Future Implausible

I should really like this book. After all, it amply fulfills its subtitle, telling us how science will revolutionize the 21st century. And it does so with bravura and competence. The bravura part is Michio Kaku’s predictions of what science can do over the next century, parsed by time and field. He provides forecasts for three periods–to 2020, from 2020 to 2050, and 2050 to 2100 and beyond–for fields ranging from information technologies to medicine to planetary colonization. The competence springs from his catholic and deep technical understanding (he is a theoretical physicist and the author of two other books, Hyperspace and Beyond Einstein). The result for the reader is a tour d’horizon of the many moving edges of contemporary science and technology, from the human genome project to superstring theory to why Deep Blue beat Kasparov. After reading this book, you can chatter away about neural nets, DNA computers, quantum cryptography, hyperspace, black holes, and much more. You can also cite the bold and unambiguous judgments of an able physicist, who characterizes the standard model for subnuclear structure as “one of the ugliest theories ever proposed.” I think the book is worth reading for that alone.

So why do I say that I should like the book? Because the author is an unabashed enthusiast for science and its possibilities, and that certainly suits me. He clearly is excited by what can be done over the next century–the use of “DNA chips” to test in real time for disease that is otherwise undetectable; custom-growing human organs; creating working, and even useful, machines from individual atoms. (Although his scientist’s training compels him to throw cold water on infeasible notions such as teletransportation of the “Beam Me Up, Scotty” kind from Star Trek.) All of this is delivered in readable, if humorless, prose.

Some will be put off by the author’s masterly certitude in predicting both what and when for scientific and technological advances. Indeed, some will wish that they could be as sure of anything as he is of everything. But what sours my reading is the atavistic “back to the future” flavor of the book, taking us back to a time when the promise of science seemed both vast and unblemished-a time of “electricity too cheap to meter,” a time when canals would be carved with nuclear explosions, a time when the first glimmerings of molecular biology raised hopes that some of our worst scourges could be conquered, a time when a major historian cited the conquest of infectious diseases as perhaps the greatest triumph of the 20th century. This was before Silent Spring, before Chernobyl, before toxic waste dumps and vast wastelands created by the nuclear weapons complex, before AIDS. This was before all of us were chastened by the limits of science in dealing with national pathologies-decaying cities, poor public education, and the polarization of income distribution.

What we have learned of the misuses and limits of science and technology-note that it is misuse and limits of and not by science and technology-has forged a new view of science and technology, not only in what is and is not feasible but, more important, that the choices we make about how to use science and technology matter a great deal. We have become much more sophisticated in understanding the benificent powers of science and technology but also more aware that they are not an unalloyed good. Our chutzpah has been punctured. This is not to say that the achievements and potential of science are not widely respected. Witness the high status accorded scientists in opinion surveys or, more palpably, the enormous investments by the public in the support of research.

Still, we have learned that what is possible is not always desirable and what at first seems desirable can have unwanted consequences. The Internet is really nifty, but pornography or information for would-be stalkers is a click or two away. The author knows that science is not a pure good. He recognizes the downside of DNA profiling, the perils of “designer children,” the loss of privacy in a networked world. But the book is called Visions, and the author is so enthusiastic about the promise of science and technology that the voice of caution is drowned out by the shouts of wonder. Rich in possibilities, the book says little about how to make choices, especially given the fact that public resources are limited. For example, the author writes at length about interplanetary travel, including terraforming of planets such as Mars and Venus to make them more hospitable to Earth’s lifeforms, a project that the author acknowledges to be a “formidable task given their hostile atmospheres.” But the question of whether we could turn our closest planets into agricultural colonies is not simply one of technological determinism. There is first the obvious point that the world has plenty of food, even if at times and with tragic consequences it does a poor job of distributing it; second, in an increasing number of countries, the rate of population growth is going down and in some instances population is declining. Should we then ask some of our best and brightest to spend their careers thinking about terraforming the planets, or are there matters closer to home that might benefit from their attention?

Kaku’s passion for science makes him overreach. He attributes England’s loss of its American colonies to King George’s porphyria-induced madness: “It was, apparently, during one of these episodes of dementia that his prime minister, Lord North, mismanaged his American colonies, thereby triggering the American Revolution and the birth of the United States.” So much for decades of historical research and analysis. Similarly, many reader will think twice when reading that “many scientists believe that by 2020 entire classes of cancers may be curable” or that “Eventually, growing new organs may become as common as heart and kidney transplants today.” Maybe. But no citation is offered for either statement. Indeed, where there are citations, they often tend to be secondary, such as the New York Times or Time or the New York Daily News.

At times the author needs to be more helpful to naive readers in calibrating his visions for the future. Thus, he echoes without caveats a timetable for achieving fusion power, including a commercial plant by 2035. Maybe. But the time until fusion power will be commercially viable is almost a scientific constant. Since about 1950, it seems that fusion is always 5 years away from producing any net energy and 35years away from commercial production. Kaku’s projection is consistent with this 45 years of failed predictions. Further, he writes that “In 1997, the fusion program was dealt a setback by the closing of the Princeton Tokamak due to budget cuts.” This view is certainly not universally shared by the plasma community, some of whom argue that plasma physics, and in time fusion power, will gain from the recent change in policy that emphasizes sponsoring work at many universities to better understand fundamentals in plasma science rather than investing limited funds in a big machine.

In a similar vein, the author offers a cramped view when he argues that writing down the equations for the four fundamental forces of matter on a single sheet of paper means that “amazingly enough, all physical knowledge at a fundamental level can be derived from this one sheet of paper.” Maybe. But we’ve learned in the past several years, thanks in good measure to the computer and the tools it provides to numerically analyze phenomena both complex and nonlinear and then to model them, that what really is interesting and revelatory is not the fundamental principles per se but rather how they interact dynamically; and that is true whether one is trying to explain a thought, the behavior and properties of matter, why the universe has the structure it does, or the origin and evolution of life.

The book is a good read for those seeking a knowledgeable guide to the inchoate frontiers of science and technology. Those who seek critical judgments on how science and technology can be used for the greatest good will not find them here. And those who bring a questioning attitude to predictions made for “the time frames of the future” will be skeptical, agreeing strongly with the author that “it’s always dangerous to make predictions stating that certain things are possible.”