Plugging in Einstein
BY BRENDAN I. KOERNER
Seers envision a future with brain implants, virtual buddies
It's 9 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2049, and I feel like a billion
electronic credits. Beatrice, my virtual companion, appears on wall screen No. 3 of my
live-work space and asks if I'd like a breakfast treat–nano-produced steak and eggs,
and hot chocolate spiked with a memory enhancer. I figure, "Why not?" At 74, my
middle-aged body can still tolerate the occasional fatty indulgence. Besides, the
computerized toilet just analyzed a urine sample, and its cheery voice gave me a clean
bill of health–a regular occurrence since the holographic doctor embedded that
anti-Alzheimer's microchip in my brain in 2047.
While Beatrice manipulates molecules to create my meal and prepares an update on
NASA's manned mission to Jupiter, I close my eyes and access the Internet with a mere
thought. In virtual reality, I sip coffee with my son, a concert pianist who owes his vast
talent to the baby designer I hired in 2011. He instructs the computer on his belt buckle
to create a virtual orchestra, and within seconds a string section serenades us with
Brahms. His wife, born in Beijing, leans over and whispers to me in Mandarin; the neural
implant I got last Christmas allows me to respond with a native's fluency. We discuss
their lovely new house in the no-tax, 2,000-person nation of Neo-Aruba, a "platform
country" in the Caribbean Sea; they used to live in London but left just before the
Great Thames Floods of 2041 to 2048. When Beatrice beckons me back to physical reality, I
give my son a farewell embrace, and I can feel his warm breath on my neck.
No bets. Though my splendid New Year's morning could easily come to pass in 50
years' time, no one is willing to offer anything close to a guarantee. Today's futurists
are notoriously leery of making too many fantastical promises. With such now laughable
prognostic gaffes as hovercars, domed cities, and lunar resorts on their profession's
track record, they are wary of betting the farm on forthcoming technological marvels.
"When you're talking about predicting the future that far out, well, you can't,"
says James Halperin, author of The Truth Machine: A Novel of Things to Come. "It's
like trying to predict what the weather will be in Dallas exactly five years from
today."
Despite the disclaimers, there is no shortage of future-minded types who are
eager to craft "scenarios"–a noncommittal euphemism for
"predictions." And their scenarios for 2049 involve everything from the mundane
(rings that monitor health and fuel-efficient cars made of carbon resins) to the
jaw-dropping (chip-enhanced brains, the end of aging, and paper-clip-size machines with
genius far beyond that of Einstein and Mozart combined).
That computers will be omnipresent seems to be one sure thing. Michio
Kaku, a
professor of physics at the City College of New York and author of Visions: How Science
Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, foresees computer chips–soon to be "cheaper
than bubble gum wrappers"–embedded in everything from tie clasps (where they'll
serve as private secretaries) to lane markers on roads (where they'll monitor traffic flow
to alleviate gridlock). "If you're on the street and you bump into somebody you don't
remember, your glasses will scan his face and say, 'It's Jim, stupid,' " Kaku says.
Silicon Valley, he adds, "will be a Rust Belt," and Bill Gates will be
"selling pencils out of a tin cup." After 2020, microchip elements will be the
size of molecules, rendering silicon components–which cannot be shrunk to such
infinitesimal dimensions–obsolete.
Ray Kurzweil, principal developer of the first print-to-speech reading machine
for the blind and author of the forthcoming The Age of Spiritual Machines, believes that,
by 2049, a device with the computational power of 1 billion human brains (1023
calculations per second) will cost $1,000; today, the same cash will only buy you the
equivalent of an insect brain (108). Such machines will be designed by "reverse
engineering"–studying the brain with advanced scanning techniques and then
mimicking its function. "Computers will have amassed all of the world's accumulated
knowledge; they'll have read all of the world's works," says
Kurzweil, who accurately
forecast the emergence of the Web over a decade ago. "They'll be sufficiently
conscious to claim that they are human."
Biohackers. Smart machines may not be the only newcomers to life's rich pageant.
The increasing ability to tinker with genes, the molecular blueprints for life, will allow
scientists to create a nearly limitless array of new species–from high-yield
"microlivestock" to satiate the world's hunger to wondrous crossbreeds. The
ethical conundrums posed by these breakthroughs pale in comparison with the changes
envisioned by some futurists. Frank "Dr. Tomorrow" Ogden, a futurist gadfly and
author of the forward-looking classic The Last Book You'll Ever Read, speaks of
"biohackers," reckless kids using gene blasters–"the chemistry sets of
tomorrow"–to create new life forms in the family bathtub. Joseph Coates,
co-author of 2025, sees gene hackers raiding laboratory databases to create three-headed
frogs and lethal microorganisms.
Fiddling with genes might also allow science to finally provide the long
sought-after Fountain of Youth; turning off the genes responsible for aging could make the
so-called golden years obsolete. "When our children hit 30, they may decide they want
to stay at 30 for a couple of decades," says Kaku.
For those who let nature take its course, joining the century club will no
longer be worth special mention on the local news, thanks to cures for cancer, diabetes,
heart disease, and other prolific killers. Glen Hiemstra, host of the Web site futurist.com, estimates that "once you hit 50, you'll
have a 90 percent chance of living to be 100." Edward Barlow, president of the
strategic planning firm Creating the Future Inc., believes that as early as 2015, we will
have started to reverse the aging process.
