by Michio Kaku
INTRODUCTION
1 “In his newspapers of January 1, 1900”: Rhodes, pp. 29–30.
2 “It will be as common for the citizen”: www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/corporations/docs/.
3 “Everything that can be invented”: quoted in Canton, p. 247.
4 “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”: quoted in Canton, p. 247.
5 “I think there is a world market”: quoted in Canton, p. 247.
6 “It is now definitely established”: Cornish, p. 149. See also: “The Facts that Got Away,” New York Times, November 14, 2001.
1. FUTURE OF THE COMPUTER: MIND OVER MATTER
1 “Where a calculator like the ENIAC”: Popular Mechanics, quoted in Kurzweil, p. 56. See also: Andrew Hamilton, “Brains That Click,” Popular Mechanics, March 1940, p. 258.
2 “Technology [is] the knack”: Rhodes, p. 206.
3 “Those components will eventually include”: Babak A. Parvie, “Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens,” IEEE Spectrum, September 2009, www.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens/0.
4 “There’s some physiological evidence”: Gary Stix, “Jacking into the Brain—Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface?” Scientific American, November 2008, pp. 56–61.
5 “It’s like being an astronomer”: Jeff Wise, “Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life,” Popular Mechanics, October 15, 2007, www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/neuroscience/4226614.
6 “possible to identify, from a large set of completely novel natural images”: New Scientist, October 15, 2008, issue 2678.
7 “Can we tap into the thoughts of others”: David Baltimore, “How Biology Became Information Science,” in Denning, pp. 53–54.
8 “I am told”: Ibid., p. 54.
9 “Perhaps something like the Star Trek tricorder”: Bernhard Blümich, “The Incredible Shrinking Scanner: MRI-like Machine Becomes Portable,” Scientific American, November 2008, p. 68.
2. FUTURE OF AI: RISE OF THE MACHINES
1 “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man”: John Markoff, New York Times, July 25, 2009, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html?scp=1&sq=Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man&st=cse.
2 “Technologists are providing”: Ibid.
3 “just at the stage where they’re robust”: Kaku, p. 75.
4 “Machines will be capable, within twenty years”: Crevier, p. 109.
5 “It’s as though a group of people”: Paul W. Abrahams, “A World Without Work,” in Denning and Metcalfe, p. 136.
6 “Today, you can buy chess programs for $49”: Richard Strozzi Heckler, “Somatics in Cyberspace,” in Denning, p. 281.
7 “To this day, AI programs”: Sheffield et al., p. 30.
8 “100 million things, about the number a typical person knows”: Kurzweil, p. 267.
9 In 2006, it was estimated that there were 950,000 industrial robots: World Robotics 2007, IFR Statistical Department (Frankfurt: International Federation of Robotics, 2007).
10 “Discovering how the brain works”: Fred Hapgood, “Reverse Engineering the Brain,” Technology Review, July 11, 2006, www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17111.
11 He was in a semiconscious state for several weeks: John M. Harlow, M.D., “Passage of an Iron Rod Through the Head,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 11, May 1999, pp. 281–83, www.neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/11/2/281.
12 “It is not impossible to build a human brain”: Jonathan Fildes, “Artificial Brain ‘10 Years Away,’ ” BBC News, July 22, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8164060.stm.
13 “It’s not a question of years”: Jason Palmer, “Simulated Brain Closer to Thought,” BBC News, April 22, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/8012496.stm.
14 “This is a Hubble Telescope of the mind … it’s inevitable”: Douglas Fox, “IBM Reveals the Biggest Artificial Brain of All Time,” Popular Mechanics, December 18, 2009, www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/extreme-machines/4337190.
15 “After we solve this”: Sally Adee, “Reverse Engineering the Brain,” IEEE Spectrum, June 2008, http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/reverse-engineering-the-brain/0.
16 “Within thirty years”: Vernor Vinge, “What Is the Singularity?” paper presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30–31, 1993. A slightly changed version appeared in Whole Earth Review, Winter 1993, http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html.
