Tag: review

I just finished Michio Kaku’s 2011 futurist book, Physics of the Future, and am posting my abbreviated notes of it, most of which describe his predictions for this century. It didn’t make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up the way The Third Wave did, but I still think most of the predictions will prove accurate. Kaku also provides a few eye-opening insights that shifted my way of thinking a bit, such as his elucidation of the “Caveman Principle,” his thesis that technology will enable “perfect capitalism,” and his point that technology will grant future humans abilities that were once the sole province of the Greek gods. Overall, I enjoyed the book and found it readable, reasonable, and well-researched.

That said, there were a few aspects of Physics of the Future that I disliked. Kaku’s predictions about cheap, room-temperature superconductors being invented by the end of this century are strikingly unsupported by any evidence he presents, and his discussion of the Kardashev Scale seems at odds with what Kardashev actually wrote (in analyzing this inconsistency, I found that Kardashev’s work on this matter is widely misunderstood, and the exercise made me doubt the value of the Scale in any case). Developments over just the last eight years suggest that the book’s predictions about the rise of therapeutic organ/tissue cloning and age slowdown/reversal therapies are too optimistic, and those about dwindling fossil fuels supplies and artificial intelligence advancement are too pessimistic.

One irritating thing about the Physics of the Future is Kaku’s habit of mixing in explicit predictions with attached deadlines with “non-predictions” that are merely re-statements of things other scientists said might be possible at an indeterminate point in the future. The latter is more common in the second half of the book, and the reader must pay careful attention to its language to tell what is what.

Physics of the Future abbreviated notes
By: Michio Kaku

Introduction

Most attempts to predict the future fail because the people making the predictions aren’t scientists or people with firsthand knowledge of science.

In this book, Kaku–who is a scientist–has formed predictions based on interviews with hundreds of scientists across many fields. 

This book is similar to his earlier futurist book, Visions.

Some brilliant people have made uncanny, correct future predictions:

• Jules Verne
  • In Paris in the Twentieth Century, (1863) he correctly foresaw glass skyscrapers, air conditioning, TV, elevators, high-speed trains, gas-powered cars, fax machines, and something like the internet. 
  • In From the Earth to the Moon, (1865) he correctly foresaw a Moon mission and even deduced details like the size of the space capsule and its human crew, the launch location, transit time, weightlessness in space, and ocean splashdown at the end. 
  • Verne used his vast trove of personal notes about scientific discoveries and progress as the foundation for his predictions. 

• Leonardo da Vinci
  • In the late 1400s, he drew diagrams of parachutes and aircraft that could have flown. Unfortunately, it would be another 400 years before a motor with a sufficient power-to-weight ratio was invented to propel such aircraft.
  • He also designed a mechanical calculator. It wasn’t built for about 500 years, but it worked. 
  • He also sketeched a warrior robot, based on a suit of armor, and it was also built and found to be functional. 
  • da Vinci was a genius in his own right, but he also collaborated with many other brilliant scientists. 

“The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” –William Gibson

Ordinary people and experts usually underestimate how much technology will change in the long run. 

At least until the year 2100, it’s wise to assume that our understanding of the laws of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong forces) will not significantly change. Concordantly, predictions for that timeframe should not violate those laws. 

By 2100, humans will have the same abilities as the ancient gods

• Ability to use thoughts to control objects
• Perfect human bodies with superhuman lifespans
• Ability to use biotech to make novel organisms
• Nanotech to seemingly transmute objects and to create objects “from thin air”
• Flying cars will be like sky chariots

Unless humans destroy themselves, within 100 years (i.e. – by the year 2111), Earth will be a “planetary civilization” with Kardashev Level 1 status.  

Famous predictions that failed:

• The paperless office
• The death of cities due to telecommuting
• The death of tourism, colleges, and malls thanks to people visiting surrogate virtual spaces. 
• The rise of video phones [it has actually come true as of 2019]
• The demise of traditional media (TV, radio, live theater, and movie theaters) thanks to the internet

Those and other predictions failed because they violated the “Caveman Principle.”

• The Principle holds that humans evolved for hunter-gatherer life, and that this still shapes our behavior and thinking today. Ways of living that force us to go against our primitive, ingrained instincts will fail. 
• Cavemen wanted to see “proof of the kill,” which today manifests itself in the human preference for tactile physical objects over digital facsimiles. 
• Cavemen always socialized through face-to-face encounters, and that method of communication allows people to read important nonverbal cues, to size each other up, and to bond in ways that are impossible through remote interaction. There was a time when humans were incapable of speech and relied on other means to communicate. 

Chapter 1 – Future of the computer

[Boilerplate stuff about Moore’s Law, “exponential,” and improvements to computers.]

Once computer chips get small enough and cheap enough, it will make sense to embed them inside all kinds of manufactured objects, like walls and home appliances. They will have wireless capabilities and will be able to communicate with each other and with the internet through the uplink.  

Our surroundings will become “intelligent,” computers won’t be thought of as distinct devices, and we’ll start thinking of computing as a ubiquitous property, as we now think of electricity. 

Computer monitors will take the form of wallpaper, picture frames and billboards, and displaying movie footage won’t cost more than displaying static images. 

These devices will also have many types of sensors, allowing them to monitor their surroundings and, among other things, to issue alerts in the event of an observed problem. 

By 2020, a computer chip will only cost a penny. 

The word “computer” will disappear from the English language. [I doubt it.]

By 2100, humans will have the formerly “Godlike” ability to control physical objects with their thoughts or with remote bodily gestures thanks to computers embedded in our bodies and brains sending signals to computers embedded in the objects around us. [It will still be simpler and more efficient to manipulate many things the “old fashioned way” by physically interacting with them.]

