Physics of the Future

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Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives By the Year 2100, by Michio Kaku, Ph.D. New York: Doubleday, 2011.

A review by Mark Plus

Many cryonicists like to think about something called “the future” (TF) more than other people, and in a more self-interested way than most. Our quest for cryotransport assumes that we can reach a time in TF when the advanced art of medicine can revive us from the cryopreserved state and restore us to good physical and cognitive health, and preferably keep us that way indefinitely. So we have an emotional investment in visualizing and trying to create the kinds of futures which will allow us to make that happen. Ironically I’ve lived long enough to experience arriving at earlier versions of TF. For example, I can remember thinking as a child after seeing Stanley Kubrick’s movie that the year 2001 seemed like a long way off in TF; now that year lies a decade in our past.

Physicist Michio Kaku likes to think about TF as well, but to the best of my knowledge he hasn’t expressed interest in cryopreservation. He doesn’t mention cryonics in his new book, and he calls the year 2100 “the far future,” when at least some cryonicists could already have tentative plans for that year and consider it practically “the near future” instead. Yet cryonicists might want to read this book anyway to see what a well known science popularizer thinks could happen in the balance of the current century.

Kaku lists reasons early in the book to defend his claim that he can make some plausible forecasts about new technologies through the year 2100 (pp. 9-10):

1.  This book is based on interviews with more than 300 top scientists, those in the forefront of discovery.
2.  Every scientific development mentioned in this book is consistent with the known laws of physics.
3.  The four forces and the fundamental laws of nature are largely known; we do not expect any major new changes in these laws.
4.  Prototypes of all technologies mentioned in this book already exist.
5.  This book is written by an “insider” who has a firsthand look at the technologies that are on the cutting edge of research.

Given these assumptions, what does Kaku see as a likely state of affairs for human life by the year 2100? He writes (pp. 10-11):

By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory, which is the foundation of the previous technologies.

 By 2100, like the gods of mythology, we will be able to manipulate objects with the power of our minds. Computers, silently reading our thoughts, will be able to carry out our wishes. We will by able to move objects by thought alone, a telekinetic power usually reserved only for gods. With the power of biotechnology, we will create perfect bodies and extend our life spans. We will also be able to create life-forms that have never walked the surface of the earth. With the power of nanotechnology, we will be able to take an object and turn it into something else, to create something almost out of nothing. We will ride not in fiery chariots but in sleek vehicles that will soar by themselves with almost no fuel, floating effortlessly in the air. With our engines, we will be able to harness the limitless energy of the stars. We will also be on the threshold of sending star ships to explore those nearby.

I find much to like and little to object to in this vision of TF, apart from the comparison of these technological abilities to the powers of the gods. No one ever attributed to a god the ability to create the iPad I’ve used to write this review, for example. In mythology the gods seem to depend on scrolls, stone tablets or rune carvings to keep their records.

Probably of main interest to cryonicists, Kaku divides up the medical aspects of his view of TF between Chapter 1, “Future of the Computer,” and Chapter 3, “Future of Medicine,” with a few mentions in other chapters. Apparently considerations about his own health have started to weigh on Kaku’s mind. In Chapter 1 Kaku writes (pp. 34-35) that between now and 2030:

A visit to the doctor’s office will be completely changed. For a routine checkup, when you talk to the “doctor,” it will probably be a robotic software program that appears on your wall screen and that can correctly diagnose up to 95 percent of all common ailments. Your “doctor” may look like a person, but it will actually be an animated image programmed to ask certain simple questions. Your “doctor” will also have a complete record of your genes, and will recommend a course of medical treatments that takes into account your genetic risk factors.

To diagnose a problem, the “doctor” will ask you to pass a simple probe over your body. In the original Star Trek TV series, the public was amazed to see a device call the tricorder that could instantly diagnose any illness and peer inside your body. But you do not have to wait until the twenty-third century for this futuristic device. Already, MRI machines, which weigh several tons and can fill ups an entire room, have been miniaturized to about a foot, and will eventually be as small as a cell phone. By passing over your body, you will be able to see inside your organs. Computers will process these 3-D images and then give you a diagnosis. This probe will also be able to determine, within minutes, the presence of a wide variety of diseases, including cancer, years before a tumor forms. This probe will contain DNA chips, silicon chips that have millions of tiny sensors that can detect the presence of the telltale DNA of many diseases.

