do not expect any major revision of this basic knowledge, at least in the foreseeable future.

We only gazed in wonder and fear at comets, lightning bolts, volcanic eruptions, and plagues, assuming that they were beyond our comprehension. To the ancients, the forces of nature were an eternal mystery to be feared and worshipped, so they created the gods of mythology to make sense of the world around them. The ancients hoped that by praying to these gods they would show mercy and grant them their dearest wishes. Today, we have become choreographers of the dance of nature, able to tweak the laws of nature here and there. But by 2100, we will make the transition to being masters of nature.

But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory, which is the foundation of the previous technologies.

Unless we succumb to the forces of chaos and folly, the transition to a planetary civilization is inevitable, the end product of the enormous, inexorable forces of history and technology beyond anyone’s control.

But several predictions made about the information age were spectacularly untrue. For example, many futurists predicted the “paperless office,” that is, that the computer would make paper obsolete. Actually, the opposite has occurred. A glance at any office shows you that the amount of paper is actually greater than ever. Some also envisioned the “peopleless city.” Futurists predicted that teleconferencing via the Internet would make face-to-face business meetings unnecessary, so there would be no need to commute. In fact, the cities themselves would largely empty out, becoming ghost towns, as people worked in their homes rather than their offices.

Actually, the reverse has happened. Traffic jams are worse than ever—a permanent feature of urban life. People flock to foreign sites in record numbers, making tourism one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet. Shoppers flood the stores, in spite of economic hard times. Instead of proliferating cyberclassrooms, universities are still registering record numbers of students.

modern humans, who looked just like us, emerged from Africa more than 100,000 years ago, but we see no evidence that our brains and personalities have changed much since then.

The point is: whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time. That’s the Cave Man Principle. For example, the caveman always demanded “proof of the kill.” It was never enough to boast about the big one that got away.

Similarly, we want hard copy whenever we deal with files. We instinctively don’t trust the electrons floating in our computer screen, so we print our e-mails and reports, even when it’s not necessary. That’s why the paperless office never came to be.

Likewise, our ancestors always liked face-to-face encounters. This helped us to bond with others and ...

This is because our apelike ancestors, many thousands of years before they developed speech, used body language almost exclusively to convey their thoughts and emotions.

The lesson is that one medium never annihilates a previous one but coexists with it. It is the mix and relationship among these media that constantly change. Anyone who can accurately predict the mix of these media in the future could become very wealthy.

And today, it is possible to take courses online. But universities are bulging with students. The one-to-one encounter with professors, who can give individual attention and answer personal questions, is still preferable to online courses. And a university degree still carries more weight than an online diploma when applying for a job.

So there is a continual competition between High Tech and High Touch, that is, sitting in a chair watching TV versus reaching out and touching things around us.

Actually, this is to be expected. The corollary to the Cave Man Principle is that if you want to predict the social interactions of humans in the future, simply imagine our social interactions 100,000 years ago and multiply by a billion.

those who maintained large social networks could rely on them for resources, advice, and help that were vital for survival.

And last, entertainment will continue to grow explosively. We sometimes don’t like to admit it, but a dominant part of our culture is based on entertainment. After the hunt, our ancestors relaxed and entertained themselves. This was important not only for bonding but also for establishing one’s position within the tribe.

Of course, science is a double-edged sword; it creates as many problems as it solves, but always on a higher level. There are two competing trends in the world today: one is to create a planetary civilization that is tolerant, scientific, and prosperous, but the other glorifies anarchy and ignorance that could rip the fabric of our society. We still have the same sectarian, fundamentalist, irrational passions of our ancestors, but the difference is that now we have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles about every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation,

Exponential growth is often hard to grasp, since our minds think linearly. It is so gradual that you sometimes cannot experience the change at all. But over decades, it can completely alter everything around us.

For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip that sings “Happy Birthday” to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip.

But what do we do with it? After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away. Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3-D situations, use more computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.

(Mother Nature appreciates the power of the exponential. A single virus can hijack a human cell and force it to create several hundred copies of itself. Growing by a factor of 100 in each generation, one virus can generate 10 billion viruses in just five generations. No wonder a single virus can infect the human body, with trillions of healthy cells, and give you a cold in just a week or so.)

When these chips are inserted into an appliance, it is miraculously transformed. When chips were inserted into typewriters, they became word processors. When inserted into telephones, they became cell phones. When inserted into cameras, they became digital cameras. Pinball machines became video games. Phonographs became iPods. Airplanes became deadly Predator drones. Each time, an industry was revolutionized and was reborn. Eventually, almost everything around us will become intelligent. Chips will be so cheap they will even cost less than the plastic wrapper and will replace the bar code. Companies that do not make their products intelligent may find themselves driven out of business by their competitors that do.

The destiny of computers—like other mass technologies like electricity, paper, and running water—is to become invisible, that is, to disappear into the fabric of our lives, to be everywhere and nowhere, silently and seamlessly carrying out our wishes.