By 2030

• There will be augmented reality glasses with internet access. Users will interact with it using a handheld peripheral device, or by doing hand gestures that the glasses will see and recognize as inputs. [One of the reasons Google Glass failed was its very limited means of input.] 
• Contact lenses that do most of the same things will also be invented. A contact lens with millions of pixels is theoretically possible. [A 1080p screen display measures 1920 x 1080 pixels, so it has a resolution of 2.1 million pixels (megapixels).]
• The glasses will also have front-facing cameras and advanced pattern recognition capabilities, allowing them to display information about people and objects in your field of view. Users will also be able to stream live footage to the internet for others to watch. [As of 2019, even though AR glasses have not become popular, livestreaming via smartphones definitely is.]
• Autonomous cars will exist. The military will get them first, and then big companies will buy autonomous big-rigs to ply simple highway routes, and finally, everyone else will get them, and they will be able to navigate suburban and urban traffic environments.
• AIs will become adept at matching humans on the basis of compatible personality traits or shared interests. Technology will expand peoples’ social circles. 
• Personal assistant AIs will be able to do complex tasks, like planning vacations for people. 
• Monitors will become paper-thin and it will be cheap enough to cover entire walls of your house with them. They will OLED-based. Some people will have rooms where all four walls are covered in said screens to create an immersive experience. [The only problem is that you’d have to clear all furniture and solid objects from the room so as not to block your view and break the visual illusion. Most people don’t have a spare room just for this.]
• The wall screens will also display customizable patters, allowing people to change what kind of “wallpaper” they have. [The durability of future OLED screens will be a major issue: If a pixel burns out, can it be fixed, or does the entire wall-sized screen need to be replaced? What if someone accidentally bangs their elbow against a wall screen, or spills a drink on it? Closely joining together many “tiles” to make a wall-sized screen will probably be the best option, as damage would only force you to replace one tile. OLED screens can also replace light fixtures, and it might make sense to cover ceilings with them.] 
• Computerized glasses and contact lenses will also let people “meet” in augmented reality or virtual reality. Seemingly 3D moving images of other people will appear to be in your vicinity. 
• Once OLED costs get low enough, it will be possible to buy disposable “sheets” of OLEDs, just like sheets of paper today. You could roll or fold them up when not in use. [But this would be a hindrance since the material would still have “memory” and would keep trying to return to some other configuration.] When done with a sheet, you would throw it away. [Unless the OLED paper were easily recyclable, environmentalists would throw a fit and try to ban it.]
• Seemingly normal windows could, upon command, turn into transparent computer screens or display images. [There are two ways this could work: 1) The windows are essentially big versions of the AR contact lenses, meaning they are transparent, but also impregnated with millions of OLED pixels that, when activated, display images. In a dual-paned window, the inner pane would be made of OLED glass, and the outer pane would be made of Privacy Glass that could turn opaque to block exterior light and make the OLED’s images easier to see. And/Or 2) The “windows” will be fake, “virtual windows” that are actually just portions of the OLED wallpaper displaying footage from exterior building cameras. See the Seoul apartment interior in Cloud Atlas]
• Cell phones might have OLED displays that can be pulled out as needed, like scrolls. [Foldable smartphones accomplish the same thing.]
• Highly immersive virtual reality will exist. Special gloves will also deliver a haptic element to the experience by allowing your fingers to feel textures and your arms to feel resistance from objects in your virtual environment. 
• There will be AI doctors that you can access from the privacy of your home and interact with conversationally. They will have realistic-looking human avatars, and will diagnose you correctly up to 95% of the time. 
• The AI doctors will have your genetic profile and will use that information to aid their diagnoses of you. 
• People will be able to afford small, handheld devices like the medical tricorders from “Star Trek.” The devices will contain mini-MRI machines, DNA chips and other sensors that will be able to peer inside your body and recognize the the genetic and biochemical signs of many diseases, including cancer. During remote medical exams, you AI doctor will tell you through your wall screen how to use the device on yourself. [I’m skeptical that MRI machines will get that small and cheap by 2030 and still do quality scans.]
• https://www.quora.com/Are-handheld-MRI-machines-possible
• Swallowable “smart pills” with tiny cameras could replace colonoscopies. 
• Your clothing and bathroom fixtures will also contain sophisticated health monitoring devices. [The value of many types of constant health monitoring is questionable. For example, you gain no benefit from testing your DNA every day, or even once every several months. And as health testing gets more frequent, so do the odds of false positives and unnecessary trips to the doctor for further investigation.] If you suffered a major injury, or a catastrophic health incident like a heart attack, the sensors embedded in your clothing and surroundings would detect it and alert EMS. [The problem with “smart clothing” is that the chips and sensors would wear out due to laundering, and to be continuously monitored, you’d need to buy a wardrobe entirely comprised of smart clothes.]
• Technology will make many aspects of live similar to fairy tale worlds. 

2030-2070

• Moore’s Law will end, meaning computer cost-performance will not double every 18 months anymore. The doubling time will increase until it is several years long. [Depending on the source, Moore’s Law “died” somewhere between 2016 and 2018.]
• Computer chips will be made of some material other than silicon. 
• Augmented reality glasses and contact lenses will be in mass use. 
• Examples of AR applications: 
  • Ability to see through solid objects by streaming external video camera footage to a person’s AR eyepiece. This would help drivers of buses and tanks, and aircraft pilots, by eliminating blind spots. It would also help people doing many types of repairs since they’d be able to see things like pipes and wires that are hidden by walls. Prospectors will be able to see underground deposits of minerals and water. 
  • Ability to make nonexistent objects appear overlaid on the real world. Architects will be able to see 3D models of structures they are designing. Interior decorators will be able to try out different furnishings and color schemes for rooms before actually buying anything. 
  • Tourism will benefit. Images of restored ancient buildings will be overlaid above their ruins. Virtual tour guides will lead tourists around art galleries and historical sites, providing helpful narration. 
  • Instant translations of text written in foreign languages, such as road signs. [Only useful when traveling]
  • Highlighting of plant species and of trails while hiking. [Only useful when hiking. Reminds me of the “intelligent belt” in The Godwhale that tells the one character to pick up edible substances.]
  • Apartment hunters could drive down the road and see which buildings are for rent along with their prices and amenities. 
  • Constellations in the sky would be labeled. [Few people care]
  • Actors, musicians and performers wouldn’t need to memorize their lines anymore since text would hover in their fields of view. 
  • Virtual lecture halls where you could even ask the instruction questions and get answers. 
  • Soldiers would have the “fog of war” lifted, as they’d be able to see maps and the locations of friendly and enemy forces. 
  • Surgeons would be able to see live MRI scans of patients during operations. 
  • Full-immersion video gaming.
  • [I’m convinced the technology will have niche applications, but skeptical that average people will adopt them for everyday use, unless we’re talking about the far future where the unemployed masses enter the Matrix 24/7. Moreover, I doubt AR eyewear will make smartphones obsolete for decades.] 
• AR eyepieces will replace cell phones, MP3 players, computer monitors, and most other gadgets. [I’m not sure. The classic problems with AR glasses would still remain.]
• AR eyepieces will let you do instant “showrooming” in any store. 
• AR eyepieces sensitive to X-rays could let you see through solid objects. You would need to carry a “flashlight” that emitted X-rays though, which would be hazardous to your health. 
• There will be portable language translators that work in real-time. 
• AR eyepieces will display seemingly 3D images, and TVs will be capable of displaying holograms. 
• TVs will display holographic images without viewers having to wear glasses. The principal hangup to holographic footage is that it contains much more data than 2D footage, so we’ll have to wait until TV bandwidth expands. [Could be a 10,000x data difference https://www.electronicworldtv.co.uk/blog/holographic-tvs-a-possibility-in-the-next-decade]
• Holographic TV screens might be shaped like domes or cylinders, with viewers under them. 

