Shorter Future: Michio Kaku +/- Kurzweil (re: Jetpack Venture Capital)

Sameness in making predictions would seem to be a good thing. Maybe your prediction is right.

I have read a few futurism books lately by Kurzweil and Michio Kaku.

I have also read the Softbank “next 300 years” strategy statement and been tracking Google’s multiple initiatives.

And I’m pretty interested in the stuff that Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and venture funds like Lux are targeting.

There is a lot of sameness in all of it, and it is quite funny to map it. I’m going to do that at some point but first I’m just going to summarize the main ideas from Kaku’s 2011 “Physics of the Future”. I’ll label RZ and G or PMA when Ray Kurzweil or Google have shown themselves to be predicting/pursuing this too (as far as my off-the-top-of-my-head memory).

Computing

Smart glasses – RK, G (though RK missed the iPhone in 2005’s Singularity Is Near)

Driverless cars – RK, G

Screens everywhere / four walls – RK, G

Electronic paper – RK

Virtual worlds – RK, G

Star Trek Tricorder – RK, G

End of Moore’s Law – Not RK interestingly

Hybrid reality/virtuality – RK, G, Facebook

Augmented reality experiences/war/travel/stories – RK, G

Universal translators – RK, G

Mindreading – RK

Thought UI – RK, G

Telekinesis

AI

Modular robots

Robot surgeons – RK

Emotional robots – RK, G

Synthetic brain / reverse engineered brain – RK, G

Robots that are smarter than humans, invent themselves – RK, G

Hybrid human-robots – RK, G

Medicine

100% Gene Map + Genes to fix problems – RK, G (23&Me)

Stem cells to grow replacement stuff – RK

Targeting and eliminating cancer cells – RK

Cloning yourself and others and your parts – RK

Enhanced selves and children through cloning + genes – RK

Reversing aging through maintenance – RK

Living forever – RK, G

Synthetic clones e.g., neanderthals or fantasy animals – RK

Nanotechnology

Nanobots in the body – RK

Nanocars / drones in the body – RK

Tricorders – RK

Carbon Nanotubes – RK

Shapeshifter

Replicator

Energy

More wind and solar – G

More nuclear

Electric cars – G

Solutions to global warming

Fusion

Cold fusion

Warm superconductors and maglev travel

Space

Moon base

Terraform Mars

Use moons like Europa

If fusion, then interesting space travel

Maybe a space elevator – RK

Nanoships  – RK

Long run

Spreading of intelligence throughout the entire universe — RK

//

I need to come back to this list at some stage with Kurzweil and the other stuff in hand. But the striking thing is the number of areas that are NOT explicitly covered in the interest areas here like

– social and political organization

– food and its production and consumption including agriculture

– housing and home-heating/cooling

– education (RK does cover it in 2 pages in Singularity, will add it later)

– storage of knowledge and the pursuit of new knowledge, i.e., research itself

– how about communications? already the fastest moving of innovative areas the last 30 years

– basic materials, extractive industries like mining

– there are more. Surely many implications in even more industries and areas of human concern.

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *