“By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshiped and feared.”

This excerpt is from one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read called “Physics of the Future,” written by the famous physicist Michio Kaku. Although the name sounds intimidating the book is actually a rather easy read due to the simplicity of Kaku’s writing and explanation of future technology.

Using Kaku’s knowledge within the field of physics he claims these future technologies are applicable. Also, the more than three hundred top scientists he interviewed on future predictions are based on what’s going on in today's laboratories. Everything mentioned in Kaku’s book is based on what's going on in today's laboratories, as well as, everything mentioned in Kaku's book has some form of a prototype that already exists.

The validity of Kaku’s statements is derived from Moore’s Law, which states that computer power doubles about every eighteen months. This began in the 1950’s and is actually predicted to come to an end in the next ten to twenty years. Once this ends it is believed that the computers we know today will change from physical processors to something more like cloud computing, Internet of Things, and wireless communication.

Kaku’s examples of what Moore’s Law has accomplished include: chips in the birthday cards you receive today have more computer power than all the Allied forces of WWII, your cell phone having more computing power than all of NASA in 1969 (the year two men landed on the moon), and a PS4 today has the power of a military supercomputer from 1997 (PS4: $300, Supercomputer: millions of dollars).

Michio Kaku

If Moore’s Law isn’t convincing enough there is also evidence of people in the past who used logical evidence to predict futuristic outcomes that hold true today. For example, in 1863 the great novelist Jules Verne accurately forecasted 100 years into the future in his novel Paris in the Twentieth Century. Verne’s predicted that by 1960 Paris would have gasoline-powered vehicles, high-speed trains, fax machines, elevators, TV, air conditioning and glass skyscrapers.

In another Jules Verne novel from 1865, From the Earth to the Moon, he predicted the details of the same lunar mission that our astronauts did in 1969. Verne again accurately predicted the size of the space capsule to within a few percent, the weightlessness that humans feel in zero gravity, the location of the launch site in Florida, the number of astronauts on the mission, the three-day long trip to make it to the moon and even how the astronauts would land in the ocean to return to Earth.

So how did he do it? Biographers have looked at his research for the novels Verne wrote and found that he constantly sought after scientists of various fields and questioned their visions of the future. It was the science of his era that led to his accurate creativity and ultimately how society would revolutionize.

With historical context combined with Moore’s Law, I’m sure you will be able to reconcile what Kaku says about our future.

I will break down this article the same as the book's chapters -- different fields such as computers, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, etc. -- and also provide Kaku’s time frame from now to 100 years within each topic.

The Future of the Computer

Present-2030:

Internet glasses and contact lenses: whether you need to regulate your glucose level as a diabetic or simply download any movie, song or information from the internet you will have it at the tips of your eyeballs. Or my favorite aspect, bumping into an acquainted friend and have their name pop up when you forgot what it was.

Driverless cars: this one's obvious, only expect this to be a common thing 10 years from now.

Flexible electronic paper: use your imagination on this one, like a flexible iPhone screen that scrolls out as large as you want it.

Virtual worlds: VR is already taking off, but in the near future it will become the next entertainment system's you get instead of the new flat screen. When you host the Super Bowl people will think they’re at the actual game.

Medical care: chips will be so common that most clothes will have them to help regulate your body temperature. Or how about when your toilet has one? When it tells you that you only have a few hundred cancer cells growing in your body it’ll be an easy fix, rather than the tumor that developed over a year.

2030-2070

Mixing real and virtual reality: with computer contact glasses everyone will be living in a mixture of real and virtual realities. An astronaut making repairs on the space station will find it useful when he can look through the walls while having an AI source helping him with wires and other parts. Or Pokemon Go will just be way more intense for you.

Augmented reality: when you go to a museum at each exhibit your contact lenses will give details and data about that artifact or painting. Or when going to an ancient ruin your lenses will show you real-life scales of what the ruins actually looked like when newly built. Imagine being at the top of Machu Picchu and viewing the actual city at its peak from the 15th-century.

Universal translators: if you’re a tourist abroad there’s no need to study basic words of that culture, you’ll read subtitles like a foreign movie.

Holograms and 3-D: can this just happen now? I want my future girlfriend to send me, "Help me, Calen Marcus. You're my only hope" holograms.

2070-2100

Mind over matter: we will be able to control computers directly with our minds. This also includes controlling machines the same way as well.

Mind reading: the brain is based on electricity moving through neurons. Passing notes to that cutie in class will be just a tad bit different than how grandpa and grandma did it (that’s us).