2070-2100

• Humans will be able to control physical objects with their minds. 
• Brain impants and externally worn BCIs (brain-computer interfaces) could monitor a person’s brain activity and read their thoughts. The BCIs would make use of brain-scanning technologies, like EEGs and fMRIs. 
• Eventually, fMRIs that can see individual brain cells will be invented. 
• fMRIs will be able to reconstruct a person’s mental images based on their brain activity. This could allow us to use machines to record our dreams, but the footage would be grainy because we imagine things in low-resolution. [See my Prometheus review]
• Fortunately, intrusive mind-reading at a distance is probably impossible. The subject would need to have brain implants or a head-worn BCI. 
• Brain scanning machines could serve as reliable lie detectors. 
• MRI machines the size of cell phones will exist. Some might even come in the form of suction-cup devices that are attached to the patient’s body. 
• Cheap, room-temperature superconductors will exist, and will be embedded in everyday objects, which will also have small computers and sensors. Humans with brain implants or other BCIs would be able to telepathically control the objects and activate electrical currents in the superconductors, which could cause them to move around thanks to magnetic force. “Telekinesis” would therefore exist. 
• [This sounds like a particularly shaky prediction since we’re not even sure if a room temperature superconductor can even exist. The theoretical aspect is still unclear. Moreover, there’s no cost-performance improvement trend akin to Moore’s Law that indicates we progressing towards inventing cheap room-temperature superconductors by 2100. Kaku’s prediction that humans will commonly use their thoughts to move objects like pieces of furniture across rooms also seems to, in spirit, clash with the Caveman Principle. Why not just move the chair in front of you by pushing it with your hand?]

Chapter 2 – Future of AI

While AI is genuinely improving, the odds of machines achieving human-level intelligence anytime soon have been overblown by the media, sci-fi movies, and a minority of scientists. Most scientists with relevant expertise don’t expect it to happen for decades, perhaps centuries. 

One of the world’s most advanced robots–ASIMO–can’t even sense and avoid tripping over objects placed in its path. A cockroach can easily do this, which means our best robots are still dumber than common insects in critical ways. 

The structure of the human brain is fundamentally different from the structure of a computer. Our brains are massively parallel, meaning they have trillions of processors working at the same time, but each processor operates very slowly. Computers are serial, meaning they typically have only one processor, but it operates very fast. 
Organizing computers to make “neural networks” the mimic the human brain has proven hard.

Humans also have common sense about the real world and are excellent at pattern recognition, whereas computers are very bad in both. [This book was published in 2011, and major advances were made in computer pattern recognition by the end of that decade.]

The “Cyc” project was started in 1984 to “codify, in machine-usable form, the millions of pieces of knowledge that compose human common sense.” As of 2017, it contained about 1,500,000 terms.

By 2030

• “Expert systems” will greatly improve and become more common. 
• There will be machine doctors that you will be able to access from your home and communicate with via natural speech. The doctors will diagnose you with similar accuracy as human doctors. 
• There will be robot nurses in hospitals that can move around interior spaces unassisted and perform basic patient care tasks, like delivering medications and monitoring humans.

2030-2070

• “Our world may be full of robots.”
• Most robots will not be humanoid, and instead will resemble animals like snakes and insects, depending on the needs of their function. 
• Many of the robots will be “modular,” meaning they could reconfigure themselves for different tasks by changing their body parts. [This kind of dovetails with my theory that the “Ideal Human” might be a giant human brain encased in something like a Mr. Potato Head torso with many ports that robotic limbs and sensors could be plugged into as needed.]
• [Looking at vehicles and guns as examples, it seems optimal to make a small number of “chassis,” with each chassis being highly modular.]
• The robots might be made of many, standardized pieces somewhat similar in concept to Lego blocks. Each block would have attachment points for other blocks, and its own sensors, computer and power source. The blocks could join together to make bigger robots of nearly any shape and to do many different types of work. 
• Robots made of such modular components could be very small or very large and have any arbitrary number of limbs or body configurations. They could pass through a wall by finding a small holes in it, passing their component modules through the hole individually, and then reassembling all modules on the other side of the wall to recreate the robot. 
• Small robots could do many jobs that humans can’t due to our large size or high labor costs. For example, small robots could crawl over all the rafters and beams of a bridge, checking for wear and spotting problems well before the bridge collapsed. [Like my idea of using insect-sized robots to crawl through the innards of a car or house to find things like the sources of oil and water leaks. Those diagnostics can be very messy, trial-and-error affairs if humans have to do the work.]
• Noninvasive keyhole surgeries will become the norm in the future, as will “telesurgery.” 
• Endoscopes used for keyhole surgeries and internal exams will get thinner, and micromachines “will do much of the mechanical work.” [Meaning unclear]
• “By midcentury, the era of emotional robots may be in full flower.” [There’s no reason to think that intelligent machines won’t someday learn how to at least convincingly mimic human emotions and to take over human jobs requiring empathy and warmth.]
• The author seems to suggest that emotions and intelligence and inextricable, meaning intelligent machines will necessarily also have emotions. 
• Robotic pets that have about the same intelligence as cats and dogs and the ability to at least outwardly imitate emotional states will be common. They won’t be able to understand verbal commands that aren’t in their programming. [Progress with understanding human language seems to be progressing faster than he predicted. He’s right to point out that some robots will look exactly like animals, and that “dog-level intelligence” will be achieved before “human-level intelligence”.]
• The human brain will be mapped. However, it will then take “many decades to sort through the mountains of data,” which seems to suggest that an AI derived from a reverse-engineered human brain won’t be made until after 2070. Consider that the C. elegans brain was fully mapped in 1986, but scientists still can’t make a computer simulation of its brain that functions the same.  
• In 2009, neuroscientist Henry Markram predicted that a computer simulation of a human brain could be made in 10 years, provided the project to do so got enough funding. The author speculates the costs would be comparable to the Manhattan Project. 
• Another way to map brains is to cut brains into very thin slices, to use electron microscopes to photograph the cross-sectioned neurons in each slice, and to assemble the resulting data into a 3D computer model of all the neurons in the brain. 
• Gerry Rubin predicts that the fruit fly brain will be mapped in 20 years (2031), and that will get us 20% of the way towards understanding the human mind. 
• A human brain has 1 million times as many neurons as a fruit fly brain.  

