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

mythology, the gods lived in the divine splendor of heaven, far above the insignificant affairs of mere mortals. The Greek gods frolicked in the heavenly domain of Mount Olympus, while the Norse gods who fought for honor and eternal glory would feast in the hallowed halls of Valhalla with the spirits of fallen warriors. But if our destiny is to attain the power of the gods by the end of the century, what will our civilization look like in 2100? Where is all this technological innovation taking our civilization?
    All the technological revolutions described here are leading to a single point: the creation of a planetary civilization. This transition is perhaps the greatest in human history. In fact, the people living today are the most important ever to walk the surface of the planet, since they will determine whether we attain this goal or descend into chaos. Perhaps 5,000 generations of humans have walked the surface of the earth since we first emerged in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and of them, the ones living in this century will ultimately determine our fate.
    Unless there is a natural catastrophe or some calamitous act of folly, it is inevitable that we will enter this phase of our collective history. We can see this most clearly by analyzing the history of energy.
    RANKING CIVILIZATIONS
    When professional historians write history, they view it through the lens of human experience and folly, that is, through the exploits of kings and queens, the rise of social movements, and the proliferation of ideas. Physicists, by contrast, view history quite differently.
    Physicists rank everything, even human civilizations, by the energy it consumes. When applied to human history, we see that for countless millennia, our energy was limited to 1/5 horsepower, the power of our bare hands, and hence we lived nomadic lives in small, wandering tribes, scavenging for food in a harsh, hostile environment. For eons, we were indistinguishable from the wolves. There were no written records, just stories handed down from generation to generation at lonely campfires. Life was short and brutish, with an average life expectancy of eighteen to twenty years. Your total wealth consisted of whatever you could carry on your back. Most of your life, you felt the gnawing pain of hunger. After you died, you left no trace that you had ever lived at all.
    But 10,000 years ago, a marvelous event happened that set civilization into motion: the Ice Age ended. For reasons that we still do not understand, thousands of years of glaciation ended. This paved the way for the rise of agriculture. Horses and oxen were soon domesticated, which increased our energy to 1 horsepower. Now one person had the energy to harvest several acres of farmland, yielding enough surplus energy to support a rapidly expanding population. With the domestication of animals, humans no longer relied primarily on hunting animals for food, and the first stable villages and cities began to rise from the forests and plains.
    The excess wealth created by the agricultural revolution spawned new, ingenious ways to maintain and expand this wealth. Mathematics and writing were created to count this wealth, calendars were needed to keep track of when to plant and harvest, and scribes and accountants were needed to keep track of this surplus and tax it. This excess wealth eventually led to the rise of large armies, kingdoms, empires, slavery, and ancient civilizations.
    The next revolution took place about 300 years ago, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, the wealth accumulated by an individual was not just the product of his hands and horse but the product of machines that could create fabulous wealth via mass production.
    Steam engines could drive powerful machines and locomotives, so that wealth could be created from factories, mills, and mines, not just fields. Peasants, fleeing from periodic famines and tired of backbreaking work in the fields, flocked to the cities, creating the industrial working class. Blacksmiths and wagonmakers were eventually replaced by autoworkers. With the coming of the internal combustion engine, a person could now command hundreds of horsepower. Life expectancy began to grow, hitting forty-nine in the United States by the year 1900.
    Finally, we are in the third wave, where wealth is generated from information. The wealth of nations is now measured by electrons circulating around the world on fiber-optic cables and satellites,