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

inserted into typewriters, they became word processors. When inserted into telephones, they became cell phones. When inserted into cameras, they became digital cameras. Pinball machines became video games. Phonographs became iPods. Airplanes became deadly Predator drones. Each time, an industry was revolutionized and was reborn. Eventually, almost everything around us will become intelligent. Chips will be so cheap they will even cost less than the plastic wrapper and will replace the bar code. Companies that do not make their products intelligent may find themselves driven out of business by their competitors that do.
    Of course, we will still be surrounded by computer monitors, but they will resemble wallpaper, picture frames, or family photographs, rather than computers. Imagine all the pictures and photographs that decorate our homes today; now imagine each one being animated, moving, and connected to the Internet. When we walk outside, we will see pictures move, since moving pictures will cost as little as static ones.
    The destiny of computers—like other mass technologies like electricity,paper, and running water—is to become invisible, that is, to disappear into the fabric of our lives, to be everywhere and nowhere, silently and seamlessly carrying out our wishes.
    Today, when we enter a room, we automatically look for the light switch, since we assume that the walls are electrified. In the future, the first thing we will do on entering a room is to look for the Internet portal, because we will assume the room is intelligent. As novelist Max Frisch once said, “ Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.”
    Moore’s law also allows us to predict the evolution of the computer into the near future. In the coming decade, chips will be combined with supersensitive sensors, so that they can detect diseases, accidents, and emergencies and alert us before they get out of control. They will, to a degree, recognize the human voice and face and converse in a formal language. They will be able to create entire virtual worlds that we can only dream of today. Around 2020, the price of a chip may also drop to about a penny, which is the cost of scrap paper. Then we will have millions of chips distributed everywhere in our environment, silently carrying out our orders.
    Ultimately, the word
computer
itself will disappear from the English language.
    In order to discuss the future progress of science and technology, I have divided each chapter into three periods: the near future (today to 2030), the midcentury (from 2030 to 2070), and finally the far future, from 2070 to 2100. These time periods are only rough approximations, but they show the time frame for the various trends profiled in this book.
    The rapid rise of computer power by the year 2100 will give us power like that of the gods of mythology we once worshipped, enabling us to control the world around us by sheer thought. Like the gods of mythology, who could move objects and reshape life with a simple wave of the hand or nod of the head, we too will be able to control the world around us with the power of our minds. We will be in constant mental contact with chips scattered in our environment that will then silently carry out our commands.
    I remember once watching an episode from
Star Trek
in which the crew of the starship
Enterprise
came across a planet inhabited by the Greek gods. Standing in front of them was the towering god Apollo, a giant figure who could dazzle and overwhelm the crew with godlike feats. Twenty-third-centuryscience was powerless to spar with a god who ruled the heavens thousands of years ago in ancient Greece. But once the crew recovered from the shock of encountering the Greek gods, they soon realized that there must be a source of this power, that Apollo must simply be in mental contact with a central computer and power plant, which then executed his wishes. Once the crew located and destroyed the power supply, Apollo was reduced to an ordinary mortal.
    This was just a Hollywood tale. However, by extending the radical discoveries now being made in the laboratory, scientists can envision the day when we, too, may use telepathic control over computers to give us the power of this Apollo.

NEAR FUTURE (PRESENT TO 2030)
    INTERNET GLASSES AND CONTACT LENSES
    Today, we can communicate with the Internet via our computers and cell phones. But in the future, the Internet will be everywhere—in