17 “I’d be very surprised if anything remotely like this happened”: Tom Abate, “Smarter Than Thou? Stanford Conference Ponders a Brave New World with Machines More Powerful Than Their Creators,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 12, 2006, http://articles.sfgate.com/2006–05–12/business/17293318_1_ray-kurzweil-machines-artificial-intelligence.
18 “If you could blow the brain up”: Kurzweil, p. 376.
19 Philosopher David Chalmers has even catalogued: http://consc.net/mindpapers.com.
20 “life may seem pointless if we are fated”: Sheffield, p. 38.
21 “One conversation centered”: Kurzweil, p. 10.
22 “It’s not going to be an invasion”: Abate, San Francisco Chronicle, May 12, 2006.
23 “intelligent design for the IQ 140 people”: Brian O’Keefe, “The Smartest (or the Nuttiest) Futurist on Earth,” Fortune, May 2, 2007, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/.
24 “It’s as if you took a lot of good food”: Greg Ross, “An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter,” American Scientist, January 2007, www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter.
25 “will evolve into socially intelligent beings”: P. W. Singer, “Gaming the Robot Revolution,” Slate, May 21, 2009, www.slate.com/id/2218834/.
26 “When I was a kid”: Rodney A. Brooks, “Making Living Systems,” in John Brockman, ed., Science at the Edge: Conversations with the Leading Scientific Thinkers of Today (New York: Sterling, 2008), p. 250.
27 “My prediction is that by the year 2100”: Rodney A. Brooks, “Flesh and Machines,” in Denning, p. 63.
28 “At Little League games”: Pam Belluck, “Burst of Technology Helps Blind to See,” New York Times, September 27, 2009, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/health/research/27eye.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=“burst of technology”&st=cse.
29 “It’s great. I have a feeling”: BBC-TV, October 18, 2009.
30 “Over the next ten to twenty years … wireless Internet”: Rodney A. Brooks, “The Merger of Flesh and Machines,” in John Brockman, ed., The Next Fifty Years (New York: Vintage, 2002), p. 189.
31 “Fifty years from now … Darwinian evolution”: Ibid., pp. 191–92.
32 “When I try to think of what I might gain”: Stock, p. 23.
3. FUTURE OF MEDICINE: PERFECTION AND BEYOND
1 “Biology is today an information science”: David Baltimore, “How Biology Became an Information Science,” in Denning, p. 43.
2 “You have to have a strong stomach”: Nicholas Wade, “Cost of Decoding a Genome Is Lowered,” New York Times, August 10, 2009, p. D3, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11gene.html.
3 “Embryonic stem cells represent”: Jeanne Lenzer, “Have We Entered the Stem Cell Era?” Discover, November 2009, p. 33, http://discovermagazine.com/2009/nov/14-have-we-entered-the-stem-cell-era/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=.
4 “It’s gorgeous”: Ibid.
5 By 2001, there were more than 500: Stock, p. 5.
6 But there have been setbacks: Ibid., p. 36.
7 “What we are seeing today”: Kate Kelland, “Gene Maps to Transform Scientists’ Work on Cancer,” Reuters, December 18, 2009.
8 “Cancer is an army of cells”: David Baltimore, “How Biology Became an Information Science,” in Denning, p. 54.
9 “Homo sapiens, the first truly free species”: Kurzweil, p. 195.
10 “Although many genes are likely to
be involved in the evolution”: Stock, p. 108.
11 “It’s as if they remember”: Jonah Lehrer, “Small, Furry … and Smart?” Nature 461 (October 2009): 864.
12 “The obstacles to his understanding”: Ibid.
13 In fact, scientists believe that there has to be a balance: Jonah Lehrer, “Smart Mice,” The Frontal Cortex, October 15, 2009, http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/smart_mice.php.