2070-2100

• Human-level AI will probably be friendly to humans. 
• AIs will have failsafes built into them that shut them down whenever dangerous, aberrant, or insubordinate behavior or thoughts are detected. Humans will also be able to say safewords that trigger the failsafes. 
• Humans will build some robots whose purpose it is to disable or destroy malfunctioning robots. [I agree that there will never be a 100% human vs 100% robot war. Surely, the humans will have some number of non-sentient robots fighting for them that the other side can’t hack or persuade to switch sides.]
• Human-level AI won’t appear suddenly. It will be preceded by decades of steadily increasing machine intelligence, like roach-level AI, mouse-level AI, and chimp-level AI. Thus, humans will have time to prepare and to develop increasingly sophisticated safeguards at each step that prevent the AIs from taking hostile action against us. [And even if hostile, human-level AI appeared without warning today, the amount of damage it could do would be limited since not everything is controlled by computers, and not all computer systems would be accessible to it. Not everything can be hacked.]
• The author agrees with roboticist Rodney Brooks’ prediction that humans will cybernetically augment themselves with technology, and the advanced robots of 2100 will be inspired by the human brain and by biological systems. 
• In theory, it is possible for humans to control robot limbs and even whole robot bodies with their thoughts. A cybernetic brain interface would be needed. 
• Remote-controlled robots could enable the offshoring of blue-collar work, which would reduce the need for immigration and especially help Japan. 
• They would also be useful for doing dangerous work, like rescue missions and outside excursions on extraterrestrial bodies (the human astronauts would stay inside protected habitats). 
• Because what humans find aesthetically pleasing is rooted in our genes, people will reject body enhancements that make them look ugly or strange. [The small minority of people who are today into extreme body modifications would probably embrace all kinds of augmentations. They might even have their own bars and clubs, like something out of Deus Ex.]
• The author predicts that humans will be open to technologically augmenting their bodies so long as they augmentations don’t make them uglier by conventional standards, and that people will sometimes use remote-controlled robots for work or pleasure, but the Cave Man principle will preclude them from permanently existing in that state. [Has implications for FIVR’s future role.]
• Human-level AI won’t be created until close to the end of this century. 
• Even if we have computers with the same raw computational power as the human brain, we might not have the software necessary to make them intelligent like humans. Hardware improvements are relatively smooth and predictable, whereas software advances happen in fits and starts. AI software advances will probably lag hardware advances. 
• An AGI-based “singularity” or “intelligence explosion” isn’t a given, since we don’t know if a human-level AI would be able to make a smarter version of itself. [This is a weak argument. The history of human evolution contains several instances where one hominid species gave rise to a smarter hominid, and among humans alive today, it’s common for parents to give birth to children that are smarter than they are. And as we decode the human genome, we are discovering which genes code for human intelligence, which in theory could allow us to use genetic engineering to make smarter humans. So if humans are smart enough to make smarter versions of themselves, then a machine with human-level intelligence should also be able to make smarter machines. Also keep in mind that Einstein was human, so he technically had “human-level intelligence,” which means a merely “human-level” AI could be as smart as Einstein, but without dyslexia, with a perfect memory, and able to think 24/7. Most people would deem that “superhuman.”]
• The high costs of doing brain scans and decoding how the human brain works will also delay AGI. 

Chapter 3 – Future of medicine

By 2030

• The cost of gene sequencing will decrease enough for many average people to get their full genomes sequenced. From it, they will derive useful information about genetic health conditions they may have. 
• As more human genomes are sequenced and more genetic information becomes available for computer cross-referencing, the locations of more genes coding for specific traits (including genetic diseases) will become known. 
• A better understanding of the human genome will also assist detectives, since they will be able to generate accurate CGI facial reconstructions of unknown people by sequencing scraps of their DNA found at crime scenes. 
• You will talk to AI doctors via the wall screen in your house. 
• Your bathroom [presumably the mirror and toilet] will have sensors that can detect your disease symptoms, including cancer. 
• Nanoparticles will be used to deliver anti-cancer drugs directly to cancer cells in your body. Chemotherapies in which a patient’s body is flooded with such drugs, and they attack many healthy cells, will be obsolete. 
• It will be possible to grow new human organs, derived from a specific person’s DNA, and to implant the organs into that person without risk of rejection. [This looks headed for failure.]
• A human urinary bladder was grown in a lab for the first time in 2007, and a windpipe in 2009. [Time showed that these results were not as impressive as claimed. Research “Dr. Paolo Macchiarini,” who was a pioneer in tissue engineered windpipe transplants when this book was written, only to be revealed to be a fraud within a few years.] 
• “Within five years, the first liver and pancreas might be grown…”
• Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Walter Gilbert predicts that, in a few decades, it will be possible to use a person’s DNA to create almost any organ for him in a lab.
• A major roadblock to therapeutic cloning is infusing the synthetic organs with capillaries. These blood vessels are microscopic, and hence too small to be created using molds. 
• A major roadblock to stem cell therapy is controlling the differentiation and mitosis of the stem cells. Very subtle and poorly understood chemical messages sent between cells determine how their neighbors develop. 
• “Pixie dust” is a powder made of human extracelluar matrix. If applied to the stump of a severed finger, it allows the body to slowly regrow the fingertip. 
• Human cloning will be possible, but almost never used. Interested people might be parents looking to replace a dead child, or rich old guys looking to make worthy heirs. 
• The creation of the first human clone will probably trigger a wave of anti-cloning laws being enacted, and ethical outrage from many people. It will mirror the reaction to the first Test Tube Baby. In time, the novelty will wear off, people will see the clones act no different from anyone else, and laws and attitudes will relax. 
• Cancerous tumors typically have tens of thousands of different mutations, so it take many years of study to determine which genes can make cells cancerous. 
• There will not be a cancer cure by 2030, but we will have better, cheaper ways of detecting cancer earlier, when it is easier to treat. 
• By 2050, it might be possible to slow down the aging process, extending human lifespan to 150. 

2030-2070

• Gene therapy will probably be in common use as a cancer treatment. 
• “Designer babies” will be born. Genetic engineering can influence many human traits, including intelligence, physical strength, and baseline happiness level. 
• Richard Dawkins predicts that, by 2050, it will be possible to feed genomic data into a computer and to have it generate an accurate virtual rendering of the organism’s appearance. 

