How a futurist, Professor Michio Kaku, sees the world 16 years from here. Via Effendi Ibnoe, VP Human Capital Development of PT. Intraco Penta, Tbk

1. Effendi Ibnoe
IPMI – Executive123
Case: “The World in 2030: How Science Will Affect Computers, Medicine, Jobs,
Our Lifestyles and the Wealth of our Nations”
By Dr. Michio Kaku of University of New York
In 2009 Dr. Michio Kaku spoke in front of a crowd at Queensborough Community
College, NY about what he thinks the future will be like by 2030. Kaku made very colorful
points and with an added sense of humor, for an entertaining discussion. Besides being a scholar
himself, Kaku, has interviewed over 300 physicists – thereby giving him an idea of where our
society is headed, technically speaking.
He started the discussion with the picture bellow, about Moore’s law:
From the graphics he concluded:
· Doubling time for computer power is 18 months
· Future can be reasonably predicted out to 2020
· By 2020, chips may cost a penny
· Millions of chips will be scattered into our world
Case: The World in 2030 Page 1

2. · The computer will be everywhere, and nowhere
· After 2020: Quantum computing Artificial intelligence – jobs and society
This means that if cars obeyed Moore's law, cars today would cost 10 cents. This means
that by 2020 computer chips will cost about a penny. The future of the computer will be
everywhere and nowhere, hidden in the walls, hidden in the fabric of our life, just like electricity
is. It is everywhere and nowhere.
Physicist wrote the World Wide Web to keep track of subatomic particles. It was created
to dominate a nuclear war with Russia so we can communicate and rebuild America after New
York City is in ruins, Los Angeles, Chicago are vaporized, that's how we're going to recreate
America after World War 3. And you can see here that the internet corresponds with prosperity.
Where there is the internet, there is prosperity; there is commerce, science, finance. Where there
is no internet, there is poverty.
He first discusses how communication will soon be improved with optic web interfaces
beginning with eye glasses and then contact lenses (Smart Glass & Smart Lens). People can
download any website, any movie, do e-mails from these things and they will also recognize
people's faces. In the future, glasses will be fashionable with full internet capability. They can be
flashed directly into the retina of your eye; they could be flashed right onto the screen of your
glasses, or used as an attachment to your glasses. Fashion models will be wearing these things;
young people will demand to have full internet capability. Any video, any movie, any website,
and music downloaded via your glasses. In the future people will see subtitles of a foreign
language in the contact lenses. The contact lenses will recreate the full animation of the height of
the Roman Empire as you walk through the ruins. This is called augmented reality. Not virtual
reality, it’s a mixture of reality with animation, with subtitles, with translations. The contact
lenses will give you how fast you're moving, how much gas you have, and even point out land
marks as you're driving. This is what happens with Moore's law. The computer chip will cost a
penny, like electricity, they'll be everywhere, and nowhere.
Kaku then continued with how people will communicate in the future. In the future
people will have E-Paper instead of our Blackberry’s today. You'll simply scroll out paper
which is intelligent. And you'll type on that sheet of paper. So your cell phone is an entire PC. In
fact it has more power than a super computer of today. In fact, wall paper will be so cheap, that
when you put up wall paper it will be intelligent. Wall paper will be as intelligent as your
computer today.
Kaku then spoke of disposable computers. The computers are disposable, or at least more
commoditized, because we’ll have chips that we’ll carry information, wherever we go. He
Case: The World in 2030 Page 2

3. believes that we’ll have a filing systems worth of information on these chips. The computers just
act as the interface for these chips.
The idea of “Smart Wallpaper” was interesting. Kaku claims that we’ll be living in a
world where the walls are of digital interfaces, ultimately enhancing communication. The
wallpapers will make “touching” attainable. Instead of eating a dinner by yourself, you’ll be
able to have video conferences with friends, or a baby sitter at all times within your house.
Medically, our society is going to change significantly in 2 ways, for preventative
analysis. Our health and ancestral health information will be available wherever we go. Kaku
discusses “Smart Toilets.” The toilets would analyze our feces on a daily basis, alerting doctors
if in case something was wrong. The toilets along with “Smart Glass,” could analyze our
proteins, genes and DNA. ”Smart Glass” would work by blowing on the glass; the glass would
then capture either bacteria or pieces of skin from our mouth, to analyze.
Kaku said that a world where organs will be genetically created in labs. He also claims
that doctors will conduct surgery with 3D video and imaging.
Kaku then speaks on “Artificial Intelligence”. He said not to worry about a “Judgment
Day” ending. Robots are so far away from having any conscious personality, where bad behavior
is the outcome. He said that if they showed any signs of this evil trait, that we’d have more than
enough time to turn the robots off.
Kaku later goes into speaking about “Invisibility”, “Teleportation” and
“Telepathy.” Regarding teleportation, he says that it’s basically impossible. In order to teleport,
we have to dissolve and then reconstruct the object or organism. It essentially would be creating
a new you. Telepathy is now possible; however it’s just the beginning. He gave an example of
a paralyzed victim that is able to communicate with the web. It’s our first direct link between
mind and computer.
He says that we’ll have the ability to record dreams. He gave an example from a Kyoto
study that was able to map images from the brain, via MRI scan to computer. The subject had
his/her sight recorded via this extraction method and the object mapped out was a horseshoe.
This same technology may be able to assist government agencies with lie detector tests.
Later in the discussion he speaks of the “far away” future. He talks about “Interstellar
Travel,” via NASA starships. He also discusses ”Blackholes” and “Time Machines.” One thing
that interested me was his discussion on “The 4 types of civilizations”.
Types of Civilizations:
· Type 0 – our civilization
· Type I – controls power of an entire planet
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4. · Type II – controls power of an entire star
· Type III – controls power of an entire galaxy
Now we are at Type 0 civilization, we don’t even a raid on this scale, he said. We get our
energy from dead plants, oil and coal.
He claims that we’ll be a Type I civilization in 100 years. It’s meaning, that one
government will rule the world. Type I civilization has the power of entire planet, they harness
the weather, they can play with storms, they play with hurricanes and volcanoes. The Type I
civilization comment strikes an intriguing fact of Kaku’s “NWO affiliation.”
Type II is stellar; they consume the power of a star like the federation applied on Star
Trek. Star Treks would be very a typical of the Type II civilization; they can barely harness the
power a star. Type III controls the power of an entire galaxy like the empire.
Type III: if the universe will eventually freeze:
a) Escape into another universe
b) Escape into an earlier time in the past
c) If this too difficult, inject the sum total of your information through a tiny
wormhole and re-create your civilization.
All in all, it was an insightful discussion. He’s a brilliant man and a bit cocky at times,
but this presentation was filled with many new ideas that give listeners some sense of what
direction technology will bring us.
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