What will current smartphones become in the coming decades? Do we have a chance to live up to 150 years? Can doctors finally defeat cancer? Will we see ideal capitalism in our lifetime? About all this theoretical physicist and popularizer of science Michio Kaku asked more than 300 leading scientists from around the world. The author of many bestsellers recently personally came to Moscow for the III Forum of Social Innovations of the Regions to tell us what awaits us in the near future.
1.Medicine and life
1. Already by 2050, we will be able to overcome the usual threshold of life expectancy, striving to live up to 150 years and even longer. Scientists promise to slow down the aging process in a variety of ways. These include stem cell therapy, replacement body parts, and gene therapy to repair and tidy up aging genes.
2. One of the most promising areas for increasing life expectancy is the replacement of worn-out organs. Doctors will grow organs from the cells of our own body, and the body will not reject them. Already, cartilage, blood vessels and arteries, skin, bone material, the bladder are being successfully grown, the most complex organs are next in line — the liver and brain (apparently, it will take a long time to tinker with the last scientist).
3. The medicine of the future predicts a successful fight against many diseases, for example, against our worst enemy — cancer. Now it is often found already at dangerous stages, when cancer cells number in the millions and even trillions.
Tiny devices could take samples for biopsies and even perform minor surgeries
In the future, the futurist claims, it will be possible to notice single cells. And not even a doctor will do this, but … a toilet bowl (digital, of course). Equipped with sensors and software, it will test for tumor markers and detect individual cancer cells ten years before tumor formation.
4. Nanoparticles will target and destroy the same cancer cells, delivering the drug exactly to the target. Tiny devices will be able to take images of areas that surgeons need from the inside, take “samples” for biopsy, and even perform minor surgical operations.
5. By 2100, scientists may be able to reverse the aging process by activating cell repair mechanisms, and then human life expectancy will increase several times. Theoretically, this would mean immortality. If scientists really extend our lives, some of us can live to see it.
2. Teknụzụ
1. Alas, our dependence on gadgets will become total. Computers will surround us everywhere. More precisely, these will no longer be computers in the current sense — digital chips will become so small that they can fit, for example, in lenses. You blink — and enter the Internet. Very convenient: at your service all the information about the route, any event, people in your field of vision.
Schoolchildren and students will not need to memorize numbers and dates — why, if any information is already available to them? The education system and the role of the teacher will change dramatically.
2. Technology and the very idea of gadgets will change. We will no longer need to buy a smartphone, tablet and laptop. The technologies of the future (the same quantum computer or a device based on graphene) will make it possible to be content with a universal flexible device that unfolds, depending on our desire, from small to gigantic.
3. In fact, the entire external environment will become digital. In particular, with the help of «katoms» — computer chips the size of a tiny grain of sand, which have the ability to attract each other, changing the static electric charge at our command (now the creators of catoms are working on their miniaturization). Ideally, they can be built in any shape. This means that we will be able to easily change one model of a machine to another, simply by reprogramming «smart» matter.
It will be enough to give acceleration, and cars with trains will quickly soar above the surface of the earth.
Yes, and for the New Year, we do not have to buy new gifts for loved ones. It will be enough to buy and install a special program, and the matter itself will be transformed, becoming a new toy, furniture, household appliances. You can even reprogram the wallpaper.
4. In the coming decades, 3D technology will become universal. Any thing can be simply printed. “We will order drawings of the necessary things and print them on a 3D printer,” says the professor. — It can be parts, toys, sneakers — whatever. Your measurements will be taken and while you are drinking tea, sneakers of the chosen model will be printed. Organs will also be printed.
5. The most promising transport of the future is on a magnetic cushion. If scientists can invent superconductors that work at room temperature (and everything is going to this), we will have roads and supermagnet cars. It will be enough to give acceleration, and cars with trains will quickly soar above the surface of the earth. Even earlier, cars will become smart and unmanned, allowing passenger drivers to go about their business.
3. Professions of the future
1. Robotization of the planet is inevitable, but it will not necessarily be androids. In the coming decades, the development of expert systems is predicted — for example, the emergence of a robo-doctor or a robo-lawyer. Let’s say you have a stomach ache, you turn to the Internet screen and answer the questions of the robodoctor: where does it hurt, how often, how often. He will study the results of analyzes from your bathroom, equipped with DNA analyzer chips, and issue an algorithm of actions.
There will probably also be «emotional» robots — mechanical similarities of cats and dogs, capable of responding to our emotions. Robotic surgeons, cooks and other professionals will also improve. There will also be a process of merging people and machines through robotic limbs, exoskeletons, avatars and similar forms. As for the emergence of artificial intelligence, which will surpass the human one, most scientists postpone its appearance to the end of the century.
2. Robots will gradually replace people whose duties are based on repetitive operations. The professions of assembly line workers and all kinds of intermediaries — brokers, cashiers, and so on — will become a thing of the past.
Specialists in the field of human relations will find excellent use — psychologists, teachers, lawyers, judges
3. Those types of professions will remain and flourish in which machines cannot replace homo sapiens. Firstly, these are professions related to the recognition of images and objects: garbage collection and sorting, repair, construction, gardening, services (for example, hairdressing), law enforcement.
Secondly, specialists in the field of human relations — psychologists, teachers, lawyers, judges — will find excellent use. And, of course, there will be a demand for leaders who can analyze a lot of data, make decisions and lead others.
4. The «intellectual capitalists» will flourish the most — those who can write novels, compose poems and songs, paint pictures or create images on the stage, invent, explore — in a word, invent and discover something.
5. Mankind, according to the forecasts of the futurologist, will enter the era of ideal capitalism: the producer and consumer will have complete information about the market, and the prices of goods will be absolutely justified. We will mainly benefit from this, since we will instantly receive all the information about the product (its components, freshness, relevance, cost, prices from competitors, reviews of other users). We have about half a century left before this.