14 “We all know that good-looking people do well”: Sheffield et al., p. 107.
15 “There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death”: Kurzweil, p. 320.
16 “If something like age-1 exists in humans”: Kaku, p. 211.
17 Finally, in 2009, the long-awaited results came in: Nicholas Wade, “Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging,” New York Times, August 17, 2009, p. D4, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18aging.html?ref=caloric_restriction.
18 Scientists have found that sirtuin activators: Nicholas Wade, “Quest for a Long Life Gains Scientific Respect,” New York Times, September 29, 2009, p. D4, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29aging.html?ref=caloric_restriction.
19 His colleague Sinclair, in fact, admits that he: Nicholas Wade, “Scientists Find Clues to Aging in a Red Wine Ingredient’s Role in Activating a Protein,” New York Times, November 26, 2008, p. A30, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/health/27aging.html?scp=6&sq=sinclair%20resveratrol&st=cse.
20 “In five or six or seven years”: Wade, “Quest for a Long Life,” New York Times, September 28, 2009, p. D4, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29aging.html?ref=caloric_restriction.
21 “Such interventions may become commonplace”: Kurzweil, p. 253.
22 “Gradually, our agonizing”: Stock, p. 88.
23 In 2002, with the best demographic data: Ciara Curtin, “Fact or Fiction?: Living People Outnumber the Dead,” Scientific American, March 2007.
24 Every year, 79 million: Brown, p. 5.
25 “I believe that by 2050”: Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (New York: Houghton Mifflin Mariner, 2004), p. 113.
26 Even more interesting is the HAR1 region of the genome: Katherine S. Pollard, “What Makes Us Human?” Scientific American, May 2009, p. 44.
27 This cell would then be reprogrammed to revert: Nicholas Wade, “Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome,” New York Times, February 12, 2009, p. A12, www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/science/13neanderthal.html?scp=3&sq=neanderthal
&st=cse.
28 “Are you going to put them in Harvard”: Ibid.
29 “will doubtless raise”: Dawkins, p. 114.
30 “A year ago, I would have said”: Kate Wong, “Scientists Sequence Half the Woolly Mammoth’s Genome,” Scientific American, January 2009, p. 26, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=woolly-mammoth-genome-sequenced.
31 “Traditional Darwinian evolution now produces”: Stock, p. 183.
4. NANOTECHNOLOGY: EVERYTHING FROM NOTHING?
1 “The grandest dream of nanotechnology”: Carl T. Hall, “Brave New NanoWorld Lies Ahead, “San Francisco Chronicle, July 19, 1999, http://articles.sfgate.com/ 1999–07–19/news/17694442_1_atom-molecules-nanotech.
2 “Eventually, the goal is not just to make computers”: Ibid.
3 “Nanotechnology has the potential”: quoted in Kurzweil, p. 226.
4 The key to these nanoparticles is their size: James R. Heath, Mark E. Davis, and Leroy Hood, “Nanomedicine—Revolutionizing the Fight Against Cancer,” Scientific American, February 2009, p. 44.
5 “Because the self-assembly doesn’t require”: Emily Singer, “Stealthy Nanoparticles Attack Cancer Cells,” Technology Review, November 4, 2009, www.technologyreview.com/business/23855/.
6 “It’s basically like putting”: “Special Gold Nanoparticles Show Promise for ‘Cooking’ Cancer Cells,” www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009–03/acs-sgn030909.php.
7 Yet another way to steer a molecular machine: Thomas E. Mallouk and Ayusman Sen, “How to Build Nanotech Motors,” Scientific American, May 2009, p. 72.
8 “Today, it takes a room filled with computers”: Katherine Harmon, “Could a Microchip Help to Diagnose Cancer in Minutes,” Scientific American blog post, September 28, 2009, http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=could-a-microchip-help-to-diagnose-2009–09–28.
9 The question—When will Moore’s law collapse?—sends shudders: Electronic News, September 18, 2007, www.edn.com/article/CA647968.