Today, when we enter a room, we automatically look for the light switch, since we assume that the walls are electrified. In the future, the first thing we will do on entering a room is to look for the Internet portal, because we will assume the room is intelligent.

novelist Max Frisch once said, “Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we d...

Ultimately, the word computer itself will disappear from the English language.

the near future (today to 2030), the midcentury (from 2030 to 2070), and finally the far future, from 2070 to 2100.

The rapid rise of computer power by the year 2100 will give us power like that of the gods of mythology we once worshipped,

This may alter the educational system. In the future, students taking a final exam will be able to silently scan the Internet via their contact lens for the answers to the questions, which would pose an obvious problem for teachers who often rely on rote memorization. This means that educators will have to stress thinking and reasoning ability instead.

(Some examples of Pentagon projects include the Internet, which was originally designed to connect scientists and officials during and after a nuclear war, and the GPS system, which was originally designed to guide ICBM missiles. But both the Internet and GPS were declassified and given to the public after the end of the Cold War.)

The GPS system itself is a marvel of modern technology. Each of the thirty-two GPS satellites orbiting the earth emits a specific radio wave, which is then picked up by the GPS receivers in my car. The signal from each satellite is slightly distorted because they are traveling in slightly different orbits. This distortion is called the Doppler shift. (Radio waves, for example, are compressed if the satellite is moving toward you, and are stretched if it moves away from you.) By analyzing the slight distortion of frequencies from three or four satellites, the car’s computer could determine my position accurately.

Traffic jams may also be a thing of the past. A central computer will be able to track all the motions of every car on the road by communicating with each driverless car. It will then easily spot traffic jams and bottlenecks on the highways. In one experiment, conducted north of San Diego on Interstate 15, chips were placed in the road so that a central computer took control of the cars on the road. In case of a traffic jam, the computer will override the driver and allow traffic to flow freely.

When you are lonely or in need of company, you will simply ask your wall screen to set up a bridge game with other lonely individuals anywhere in the world. When you want some assistance planning a vacation, organizing a trip, or finding a date, you will do it via your wall screen.

(Some commentators have remarked that the Internet was originally conceived as a “male” device by the Pentagon, that is, it was concerned with dominating an enemy in wartime. But now the Internet is mainly “female,” in that it’s about reaching out and touching someone.)

At first, it might seem strange talking to an empty room. But remember, when the telephone first came out, some criticized it, saying that people would be speaking to disembodied voices. They wailed that it would gradually replace direct person-to-person contact. The critics were right, but today we don’t mind speaking to disembodied voices, because it has vastly increased our circle of contacts and enriched our lives.

This may also change your love life. If you are lonely, your wall screen will know your past preferences and the physical and social characteristics you want in a date, and then scan the Internet for a possible match. And since people sometimes lie in their profiles, as a security measure, your screen will automatically scan each person’s history to detect falsehoods in their biography.

The price of flat-screen TVs, once more than $10,000, has dropped by a factor of about fifty just within a decade. In the future, flat screens that cover an entire wall will also fall dramatically in price. These wall screens will be flexible and superthin, using OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes). They are similar to ordinary light-emitting diodes, except they are based on organic compounds that can be arranged in a polymer, making them flexible. Each pixel on the flexible screen is connected to a transistor that controls the color and intensity of the light.

Market forces will then drive down the cost of this technology and bring it to the public. As prices go down, the cost of these wall screens may eventually approach the price of ordinary wallpaper.

Today, we have scrap paper that we scribble on and then throw away. In the future, we might have “scrap computers” that have no

where you are billed not for computers but for computer time, treating computation like a utility that is metered like water or electricity, is an early example of this.)

Of course, many people hate going to the doctor. But in the future, your health will be silently and effortlessly monitored several times a day without your being aware of it.

Your toilet, bathroom mirror, and clothes will have DNA chips to silently determine if you have cancer colonies of only a few hundred cells growing in your body. You will have more sensors hidden in your bathroom and clothes than are found in a modern hospital or university today. For example, simply by blowing on a mirror, the DNA for a mutated protein called p53 can be detected, which is implicated in 50 percent of all common cancers. This means that the word tumor will gradually disappear from the English language.

In the future, it will be difficult to die alone. Your clothes will be able to sense any irregularities in your heartbeat, breathing, and even brain waves by means of tiny chips woven into the fabric.

Some futurists have even feared that this might give rise to a return to the mysticism of the Middle Ages, when most people believed that there were invisible spirits inhabiting everything around them.

Today, we take it for granted, and in fact believe it is our birthright, to have computer products of ever-increasing power and complexity. This is why we buy new computer products every year, knowing that they are almost twice as powerful as last year’s model. But if Moore’s law collapses—and every generation of computer products has roughly the same power and speed of the previous generation—then why bother to buy new computers?