It's another new year, and that means it is time once again for the Edge Annual Question. This year's question is:
What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?
My initial reaction to their question, I'm sorry to say, is annoyance. As we've stated before:
In thinking, writing, and talking about the impact of transformative future technologies, there is a strong temptation to sum it up as, "This changes everything."
You'll frequently hear that statement, but the problem is that it is not very descriptive and it's also very likely not true.
Rather than falling back on the standard "everything changes" line, we recommend systematic studies, and in particular we suggest an inquiry into the effects of future technologies in three areas of human endeavor and interaction: energy, conflict, and health.
But with that caveat aside, the wide range of responses to the Edge Annual Question does make for some interesting reading.
Right away, on Page 1, we get Ed Regis suggesting that the game-changing development to watch for is Molecular Manufacturing:
Nothing has a greater potential for changing everything than the successful implementation of good old-fashioned nanotechnology.
I specify the old-fashioned version because nanotechnology is decidedly no longer what it used to be. Back in the mid-1980s when Eric Drexler first popularized the concept in his book Engines of Creation, the term referred to a radical and grandiose molecular manufacturing scheme. The idea was that scientists and engineers would construct vast fleets of "assemblers," molecular-scale, programmable devices that would build objects of practically any arbitrary size and complexity, from the molecules up. Program the assemblers to put together an SUV, a sailboat, or a spacecraft, and they'd do it—automatically, and without human aid or intervention. Further, they'd do it using cheap, readily-available feedstock molecules as raw materials. . .
[W]hat if nanotechnology in the radical and grandiose sense actually became possible? What if, indeed, it became an operational reality? That would be a fundamentally transformative development, changing forever how manufacturing is done and how the world works. Imagine all of our material needs being produced at trivial cost, without human labor, and with no waste. No more sweat shops, no more smoke-belching factories, no more grinding workdays or long commutes.
Moving ahead to Page 5 of the answers, we have Aubrey de Grey offering the fascinating proposal that within our (extended) lifetimes, we could see The Unmasking of True Human Nature. He lists three main developments that, combined, may lead to this outcome: artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing, and regenerative medicine.
The transformative technologies I have mentioned will, in my view, probably all arrive within the next few decades—a timeframe that I personally expect to see. And we will use them, directly or indirectly, to address all the other slings and arrows that humanity is heir to: biotechnology to combat aging will also combat infections, molecular manufacturing to build unprecedentedly powerful machines will also be able to perform geoengineering and prevent hurricanes and earthquakes and global warming, and superintelligent computers will orchestrate these and other technologies to protect us even from cosmic threats such as asteroids—even, in relatively short order, nearby supernovae. (Seriously.) Moreover, we will use these technologies to address any irritations of which we are not yet even aware, but which grow on us as today's burdens are lifted from our shoulders. . .
Humanity will at that point be in a state of complete satisfaction with its condition: complete identity with its deepest goals. Human nature will at last be revealed.
Finally, on Page 7, Eric Drexler says the answer is Knowledge Spreading:
I see great change flowing from the spread of knowledge of two scientific facts -- one simple and obvious, the other complex and tangled in myth. Both are crucial to understanding the climate change problem and what we can do about it.
First, the simple scientific fact: Carbon stays in the atmosphere for a long time.
To many readers, this is nothing new, yet most who know this make a simple mistake. They think of carbon as if it were sulfur, with pollution levels that rise and fall with the rate of emission: Cap sulfur emissions, and pollution levels stabilize; cut emissions in half, cut the problem in half. But carbon is different. It stays aloft for about a century, practically forever. It accumulates. Cap the rate of emissions, and the levels keep rising; cut emissions in half, and levels will still keep rising. Even deep cuts won't reduce the problem, but only the rate of growth of the problem.
In the bland words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "only in the case of essentially complete elimination of emissions can the atmospheric concentration of CO2 ultimately be stabilised at a constant [far higher!] level." This heroic feat would require new technologies and the replacement of today's installed infrastructure for power generation, transportation, and manufacturing. This seems impossible. In the real world, Asia is industrializing, most new power plants burn coal, and emissions are accelerating, increasing the rate of increase of the problem.
