Controlling The Future

ABOUT TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physis as NYU, predicted that within a hundred years, by which he seems to have menat the end of the twenty first century, humanity would have the ability to control the weather. Time's ticking, but we still have seventy five years left, which might not be enough time to reverse climate change sufficiently to save the Earth's ecosystem from disastrous consequences. already the sixth mass extinction is well underway, millions of species of plants and animals from becoming extinct at an alarming rate, in what is now being called the "anthropocene", or "the age of man". The human race has become the single most powerful force shaping environmental conditions on this planet. Scientists tend to agree that the anthrocopene began in the early nineteen fifties, when both nuclear and hydrogen bombs proved that homo sapien sapiens had indeed taken control. Despite the well known Confucion admonition that only fools predict the future, Kaku plunges ahead without trepidation in a ceaseless attempt to do exactly that. His past futuristic ruminations have convered topics ranging from the future of humanity in general: "The Future of Humanity", of human mentality. "The Future of the Mind", the future of physics, "Physics of the Future", and general futuristic speculations: "Visions", all topics ot which he has devoted intriguing, highly speculative, but easily accessible monographs. He even dares to take theoretical physical to future realms "Beyond Einstein", a sequal to his successful work "Einsteins's Cosmos". His latest endeavor, published just this year, is titled "Quantum Supremacy", and, as the title suggests, deals with the future of computers. Kaku does for future science what Carl Sagan did for past and present science, mainly astronomy and physics; elucidates it succinctly. We began our journey with computers with the vacuum tube, when, begining in the nineteen forties, teams of graduate students rolled shopping carts up and down, back nd forth between rows of computer connections in warehouse sized buildings on university campuses and corporate research facilities. Then came the era of transitors, and humanity was on the road to smaller and more powerful computing. finally came the microchip, and its nearly constant redesigning to produce ever smaller, more efficient versions for ever more efficient data storage. But now the era of the microchip is coming to an end, as the devices are reaching the limit of miniaturization and data storage. We are plunging head long into the era of quantum computing, wherein vast amounts of data are stored and transmitted on mere atoms and molecules. Already teh lates computers are perforing at a levelby which comparison teh famous microchiped computer, IBM's "Big Blue" is being made to seem large, slow, cumbersone, and lazy. Beyond this extraordinary level of computer processing capacity not even Michio Kaku would for the time bieng dare to proceed in his musings. There will doubtless soon come a time, however, when he indeed will.