Physics of the Future — How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by

I'm a huge fan of Michio Kaku's books, and "The Physics of the Future" is definitely not a disappointment. The book offers an expansive view of future technologies, and takes a new approach: Kaku plays journalist and interviews over 300 other top scientists in a variety of fields. The result is that you get the insights of those experts, but presented though the lens of Kaku's own deep understanding of physics and of what is ultimately likely to be possible or not. Even though Kaku carefully grounds everything within the limits of the laws of nature, his specific predictions turn out to be pretty aggressive. He foresees technologies like "retinal display" contact lenses that connect directly to the internet, driverless cars, the mixing of real and virtual reality, and software "robotic doctors" that might replace most people's initial visit to the doctor and "correctly diagnose 95% of common ailments." Kaku is also optimistic about progress in medicine, biotech and nanotechnology suggesting that we'll have medical "tricorders" like the ones on Star Trek, miniature nanobots coursing through our veins, advanced gene therapy, and maybe designer children. He even envisions that aging might be reversed and a nanotechnology "replicator" that would be able to construct almost anything from individual atoms might be possibilities by the year 2100. Kaku also believe that computers, artificial intelligence and robots will advance rapidly, even though he foresees a possible slow down in the rate of improvement as Moore's Law potentially hits a wall. He's more conservative than people like Ray Kurzweil, suggesting that we might have true artificial intelligence or even conscious machines, but not until the end of the century. One area where I think Kaku gets it wrong is in his discussion of how all this will impact the job market and the economy. He seems glued to the idea that only very repetitive jobs will be affected, giving factory workers as an example. Yet he talks of robots that will cook and software that will do the jobs of doctors, and might even become conscious. It seems clear that technology like that would be able to do the jobs of millions of people who sit in offices or work in the service industries and pretty much do the same sorts of things over and over again.