2070-2100

• Richard Feynmann predicted that human aging would be cured someday, and medical immortality achieved. Dr. William Haseltine agreed.
• The rising rate of breast cancer could be due to women having fewer children, since estrogen increases breast cancer risk, and the hormone’s levels decrease during pregnancy. 
• Twin studies prove that human lifespan is partly genetic. The specific genes that code for lifespan will be identified as more human genomes become available for medical research. 
• By 2100, technologies needed to grant medical immortality may exist. 
• “In five or six or seven years, there will be drugs that prolong longevity.” -Christoph Westphal, 2009
• “The nature of life is not mortality. It’s immortality. DNA is an immortal molecule. That molecule first appeared perhaps 3.5 billion years ago. That selfsame molecule, through duplication, is around today.” – Dr. William Haseltine
• A battery of different therapies and personal practices will allow for human life extension:
  • Grow and surgically implant new organs and tissues to replace older ones as they wear out. 
  • Ingest a cocktail of enzymes meants to slow aging and mutations at the cellular level.
  • Use gene therapy to manipulate genes responsible for aging (slow it down)
  • Maintain a healthy lifestyle (good diet and exercise) 
  • Use nanosensors to detect diseases like cancer at their early phases and treat them.  
• GM crops will allow Earth to support a much larger population.
• Richard Dawkins believes portable, full-genome sequencing kits will exist someday, and that it will be possible to clone extinct species. 
• Computers might also be able to analyze the genomes of humans, chimps and other primates to deduce the genetics of the “Missing Link.” Such a hominid could then be created in the flesh by assembling its DNA in a petri dish and implanting it in an ovum. 
• The Neanderthal genome has been sequenced using fragmentary DNA recovered from the bones of several Neanderthals, and it might be possible to resurrect them. 
• Extinct animals for which we have DNA samples, such as woolly mammoths and dodos, could be resurrected through cloning. 
• Extinct animals for which we lack DNA samples, such as dinosaurs, can’t be resurrected, but we could make “proxy species” by analyzing the genomes of living species that descended from the dinosaurs. 
• With very advanced genetic engineering, we could make hybrid animals and beasts like chimeras. 
• Clones of long-dead humans could be made using DNA recovered from their entombed bodies. 
• All communicable human diseases won’t be cured by 2100. 
• It’s unlikely that people will want to genetically engineer their children to be freakish in any way. [Small numbers of mentally ill parents might.] There will be little financial incentive for geneticists to research or develop alleles for weird traits because demand for them will be low. 
• The human race will not have split into different species thanks to genetic engineering or natural evolution. 
• As genetic technology gets cheaper and more advanced, small groups and even individual people will gain the means to make biological weapons. Airborne AIDS would be a nightmare that could result from gene splicing. 
• It might be possible to build machines capable of synthesizing microorganisms from scratch based on digital genetic data alone. 
• Nations will continue to resist using bioweapons for fear of fratricide; it would be too easy for the infection to spread from the enemy back to whoever used it. 

Chapter 4 – Nanotechnology

Around 2020, Moore’s Law will end, and if a replacement for silicon computer chips isn’t found by then, “the world economy could be thrown into disarray.”

• Richard Feynman famously believed that nanomachines could be built with the right level of technology, but he also thought it would be very difficult. 
• We can already use scanning tunneling microscopes to move around individual atoms. It is possible and doesn’t violate any laws of physics.

By 2030

• Nanoparticles could revolutionize cancer treatment. They contain cell-killing chemicals and are 10 – 100 nm in diameter, which makes them too big to diffuse into healthy cells, but small enough to pass through the abnormally large pores on many cancer cell membranes. The nanoparticles accumulate in cancer cells and release their loads, killing them but sparing the surrounding healthy tissue.
• Nanoparticles with surface structures designed to be complementary to cancer cell antigens are another option. 
• Nanoparticles made of metal (e.g. – titanium, gold) can accumulate inside cancer cells and then be externally heated with infrared lasers or vibrated with external magnets, to destroy the cancer cells. 
• Cancer will be detected early and treated with nanoparticles. 
• Medical micromachines and nanomachines could be used to move through a person’s blood vessels and precisely zap cancer cells and arterial plaques, deliver drugs to specific cells, or even do surgery. The machines would navigate using simple computers and/or magnetic and laser signals beamed from outside the person’s body. 
• DNA microarrays/chips will be small and cheap, and will allow people to do at-home testing for many types of cancer. 
• Microarrays/chips that test for proteins that are hallmarks of different diseases will also be available and will have the same personal health applications. 
• [The author is wrong to predict that people would do the at-home tests every day. Such a high rate of testing would raise the odds of Type 1 errors and needless hospital visits to confirm misdiagnoses. I doubt there would be any benefit for healthy people to take tests for cancer or other major diseases more often than once every six months or even once a year.]
• In 2007, Gordon Moore predicted that his eponymous Law would end in 10-15 years. [He was right.]
• We will be forced to start making computer chips out of something other than etched silicon wafers if we want them to keep getting faster. 
  • Stacking silicon-based chips to make “3D chips” offers only a temporary solution since problems with heat dissipation limit how high the stacks can get before the chips melt. Components at the centers of the chip stacks wouldn’t get enough air flow to cool them down. 
  • Using X-rays instead of UV light rays to etch ever-smaller features on silicon chips could also wring out more of a performance boost from the material, though there are large technical challenges to using X-rays for this. 
  • Ultimately, silicon chips will hit a “bottom limit” once their feature sizes are 5nm small, at which point quantum tunneling of electrons will start happening. 
  • Arranging silicon chips into groups of parallel processors that work together could also prolong the silicon paradigm, but the difficulty of doing this is monumental since breaking up computation tasks, shunting the fragments to different processors, and then reassembling the processed data at the end is extremely hard. There is no general set of instructions for programming computers how to do this with any type of task; human programmers can only do this painstakingly and for specific tasks. 
• Graphene-based computer chips could exist someday, and their transistors could be only 1 atom thick–the smallest possible size–but the technical challenges to manufacturing them are very high. [The author doesn’t explicitly say that these issues will be solved by 2030, so his mentioning of graphene computer chips isn’t a prediction for that year.]
• Quantum computers could also be built someday, if major technical hurdles relating to “decoherence” can be overcome. 
• Optical computers
• Quantum dot computers
• DNA computers

2030-2070

• By 2050, many manmade objects will look the same as today, but will have special material properties and will be “smart” thanks to tiny computers and sensors embedded in them. 
• “Programmable matter” will also be in common use. The basic unit of such matter will be tiny, modular robots called “catoms” that will be no bigger than grains of sand and will be able to reorient themselves with respect to each other, forming almost any shape. 
• If your house were full of programmable matter, you could do things like transform a piece of furniture into something different, or convert your child’s old toy into whatever faddish, new toy he wanted.
• A roadblock to this is the fact that catoms would cohere to each other weakly, so objects made of them would be fragile. [Also, individual catoms might be fragile, meaning an object made of them would slowly “waste away” as its components broke and fell off.]  