The second fact (complex and tangled in myth) is that this seemingly impossible problem has a correctable cause: The human race is bad at making things, but physics tells us that we can do much better.
This will require new methods for manufacturing, methods that work with the molecular building blocks of the stuff that makes up our world. In outline (says physics-based analysis) nanoscale factory machinery operating on well-understood principles could be used to convert simple chemical compounds into beyond-state-of-the-art products, and do this quickly, cleanly, inexpensively, and with a modest energy cost. If we were better at making things, we could make those machines, and with them we could make the products that would replace the infrastructure that is causing the accelerating and seemingly irreversible problem of climate change.
What sorts of products? Returning to power generation, transportation, and manufacturing, picture roads resurfaced with solar cells (a tough, black film), cars that run on recyclable fuel (sleek, light, and efficient), and car-factories that fit in a garage. We could make these easily, in quantity, if we were good at making things.
Developing the required molecular manufacturing capabilities will require hard but rewarding work on a global scale, converting scientific knowledge into engineering practice to make tools that we can use to make better tools. The aim that physics suggests is a factory technology with machines that assemble large products from parts made of smaller parts (made of smaller parts, and so on) with molecules as the smallest parts, and the smallest machines only a hundred times their size.
I encourage you to read (or at least skim) all of the answers, especially the three above from which I've posted some excerpts. And while you're at it, feel free to chime in here with your responses to the question: What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?
I actually went through all the answers, listed them, and gave them a subjective ranking of impact multiplied by the likelihood of seeing that impact within 5, 10, or 20 years. Impacts ranked 1 to 1000, with 1 meaning "life goes on, a bit different" and 1000 meaning "maybe no human life as we know it".
There were a couple of common themes (internet, longevity, molecular manufacturing, understanding the brain, AI), but surprisingly large variation beyond that. A few odd answers, including a poem and a couple one-liners ("A VERY GOOD BATTERY").
"Earth-shaking" in my ranking (bad enough to worry about even if they're low probability) were :
- nuclear war
- EMP destroys all computers
- The Singularity (impact assumed equal to nuclear war)
- Human-triggered natural mega-catastrophe
Items I thought had the most chance of happening within the next 5 years (none over 30% chance, ~75% at least one of these four will happen):
- life logging becomes very common
- Quantum computing is widely applied
- gene-engineered organisms producing bio-fuel significantly impact the world's oil economy
- inexpensive e-texts have dramatic impact on education in 3rd world
Others, more than 50% likely in next 10 years:
- cheap mobile phone/computers bring Internet and good education to 3rd world - eliminating "birthplace" disadvantages for talented young people
- personal genome common, insurance system breaks down for diseases with a strong genetic pre-disposition
- disease treatment revolution due to stem cell knowledge and/or personal genome is widely applied
- remote-controlled weapons turned on the advanced nations that invented them, mainly affecting leaders and other public figures
- lots of small, on-going changes combine in life altering ways we don't yet anticipate
Other, items very high in impact and likelihood within 20 years:
- molecular manufacturing (50-50 chance),
- AI based on better understanding of brain and mind - low likelihood of human level AI, but sub-human self-directed AI would still be impactful
- understanding of the human brain allows far more precise mind alteration than present day drugs
- life span extension clearly accelerating toward year-per-year escape rate,
- genetic modification of human embryos
- synthetic life forms (low chance in 20 years, but potentially big impact).
A couple of modest world-changers I would add:
- personal stem cell banks for emergency organ repair/construction
- budget-strapped NASA turns to remote-controlled robots for their moon program - ultimately enabling cost savings that make human colonization far more affordable
Posted by: Tom Craver | January 09, 2009 at 06:49 PM
Great analysis - thanks, Tom!
Posted by: Mike Treder, CRN | January 10, 2009 at 07:31 PM