All this by 2030, eh? This gee-whiz speculation about medicine in the next 20 years ignores the social context in which medicine operates, including debates in many countries with aging populations about what health care to offer, and whom to offer it to, under politicized systems which struggle to control escalating costs. Kaku must know about this reality, but the prospect of heavily regulated, rationed and non-progressing health care in the 21st Century doesn’t fit in with his futurist narrative, nor does he discuss how to break out of this trap.

Kaku also writes things here and there which make him sound like the cryonicist and transhumanist FM-2030, who currently is a patient at Alcor. For example, Kaku writes (p. 35):

Today, if you are in a bad car accident on a lonely road, you could easily bleed to death. But in the future, your clothes and car will automatically spring into action at the first sign of trauma, calling for an ambulance, locating your car’s position, uploading your entire medical history, all while you are unconscious. In the future, it will be difficult to die alone. Your clothes will sense any irregularities in your heartbeat, breathing, and even brain waves by means of tiny chips woven into your fabric. When you get dressed, you go online.

This invites comparison with FM’s description of the “Life Support Suit” he imagined in his 1973 book Up Wingers, and his “Immortality Module” in the recently published e-book of Countdown to Immortality, the last book FM wrote before his cryopreservation in 2000.

Kaku covers a lot of material in the rest of his book, but he ties it all together in the last chapter in a story about the life of an ordinary New Yorker named John in the year 2100. I laughed at the passage where John, whom Kaku refers to in the second person, has the following conversation with an AI named Dr. Brown which serves as his main health care provider (pp. 364-5):

Dr. Brown’s image instantly appears on the wall screen. “Is there something bothering you, son?” he asks in a fatherly way.

“Doc, I have to ask you a question that’s been troubling me lately.”

“Yes, what is that?” asks Dr. Brown.

“Doc,” you say, “how long do you think I’ll live?”

“You mean what is your life expectancy? Well, we don’t really know. Your records say you are seventy-two years old, but biologically your organs are more like thirty years old. You were part of the first generation to be genetically programmed to live longer. You chose to stop aging at around thirty. Not enough of your generation has died yet, so we have no data to work with. So we have no way of knowing how long you will live.”

“Then do you think I will live forever?” he asks.

“And be immortal?” Dr. Brown frowns. “No, I don’t think so. There is a big difference between someone who lives forever and someone who has a life span so long that it hasn’t been measured yet.”

“But if I don’t age,” you protest, “then how am I supposed to know when to get . . . ” You stop yourself in mid sentence. “Ah, okay . . . you see, I just met someone, ah, special, and, assuming I want to plan a life with her, how do I  adjust the stages in my life to hers? If my generation hasn’t lived long enough to die,” you continue, “then how am I supposed to know when to get married, have kids, and plan for retirement? You know, how do I set the milestones in my life?”

“And when do I buy my cemetery plot?” John could just as well have asked. This shows a lack of imagination on Kaku’s part, not to mention a lack of due diligence. Kaku doesn’t seem to appreciate fully what an excellent “problem” John has, even while portraying John’s radical life extension in a positive way. Cryonicists have generated a body of literature going back nearly 50 years now which deals with exactly these questions about how to use extreme longevity productively in TF. Kaku could have looked up Robert Ettinger’s first two books online for some of Ettinger’s well thought-out answers, then he could have cribbed from them and offered them to John care of the AI physician; or better, Kaku could have written that the AI searched for and evaluated this literature on the Internet of 2100 and “prescribed” some of it to John as a reading assignment, like the use of self-help books as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Science fiction writers have also produced many novels and stories which try to show how people with extremely long lives could fruitfully employ their extra time, with varying success, and the AI could have prescribed some of those as well. However, by the year 2100 in Kaku’s version of TF, contemporary thinking would have started to deal with John’s issues as practical realities, not as far-future speculations.

Despite its limitations, Kaku’s book deserves reading, and to his credit he has become cryonicists’ ally in the culture war against deathism. He also adds to the case for rational optimism about TF in a time when progress seems to have decelerated and we hear talk of a “great stagnation.” I’d like to see Dr. Kaku sign up for cryonics so that he has a shot at experiencing the world beyond what he currently considers “the far future.”