2070-2100

• Molecular assemblers (e.g. – nanomachines that can build things from the bottom-up) don’t violate the laws of physics, and the existence of ribosomes and enzymes are proof of concept. However, it will be extremely hard for us to create molecular assemblers with the sorts of capabilities people like Eric Drexler envision. 
• In theory, an MRI machine could be built that is powerful enough to see individual cells, so it could be possible in the future for people to get “body scans” that recorded the locations of all their cells as digital data. [This point is debatable: https://www.quora.com/Radiology-Will-MRI-technology-ever-reach-the-resolution-to-image-individual-neurons]
• Put together, the aforementioned facts and the rate of improvement for the relevant technologies suggest that we might be able to build Star Trek-style replicators by the end of this century. [Even then, it will still be cheaper and more optimal to make most objects through “top-down” macro manufacturing methods we use today. Not every object must be super-strong or made to atomic levels of precision.]
• The “Gray Goo” doomsday scenario is unlikely to happen, partly because nanotechnology is advancing so slowly that regulators will have time to enact the necessary safety measures. 
• If replicators become widespread, and, along with other technologies and government policy, let all people have their material needs met, then society will probably split into a large group of loafers and a small group of innovators who work hard pursuing their passions. [This may have been what Federation society was like in “Star Trek.” Not even 1% of its citizens joined Starfleet.]

Chapter 5 – Future of energy [This is the weakest chapter so far]

In 1956, American petrochemical engineer M. King Hubbert famously predicted that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970 and then start declining. He proved right, which fanned fears of global “Peak Oil.” [Hubbert’s prediction about the peaking of U.S. CONVENTIONAL OIL production was the only big thing he got right. His predictions about U.S. natural gas production and global fossil fuel production proved far too pessimistic. Unconventional oil production in the U.S. also sharply ramped up in the 2010s, allowing total U.S. oil production to surpass the 1970 peak.]

The consensus among experts that the author spoke with is that global oil production had either already peaked or was at most 10 years away. [This book was published in 2011.] “The average price of oil will continue to rise over the long term.” [Oil prices have in fact dropped about 50% since 2011.]

By 2030

• The likeliest successor to fossil fuels is a solar/hydrogen energy economy. [Solar is rapidly growing, but hydrogen is stalled.]
• Wind power can’t supply all of the world’s energy needs for several important reasons. 
• The amount of electricity made by solar panels has rapidly grown and will keep doing so. 
• Electric cars are becoming practical. 
• Laser technology for uranium enrichment could be perfected, lowering enrichment costs but also raising the risk of nuclear proliferation. [Since the book was published, the leading laser enrichment company, Silex, has been mostly stuck in neutral with the technology due to high costs and uncertain demand.] 
• Advanced, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs could be developed. 

2030-2070

• The climate will have significantly changed by 2050 thanks to global warming. “…by midcentury, the situation could be dire.”
• [Listing of Worst Case Scenarios but no mention of their statistical unlikelihood.]
• Several geoengineering projects have been proposed to counteract global warming, but none have gotten serious funding. If the problem gets bad enough, this might change by midcentury. 
• By midcentury, the world will be in the “Hydrogen Age.” 
• Hot fusion power plants could be everywhere, providing limitless amounts of electricity and no pollution. 
• “Tabletop fusion” reactors might also be possible to build. 

2070-2100

• Room temperature superconductors will probably have been discovered. [Why does he think so? Is there a trend like Moore’s Law?]
• Up to 30% of electricity generated at a power plant is lost during transmission. Power lines made of room temperature superconductors would eliminate those losses. Wind turbines in the middle of America could provide electricity to New York. Nuclear power plants could be relocated to remote areas. 
• Magnetic field lines can’t penetrate superconductors (the Meissner Effect), so cars with magnets on their bottoms could float over streets made of superconductors. The vehicles would still have to overcome air friction, so they’d need backward-facing engines of some kind. 
• Maglev trains also float over their tracks, but the system doesn’t use superconductors, it uses simple magnets, oriented so their forces repel each other. Trains with superconductors could be much cheaper to build than today’s maglev trains. 
• Superconductors would also allow us to shrink MRI machines to the sizes of shirt buttons. 
• [The author doesn’t present any trend data to back his claim that room temperature superconductors will be invented by 2100, or that they will be cheap enough by then for these applications.] 
• Space-based solar power beamed to Earth as microwaves could be real. However, space rocket launch costs will need to decline as much as 99% for solar satellites to become feasible. This probably won’t happen until the end of this century. 

Chapter 6 – Future of space travel

By 2030

• Better telescopes (mainly space-based) will have revealed the locations of thousands of planets outside our solar system. Hundreds of those will be similar to Earth in size and composition. [Note that the author doesn’t say that we will know if these planets harbor life–he merely says we will be able to see that they are rocky and the same size as Earth.] 
• A space probe will probably be sent to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. 
• The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) satellite system will be in space, and its ability to detect gravity waves could reveal what existed before the Big Bang. [Since the book’s publishing, LISA’s launch date has been pushed back until at least 2030]
• Micrometeor impacts and radiation are so bad on the Moon that a permanent manned base would need to be built underground. [The author doesn’t actually say that there will be a manned base on the Moon by 2030.]

2030-2070

• It’s unlikely that any off-world bases will be self-sustaining until late this century, or even until the 22nd century. [Agree] Like the ISS today, any bases we build on the Moon or Mars will be net resource drains on Earth until then, not assets. 
• Space tourism could exist, though it will be very expensive.  
• Breakthroughs may have dramatically reduced space launch costs. One candidate technology is laser propulsion, in which a powerful, ground-based laser shoots beams at the underside of a craft that is dripping water. The beams vaporize the water, causing a series of small explosions that propel the craft upward into space. 
• Another candidate is the “gas gun,” which is a vertical howitzer that uses pressurized gas instead of gunpowder to accelerate objects to escape velocity. Due to the intensity of the G-forces, it could only be used to launch robust, unmanned craft. 
• Another candidate is the “slingatron.” [Sounds impractical] 
• All of those space technologies are longshots that will need decades of R&D to determine their feasibility. The odds of any succeeding can’t be calculated now, but it’s possible that any one of them could prove practical and sharply reduce the costs of launching things into space. 