10 “We see that for at least the next fifteen to twenty”: Electronic News, July 13, 2004. See also Kurzweil, p. 112, and www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=04803.
11 “From the point of view of physics”: Alexis Madrigal, “Scientist Builds World’s Smallest Transistor, Gordon Moore Sighs with Relief,” Wired, www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/scientists-buil/.
12 “It’s about the smallest”: Ibid.
13 “By 2050, we will surely have found ways to achieve”: Vint Cerf, “One Is Glad to Be of Service,” in Denning, p. 229.
14 “Think of a mobile device”: Sharon Gaudin, “Intel Sees Future with Shape-shifting Robots, Wireless Power,” Computerworld, August 22, 2008, www.computerworld.com/s/article/9113301/Intel_sees_future_with_shape_shifting_robots_wireless_power?taxonomyId=12&pageNumber=2.
15 “Sometime over the next forty years”: Ibid.
16 “Why not?”: Ibid.
17 “Much like you can’t make a boy and a girl fall in love”: Rudy Baum, “Nanotechnology: Drexler and Smalley Make the Case for and Against ‘Molecular Assemblers,’ ” Chemical & Engineering News 81, December 1, 2003, pp. 37–42, http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8148/8148counterpoint.html.
18 “If a self-assembler ever does become possible”: BBC/Discovery Channel, Visions of the Future, Part II, 2007.
19 “Nanotechnology will thrive, much as photolithography thrives”: Rodney A. Brooks, “Flesh and Machines,” in Denning, p. 63.
5. FUTURE OF ENERGY: ENERGY FROM THE STARS
1 the world consumes about 14 trillion watts of power: Kurzweil, p. 242.
2 U.S. oil reserves were being depleted so rapidly: www.mkinghubbert.com/speech/prediction.
3 “Food and pollution are not”: Sheffield, p. 179.
4 China will soon surpass the United States in wind power: www.gwec.net/index.php?id=125.
5 “All the geniuses here at General Motors”: Tad Friend, “Plugged In,” The New Yorker, August 24, 2009, pp. 50–59.
6 “You put your hand over the exhaust pipe”: “GM Convinced the Future Is in Fuel Cells,” CBS News, September 11, 2009, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/11/tech/main5302610.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;6.
7 The plant will occupy 200 acres: Business Wire, www.businesswire.com/portal/ge/index. See also www.swampfox.ws/node/26502.
8 Greenland’s ice shelves shrank by twenty-four square miles: Brown, p. 63.
9 Large chunks of Antarctica’s ice, which have been stable: Brown, p. 64.
10 According to scientists at the University of Colorado: Brown, p. 65
11 In 1900, the world consumed 150 million: Brown, pp. 56–57.
12 “Envision Pakistan, India, and China”: Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” Global Business Network, October 2003, p. 18. PDF available at www.gbn.com/search.php?topnavSearch=envision+pakistan%2C+india&x=0&y=0.
13 countries bound by the London Convention: Cornelia Dean, “Experts Ponder the Hazards of Using Technology to Save the Planet,” New York Times, August 12, 2008, p. F4, www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/health/12iht-ethics.3.15212327.html?_r=1&scp
=10&sq=planktos&st=cse.
14 The liquefied gas will be injected: Matthew L. Wald, “Refitted to Bury Emissions, Plant Draws Attention,” New York Times, September 29, 2009, p. A19, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/earth/22coal.html?ref=american_electric_power_company.
15 “We view the genome as the software … There are already t
housands … We think this field”: J. Craig Venter, quoted in Oil and the Future of Energy: Climate Repair, Hydrogen, Nuclear Fuel, Renewable and Green Sources, Energy Efficiency, editors of Scientific American (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2007), pp. 220–21. From Venter’s presentation “Synthetic Genomics” at the Conference on Synthetic Biology (SB2.0), Berkeley, California, May 20, 2006. Audio available at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=15766.