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

for piracy, smuggling, drunken sailors, and other unsavory activities. A group of his associates, however, dreamed of the day when this tiny seaport could rival the West. Although Singapore had no significant natural resources, its greatest resource was its own people, who were hardworking and semiskilled. His group embarked on a remarkable journey, taking this sleepy backwater nation and transforming it into a scientific powerhouse within one generation. It was perhaps one of the most interesting cases of social engineering in history.
    He and his party began a systematic process of revolutionizing the entire nation, stressing science and education and concentrating on the high-tech industries. Within just a few decades, Singapore created a large pool of highly educated technicians, which made it possible for the country to become one of the leading exporters of electronics, chemicals, and biomedical equipment. In 2006, it produced 10 percent of the world’s foundry wafer output for computers.
    There have been a number of problems, he confessed, along the course of modernizing his nation. To enforce social order, they imposed draconian laws, outlawing everything from spitting on the street (punishable by whipping) to drug dealing (punishable by death). But he also noticed one important thing. Top scientists, he found, were eager to visit Singapore, yet only a handful stayed. Later, he found out one reason why: there were no cultural amenities and attractions to keep them in Singapore. This gave him his next idea: deliberately fostering all the cultural fringe benefits of a modern nation (ballet companies, symphony orchestras, etc.) so that topscientists would sink their roots in Singapore. Almost overnight, cultural organizations and events were springing up all over the country as a lure to keep the scientific elite anchored there.
    Next, he also realized that the children of Singapore were blindly repeating the words of their teachers, not challenging the conventional wisdom and creating new ideas. He realized that the East would forever be trailing the West as long as it produced scientists who could only copy others. So he set into motion a revolution in education: creative students would be singled out and allowed to pursue their dreams at their own pace. Realizing that someone like a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs would be crushed by Singapore’s suffocating educational system, he asked schoolteachers to systematically identify the future geniuses who could revitalize the economy with their scientific imagination.
    The lesson of Singapore is not for everyone. It is a small city-state, where a handful of visionaries could practice controlled nation building. And not everyone wants to be whipped for spitting on the street. However, it shows you what you can do if you systematically want to leap to the front of the information revolution.
    CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE
    I once spent some time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and had lunch with Freeman Dyson. He began to reminisce about his long career in science and then mentioned a disturbing fact. Before the war, when he was a young university student in the UK, he found that the brightest minds of England were turning their backs on the hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, in favor of lucrative careers in finance and banking. While the previous generation was creating wealth, in the form of electrical and chemical plants and inventing new electromechanical machines, the next generation was indulging in massaging and managing other people’s money. He lamented that it was a sign of the decline of the British Empire. England could not maintain its status as a world power if it had a crumbling scientific base.
    Then he said something that caught my attention.
    He remarked that he was seeing this for the second time in his life. The brightest minds at Princeton were no longer tackling the difficult problemsin physics and mathematics but were being drawn into careers like investment banking. Again, he thought, this might be a sign of decay, when the leaders of a society can no longer support the inventions and technology that made their society great.
    This is our challenge for the future.

People alive now are living in the midst of what may be seen as the most extraordinary three or four centuries in human history.
    —JULIAN SIMON
    Where there is no vision, the people perish.
    —PROVERBS 29:18

8 FUTURE OF HUMANITY Planetary Civilization
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