2070-2100

• A space elevator might be built. However, there are major technical roadblocks to overcome:
  • Only carbon nanotubule fibers have the necessary strength-to-weight ratios to make the space elevator. Several paradigm shifts in manufacturing techniques need to happen before we can make tens of thousands of miles of carbon nanotubules that are flawless down to the atomic level. 
  • The risk of collision between the space elevator and satellites would be very high, and the elevator would need to be able to move around to dodge them, meaning it would probably need to be tethered to a ship floating in the ocean, and the elevator’s upper segments would need thrusters.  
• A Mars outpost will probably exist.
• An outpost in the Asteroid Belt will probably exist. 
• Only token numbers of humans will live outside of the Earth. Mass colonization of space will not be underway.
• Probes will probably have explored some of Jupiter’s moons.
• A serious effort will be underway to send our first probe to another solar system. 
• Antimatter engines are not prohibited by the laws of physics. The real limitation is the high cost of synthesizing antimatter. Making just a few trillionths of a gram costs $20 million. 
• An asteroid made of antimatter would be a game-changer. [But what about the effects of frequent collisions with interstellar dust particles made of normal matter?]
• Antimatter won’t be cheap enough for propulsion applications until the end of this century. 
• Nano-sized Von Neumann Probes could be used to explore and colonize the galaxy. Small size would make it easy to accelerate them to relativistic speeds using gravitational slingshotting around Jupiter or something like a particle accelerator. When they reached their destinations, they could start making copies of themselves. 

Chapter 7 – Future of wealth

By 2030

• Computers will get so small and cheap that they will be integrated into everyday objects. They will be so omnipresent that the word “computer” might fall out of use since people won’t think of data computation services as coming from discrete physical devices. [I don’t see how this is a prediction about “future wealth.”]

2030-2070

• Machines will take over jobs that involve repetitive physical or mental labor. 
• Human workers will need to provide things machines can’t in order to keep their jobs. Workers with strong “people skills,” creativity, leadership, and other idiosyncratic human traits won’t lose their jobs. 
• The best lawyers will still be humans. 
• Juries will not be automated, since the law requires that juries be composed of the “peers” of the defendant being tried for a crime. 
• [Problematically, many jobs that bank heavily on these human traits, like artists, comedians, and jurors, are low-paid. And because of simple supply and demand, the pay will drop further as more people enter those fields. Also, the necessary traits are unevenly distributed in the population, meaning not every person can switch to being a comedian, warm-hearted therapist, or painter once their old jobs are automated.]
• Changes in the music retail paradigm caused by the rise of the internet mean that the music market will be democratized in the future, with middleman “gatekeeper” record companies and music moguls withering away, and average listeners deciding which artists succeed or fail. Poor, unknown singers and bands will be able to rise to the top more easily by selling their songs over the internet cheaply. 
• Newspapers will continue declining, but won’t disappear because eventually, people will see the downsides of the atomized editorial news/conspiracy theorist podcaster paradigm, and they will crave reputable, unbiased news sources. 
• Lifelike, computer-generated actors won’t exist because the nuances of the human face and its expressions are too hard to model. [This prediction will almost certainly be wrong.]

2070-2100

• A state of “perfect capitalism” will arise, in which firms have perfect information about the needs and preferences of customers, and customers have perfect information about the prices and quality of goods and services offered by firms. People will see fewer ads that don’t appeal to them, and prices and profit margins for everything will be lower.
• Augmented reality eyewear will let consumers see information about products before buying them, and to quickly do price/quality comparisons to find the best deals. [AI will do the number crunching.]
• Firms will also be able to buy highly detailed customer data and to adjust their marketing strategies and prices accordingly. 
• It won’t cost more money to have clothes and other types of objects custom-made instead of buying standardized shapes and sizes. “In the future, everything will fit.” 
• Computation will be thought of as a commoditized utility service like electricity or piped water. People will no longer get their computation services from expensive boxes full of electronics that they buy for personal use and keep in their houses or pockets. Computation service will be remotely accessed through the cloud, using tiny, cheap devices embedded in the environment. [Or implanted in peoples’ bodies.] Any wall will be able to turn into a computer display screen in an instant. 
• The Internet will not evolve into a means of mass surveillance. “Today, Big Brother is not possible.” [Events since 2011 show that the jury is still out on the internet’s long-term direction.]
• Commodity goods and natural resources are getting cheaper over time and will continue to do so. As such, “commodity capitalism,” which is the trading of simple goods, will fade in importance, and “intellectual capitalism” will rise to the fore.
• “Intellectual capitalism” refers to the production and trading of goods and services that have value because of uniquely human cognitive effort. New computer algorithms, films, video games, and inventions are all products that can only be created by careful human thought. [I think the author is overestimating how long humans will have a monopoly over these kinds of products. Most Hollywood films are so formulaic that AIs could soon write their scripts, and 100% CGI actors could star in them.]
• The future is up for grabs, meaning developing nations could rise to the forefront of power by copying the West’s technology and the best aspects of culture and governance, and today’s rich, established countries could be second-tier. But the author makes no firm predictions beyond that general observation. 
• Singapore is the best example of a country that rapidly developed thanks to a highly competent and technocratic government that identified and copied the best attributes of the West. 

Chapter 8 – Future of humanity

We are headed to become a planetary civilization. 

On the Kardashev Scale, we are now a Type 0 civilization. 

We will be a Type 1 civilization in 100 years, based on extrapolations of economic growth trends. [This is wrong. In Kardashev’s 1964 science paper, he set the Earth’s then-current level of energy expenditure (4×10^19 ergs/second) as the threshold for a Type 1 civilization. In other words, humanity has been a Type 1 civilization since 1964 at the latest. The paper also said nothing of there being a “Type 0” civilization.]

If the long-term global economic growth rate is 1%, then we will achieve Type 2 status in 2,500 years. With a 2% growth rate, it will happen in 1,200 years. [It depends on how fast we can build a Dyson Swarm. Even their component satellites are self-replicating, it will take many years to mine the raw materials to make enough of them to surround the Sun, and then to move them into the right positions in orbit. Several hundred years is a good estimate.] 

Evidence of our transition to a Type 1 civilization:

• The rise and ubiquity of the Internet. This provides a universally accessible platform for low-cost communication and access to information. 
• The rise of English as the world’s common language. [Computer translation technology will accomplish the same thing.]
• The economy is increasingly globalized, and super-national trade blocs like NAFTA and the EU have formed. [Events since 2011 has stalled the expansion of international free trade and of trade blocs.]
• The rise of a global middle class, whose values and outlooks are broadly similar and peaceful, regardless of which nation they live in. When people have a stake in society (e.g. – good job, money, property, a family), they become risk-averse and much less likely to support revolutions or big wars since they have so much to lose. 
• Culture is increasingly globalized and homogenized, with people across the world consuming the same films and music and wearing the same styles of clothes. Local cultures will still survive though, and people will be “bi-cultural.” 
• International sports events like the Olympics command more attention than ever. 
• Environmental problems and disease outbreaks are increasingly viewed as global problems that countries by default work together to address. 
• Low-cost plane travel and the swelling global middle class have allowed for a massive increase in international travel for tourism, work, and study. This gives more people exposure to foreigners, building bonds of affection and making it harder for them to go to war. 
• Lower birthrates mean that parents value their children more as scarce resources, and don’t want to risk them dying in wars. [The rise of killer robots will fix that. A country’s military strength will decouple from its human population size.]
• Nation-states will still exist in 2100, but they will be weaker than today. 

