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

identity is your body.
    The conference room is nearly empty, with only a few coworkers sitting around the table. But then, in your contact lens, the 3-D images of the participants begin to rapidly materialize around the table. Those who cannot come to the office are here holographically.
    You glance around the room. Your contact lens identifies all the people sitting at the table, displaying their biographies and backgrounds. Quite a few big shots here, you notice. You make a mental note of the important people attending.
    The image of your boss suddenly materializes in his chair. “Gentlemen,” he announces, “as you’ve probably heard, the dikes around Manhattan have suddenly begun to leak. It’s serious, but we caught it in time, so there is no danger of collapse. Yet, unfortunately, the robots we have sent down to repair the dikes have failed.”
    Instantly, the lights dim, and you are completely surrounded by the 3-D image of the underwater dike. You are completely immersed in the water, the image of the dike with a huge crack staring you in the face.
    As the image rotates, you can see precisely where the leak has occurred. You can see a large, strange gash in the dike that catches your attention. “Robots are not enough,” your boss continues. “This is a type of leak that is not part of their programming. We need to send experienced people down there who can size up the situation and improvise. I don’t have to remindyou that if we fail, New York could suffer the same fate as other great cities, some now underwater.”
    A shudder goes through the group. Everyone knows the names of the great cities that had to be abandoned as sea levels rose. Although renewable technologies and fusion power displaced fossil fuels many decades ago as the main source of the planet’s energy, people are still suffering from the carbon dioxide that was already released into the atmosphere in the first part of the last century.
    After much discussion, it is decided to send the human-controlled robot repair crew. This is where you come in. You helped to design these robots. Trained human workers are placed in pods, where electrodes are fitted around their heads. Their brain signals allow them to make telepathic contact with robots. From their pods, the workers can see and feel everything that the robots see and feel. It’s just like being there in person, except in a new superhuman body.
    You are justifiably proud of your work. These telepathically controlled robots have proven their worth many times over. The moon base is largely controlled by human workers, who lie comfortably and safely in their pods on earth. But since it takes about a second for a radio signal to reach the moon, it also means that these workers have to be trained to adjust for this time delay.
    (You would have loved to put your robots on the Mars base, too. But since it takes up to twenty minutes for a signal to reach Mars and twenty minutes to come back, communicating with robots on Mars would be too difficult, it was decided. Alas, for all our progress, there is one thing you cannot adjust: the speed of light.)
    But something is still bothering you at the meeting.
    Finally, you summon the nerve to interrupt your boss. “Sir, I hate to say this, but looking at the leak in the dike, the crack looks suspiciously like a mark left by one of our own robots.”
    A loud murmur immediately fills the room. You can hear the rising chorus of objections: “Our own robot? Impossible. Preposterous. It’s never happened before,” people protest.
    Then your boss quiets the room and responds solemnly. “I was afraid someone would raise this issue, so let me say that this is a matter of great importance, which has to be kept strictly confidential. This informationmust not leave this room, until we issue our own press release. Yes, the leak was caused by one of own robots that suddenly went out of control.”
    Pandemonium breaks out in the meeting. People are shaking their heads. How can this be?
    “Our robots have had a perfect record,” your boss insists. “Absolutely spotless. Not a single robot has caused any harm, ever. Their fail-safe mechanisms have proven effective again and again. We stand by that record. But as you know, our latest generation of advanced robots use quantum computers, which are the most powerful available, even approaching human intelligence. Yes, human intelligence. And in the quantum theory, there is always a small but definite