Technology

It has been clear since the first industrial revolution in England that technology can play an important role in improving (or degrading) the human condition. Technology is a particularly good indicator in thinking about the future because of the generally stately pace with which it evolves and gets introduced into society. Genomics and biotechnology are good examples. These fields were inaugurated in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the helical structure of DNA. While there have been some amazing discoveries in these fields since then, the pace at which the accumulated knowledge has been employed to improve the general human condition is still gaining steam more than 50 years later. While we can’t say with certainty what genomics and biotechnology will produce 50 years hence, it is safe to bet that some of the promise we can see in these fields today will be realized. It is important, then, to understand something about those technologies today that hold the greatest promise for the future human condition.

The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century - 2002

John Brockman (ed.)

Learn more (Vintage Books)

This is a collection of essays from 25 eminent scientists who were asked how achievements in their specialties would change our world over the next fifty years. As one might expect, the quality is uneven, but the general collection gives a glimpse of a variety of plausible futures and the best essays are fascinating. One by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyhi on the future of happiness worries that our ability to control the human genome is likely to produce intense selective pressure to produce happy children, but we know that happy people do not tend to value material possessions, are less affected by ads, and are not as driven to power and achievement. Is that what we want? An essay by Roger C. Schank argues that our society that prizes the ability to come up with answers will be dramatically changed by ubiquitous technology that will make coming up with answers a triviality for everyone. He argues that, as answers become devalued (because anything easily obtained is devalued in our society), questions will become more valued and creativity will become what defines educated and intelligent people. A third essay by Richard Dawkins suggests that at the rate gene sequencing is advancing, in fifty years we might each be able to carry around our own personal genome. With literally millions of sequenced genomes, we could track (among other things) in astonishing detail historic migrations of peoples from ancient times. Short blurbs can’t do justice to the full essays, but there are several that suggest intriguing potential futures.

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters - 2000

Matt Ridley

Learn more (HarperCollins)

We are clearly on the cusp of a great leap forward in our understanding of the human body and, indeed, of all living things. This book is a very readable introduction to the state of knowledge of (particularly) the human genome as of 2000. Our continuing unraveling of the mysteries of the genome will, as Ridley puts it, “revolutionise [sic] anthropology, psychology, medicine, paleontology, and virtually every other science.” This book gives a good sense both of how incredibly complex the genome is and of what our further understanding of it may portend. Perhaps the most important lesson for me was how similar the human genome is to the genomes of all other living things – even bacteria. This suggests both that we can use the somewhat simpler genomes of other living things to better understand the human genome, but that we can also use understanding of any genome to improve our understanding of all genomes.

Nanotechnology: Basic Science and Emerging Technologies - 2004

Michael Wilson et al.

Learn more (Chapman and Hall/CRC)

A collaboration among five experts on various aspects of nanotechnology, this book describes the state of nanotechnology research as of 2004. It begins with an introduction to nanotechnology and then covers areas such as molecular nanotechnology, nanomaterials and nanopowders, nanoelectronics, nanobiometrics, optics, photonics, and solar energy. It is a fairly technical read, but one can get a clear sense of the potential for nanotechnology without understanding the chemistry involved. The important thing about nanotechnology is that we are just beginning to see what the ability to construct materials atom by atom will produce. We are already seeing commercially viable products, including improved sunscreens, cleaners, car protection products, and industrial polishing powders, but the promise is so much greater. Building materials at the atomic level is already producing products with remarkable properties – a one-atom-thick covering for a car windshield, for example, that makes it almost as hard as diamonds. In both the material and biological realm we are likely to see increasingly remarkable products. Great progress is being made in laboratories both in being able to produce materials with remarkable properties and being able to scale that production up to commercially viable amounts. Some of the more fanciful nanotechnology possibilities, such as nanomachines that can do surgery on humans or using DNA to produce nanomachines, are decades or more away, but there seems to be little scientifically that would prevent us from eventually making them. There is much yet to be discovered and the possibilities for nanotechnology include such things as inexpensive, effective means for cleaning up environmental damage and reducing global dependence on a variety of scarce materials. The one thing that is clear is that research should and will continue in this area well into the future.