Our transition to a Type 2 civilization

• Won’t happen for thousands of years. Since we will have existed as a planetary civilization for so long by that point, we’ll probably have ironed out the differences that put us at odds today, and we will be much more peaceful by the time we achieve Type 2 status. 
• Once this status is attained, our civilization will become immortal since there is no known natural force that can destroy an advanced, multiplanetary civilization. [Agreed, though we might still be able to destroy ourselves through warfare or some kind of manmade accident, or be destroyed by aliens.]
• We will have colonized all the celestial bodies in our Solar System and possibly built a Dyson Sphere. 
• We will have colonized nearby star systems. 

What our civilization will look like when it has Type 3 status

• We will have explored most of the galaxy, probably through use of unmanned, self-replicating probes.
• We might be able to derive energy from the fabric of space-time itself. (“Planck energy”) This could also allow for the creation of wormholes that would effectively enable superluminal space travel.
• Type 3 civilizations might already have a presence in our Solar System or even on Earth itself. They could be here in the form of very small probes that we overlook or lack the technology to detect. The Fermi Paradox is resolved if you assume aliens have this kind of technology. 

We will probably detect advanced alien life this century thanks to better telescopes. 

The discovery of intelligent alien life will be one of the most important events in human history. However, it won’t change things as quickly as many people expect. For example, if we learn about the existence of aliens by intercepting one of their radio transmissions, and it turns out the transmission was not meant for Earth, it will indicate that they don’t know we exist. There will be no imperative to send a signal back, meaning we could take our time deciding on our next step. It will also probably take decades for our response to reach them. 

Alternatives to the Kardashev scale

• Carl Sagan’s scale is based on how many bits of information a civilization processes, and its increments are based on orders of magnitude (e.g. – A “Type C” civilization processes ten times as much information as a “Type B” civilization, and so on down the alphabet).
• Freeman Dyson believed that advanced aliens would build spherical structures around their stars to capture all of the light and turn it into energy. Some waste heat would be emitted, so he suggested that “stars” that only emitted infrared light were probable locations of alien civilizations. 

As a civilization gets bigger and more advanced, it will generate more waste, including waste heat. If left unchecked, this would lead to their home planets and even their solar systems becoming uninhabitable. Thus, we can expect advanced civilizations to be much more efficient at resource usage than we are today. 

“Today, the Internet, with all its faults and excesses, is emerging as a guardian of democratic freedoms.” [In 2019, it is increasingly viewed as a means to spread government surveillance, extremism, and disinformation. Funny how things change.]

Democracies only work well if voters are well-informed and rational.  [But isn’t that true of any type of government? For example, dictatorships only work well if the dictators are well-informed and rational.]

Chapter 9 – A day in the life in 2100

You have hundreds of hidden sensors in your bathroom mirror, toilet and sink that scan you for illness. 

You have an AI personal assistant named “Molly” that can handle conversational speech, answer your questions intelligently, and complete tasks for you. You interact with Molly through your wall screen. 

You “wrap some wires around your head,” allowing you to use your thoughts to control the technology in your house. 

A robot chef is in your kitchen. 

You have augmented reality contact lenses that show you internet content. You watch the news:

• There is a Mars colony. 
• Preparations are underway to send nano-sized probes to other star systems. 
• Extinct species are being resurrected using cloning technology. 
• A space elevator is operational. 
• Fusion power plants have existed since 2050.
• Manhattan is surrounded by dikes due to higher sea levels, and one is leaking. 

You telepathically summon your self-driving car and tell it to drive you to work. [Clever and likely to hold true.]

The car hovers above the ground thanks to roads made of room-temperature superconductors. 

You work at a civil engineering company. In the lobby of your workplace, a small laser scans your irises from a distance to verify your identity. You don’t need an ID badge. 

Your augmented reality contact lenses and telepresence technology makes the conference room seem full of people, most of whom are actually somewhere else. You have a group meeting and discuss the dike leak. 

Several coastal cities across the world have been abandoned due to rising sea levels. Manhattan survived thanks to its dikes.  

The group realizes that an underwater maintenance robot probably went haywire and drilled the hole in the dike. A decision is made to fix it with a different underwater robot that is remote-controlled by a human.

After work, you return home and use your wall screen to do a video call with your robot doctor. It tells you that the sensors in your bathroom diagnosed you with pancreatic cancer this morning. The doctor prescribes you nanoparticles to kill the cancer cells. 

You run a smartphone-sized MRI machine over your abdomen to make a 3D scan of your internal organs, and the doctor sees it immediately. 

You have a holographic TV system in your living room that lets you watch sports games immersively. It looks like the players are running around you. 

Human genetic engineering is common.  

Molly helps you set up a date with a woman named “Karen.” Both of you have online dating profiles. 

You can use your wall screen to virtually explore places in the real world. You use this ability to “go shopping” at a local mall and to see if a robot dog is for sale there. You find it, and decide to drive to the actual mall to buy it because you are bored and want to get out of your house. 

Large numbers of robots of different shapes and sizes are roaming public spaces, mostly doing labor. 

The robot industry is bigger than the car industry. 

Robots still lack human levels of intelligence, creativity and humor. 

You try on suit jackets at a shop until you find the one that looks the best. You send an online order to a local textile factory to make that suit for you, but tailored to your exact body measurements. It will be delivered to you by the end of the day. 

At the supermarket, your AR contact lenses display price comparison data over all the items on the shelves and highlight the bargains. 

You return home. Most of your furniture is made of programmable matter, so you can change its appearance at will. You pick a new home decor motif and verbally order Molly to change everything. It takes about an hour for the process to complete.  

Medicines that can slow the aging process have existed for many years, and it’s common for adults to be much older than they look. 

You were born in 2028 and were genetically engineered in vitro to have a longer lifespan. That feature, coupled with medical interventions you had later in life, has resulted in you having a body of someone who is 30 even though you are 72 years old. 

FIVR gaming and tourism exists. 

You visit Europe with Karen, and while touring the ancient ruins of Rome, your AR contact lenses generate real-looking images that show what the area looked like in its prime. 

The Italian speech of the people you encounter is subtitled in English across your field of view by your contact lenses. 

You don’t need a paper map to find your way around Rome because your contact lenses display lines and arrows that tell you where to go. 

Ageless people don’t feel pressure to get married or have children. You’ve never passed either milestone. 

You and Karen agree to have a child, and contemplate genetically engineering it.