Mankind's mastery of DNA splicing could also rid people of many diseases while
they are still in the womb. Out on the ethical edge, baby designers could reproduce the
looks of Brad Pitt or Picasso's gift for painting. Cloning an entire human, says
Kaku,
although feasible, will be far less common–probably the domain of "rich people
who want to leave all their money to themselves as children."
Neural implants and genetic alterations could blur the line between man and
machine. "Human enhancement is the marketplace of the 21st century," says James
Canton, president of the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures. "Who won't
pay to live an extra 50 or 60 years with the vitality of a 25-year-old or have a computer
embedded in your body to learn how to play the violin in an hour?" Or to speak five
dozen languages and download years' worth of classroom lessons with a blink? The
possibilities seem nearly endless. "We could restructure our DNA to give ourselves
almost any quality we wanted," says Halperin. "Maybe the ability to think at
electronic speed instead of nerve-impulse speed."
Crowded. Eventually, humanity could be divided into the enhanced haves and the
unenhanced have-nots. Unless there's an asteroid strike or a thermonuclear war, those two
camps promise to be enormous in number; the world's population could easily top 10 billion
in a half-century. Underground dwellings could be common in the world's great cities,
where real-estate prices will exclude all but the fabulously wealthy. Fortunately for the
commute-weary, most jobs will probably be work-at-home affairs. Meetings will take place
via wall screens, and "knobots"–knowledge robots–will handle the grunt
work. "You'll say, 'Margaret, do a search–English only–on the effect of
termites on housing,' " says Coates. " 'I'll be at screen No. 7 at 4:30. Give me
a report then.' " For those who must occasionally put in face time at an office, at
least the drive to work might be less troubling; on freeways, fuel-cell-powered cars could
tap into magnetic guidance systems, freeing the driver to play a round of virtual golf
with a buddy 5,000 miles away.
There are also some improbable wild cards to consider. Room-temperature
superconductors, aside from earning their discoverers a Nobel Prize, would allow the
construction of levitating trains and cars–"we'd float to work," says
Kaku. Nanotechnology, the power to manipulate individual molecules, could give us true Star Trek
powers: the ability to create anything we desire, atom by atom, or to teleport ourselves
around the world and cosmos. On the downside, global warming could lead to massive floods
and rapid desertification. And one vicious virus–perhaps mutated by a careless
preteen biohacker–could scour the planet clean of humans.
At least some basics, futurists assure us, are unlikely to change. Family, love,
and companionship will all remain top priorities on everyone's list. The food may be
nano-produced, but a good meal will still be a joy. Men and women will still work for a
living. And, yes, barring an unforeseen catastrophe, the sun will still rise in the east
and set in the west. No intelligent computer, neural implant, or eternal 30-year-old will
be able to change that. At least not by 2049.
THE FUTURE THEN
A backward look ahead...
Americans have always cared more about visions, even flawed visions, of an
unknowable future than for hard-eyed appraisals of the past or present. If a happier,
safer, easier world could be willed into being, Americans would do so. The midpoint of
this century prompted an outpouring of such speculation about the way life might be by the
year 2000–with mixed results.
Gerald Wendt was one scientist whose fantasies outran reality. He informed the
nation's teachers in 1951 that he could confidently predict a 24-hour work week, a life
span of 85-90 years, auto engines as small as typewriters, and rocket planes carrying
Americans on space voyages.
Wendt did anticipate the advent of "electronic thinking machines." But
few mid-century seers identified those room-sized precursors to the computer (IBM's World
War II era Bessie or a 1950 offspring, the $500,000 Mark III) as foreshadowing a
revolution. One who did was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Prof. Norbert
Wiener, who declared that the computing tools were harbingers of a new science of
communication and control named "cybernetics."
When Waldemar Kaempffert, science editor of the New York Times, polished his
crystal ball for Popular Mechanics in February 1950, he saw a remarkable new metropolis.
He forecast the creation of metropolitan suburbs built in concentric circles around the
hub of airports, with the first rings occupied by businesses and factories, and outer
rings by residential districts. Those cities would be fueled primarily by solar power, and
homes would be constructed of sandwich-style walls of metal, plastic, and aerated
clay–"by 2000 wood and brick are ruled out because they are too expensive."
An air-conditioned eight-room house built to last for about 25 years would cost only
$5,000. Residents would use an electronic stove to cook a steak in two minutes, depilatory
creams instead of razors to shave, and throwaway plastic plates. Housecleaning would be
done with a water hose, spraying down everything from furniture to rugs to drapes–all
synthetic and quick-drying.
Husbands would do much of their work by teleconferencing and wives their
shopping the same way. Naturally, they would use the family helicopter for longer trips,
reserving the family car, fueled by alcohol, for journeys of under 20 miles. While
Kaempffert envisioned major medical advances–including the conquering of viral
diseases such as the flu, the common cold, and polio–cancer would still have no cure.
One prediction from the time, happily, never came to pass. In July 1950, Popular
Science wrote that budding nuclear engineers might soon be playing with atoms on the
kitchen table. "Your own 10-year-old may take a peek into his future in the murky
ball of a midget Wilson cloud chamber, while you borrow his Geiger counter to go
prospecting for uranium." One toy maker proposed to mass-market a Geiger counter for
$18.50 and a kit for atomic energy experiments for $42.50. The government, it said, would
pay a bonus of $10,000 if Dad or Junior found a rich source of uranium. – Joseph L.
Galloway