Photographing a dream: this is just too cool, just make sure it’s not a nightmare…

Telekinesis: through superconductors that will be everywhere this just may be possible by magnetism. Being Magneto for Halloween would be every boy's dream.

Future of Artificial Intelligence

Present-2030

Expert systems: feeling sick? Don’t go to the hospital when you have your own robodoc AI at home.

2030-2050

Modular robots: there will be disguised robot snakes, insects and other critters performing unpleasant but crucial tasks, such as going through a sewer system and repairing it.

Robot surgeons and cooks: sorry future doctors and chefs.

Emotional robots: does anyone else think this one would suck? I suppose if Westworld became a thing, we’d have accepted this fact.

Reverse engineering the brain: long story short, we’d be able to help stroke victims and patients suffering from traumas and diseases.

2070-2100

Machines become conscious: this will definitely happen, it’s just a matter of when and what that exactly means...

When robots exceed humans: yeah they’ll be smarter than us, but we should still treat them like our children -- which is exactly what they will be, so-to-speak. However, once these children start making their own children, will those ones not care for us?

Star Wars robotic hand: lose a limb in a car accident? No worries your new limb will be better than before and still have a sensational feeling.

Surrogates and avatars: although aging won’t be the worse factor by then, if we’re on our death bed we may be able to transfer our consciousness into a robot or android. Or at the very least we’ll be able to control robots far away in space working on space stations across the solar system, with our minds.

Future of Medicine

Present-2030

Genomic medicine: gene sequencing will allow us to find genes that may affect us later in life. Knowing you will likely have Alzheimer’s disease will give you a better chance of treating it.

“Visiting” the doctor: as aforementioned chips will be in your bathroom and clothes, as well as sensors, that will be detecting any disease or cancer cells forming months or years before they’d become life-threatening. If your home robodoc found cancer cells then you’d have to visit the doctor’s office, where you’d be injected with nanoparticles into your bloodstream that only attack the cancer cells.

Stem cells: stem cells have the ability to change into any type of cell. This means every single type of disease and even cancer will be curable. Waiting for a particular organ will no longer be an issue either. Stem cells will grow into any organ you’d need.

Cloning: cloning is something we’ve already mastered, but will human cloning really be a thing? The example’s Kaku came up with were interesting: parents mourning the death of a child or a wealthy man on his deathbed who has no heirs and decides to clone his younger self to be the acting heir.

Coexisting with cancer: in the near future scientists will develop a variety of cures for cancer, but no one cure for all cancers. In the coming decade, we will make tremendous strides, though, as nanotechnology and detecting cancer cells much quicker will lead to people living out -- instead of dying -- with cancer since in some cases it will be back later in their lives, where they’d just get rid of it like the first time.

2030-2070

Gene therapy: altering genes will cure people from diabetes, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and heart diseases as well. Also, healthy people may just want to improve their already functioning genes..

Designer children: want your child to become a professional athlete? Pick the genes you want your child to have and the kid will receive them, as well as have no genes that give him/her cancer or diseases. This may be the actual "cure" for cancer. Either way future humans will have genes that will make them freaks of nature, literary.

Side effects of the biotech revolution: Achilles from Greek Mythology had everything a warrior would want, all except for his heel. With all of these great strides in biotech there may be some unwarranted side effects that people may not like. Another problem is what if we create a split society of enhanced and un-enhanced humans? Sounds like a problem nobody wants, especially the poor.

2070-2100

Reverse aging: people will live twice as long, or about 150 years!

Caloric restriction: it’s already proven that if you lower your calorie intake by 30% your lifespan increases by 30%, strictly talking about the animal kingdom. In the future people will find managing what they consume extremely easy.

Immortality plus youth: preserving our youth, like the movie In Time, will involve growing new organs, ingesting special proteins and enzymes, using gene therapy, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and nanosensors to detect diseases.

Population, food, and pollution: this is where things become shady. The planet is predicted to have at least 10 billion people on it by 2100, and now people will be living longer. Food shortages could be a factor and waste will be a factor.

Even worse, germ warfare: AIDS could possibly be re-engineered to spread like the common cold, something terrorists would certainly use.

Nanotechnology

Present-2030

Nanomachines in our bodies: microscopic machines will keep our bodies in prime condition.

DNA chips: long story short, these will have the capacity of university labs inside the chip, thus making things much cheaper to treat when something is found in your body.

Carbon nanotubes: stronger and lighter than steel and conducts electricity, carbon nanotubes will take over silicon for electronics, and perhaps be used for a space elevator later in the future.

Quantum computers: computing on individual atoms themselves, creating the greatest computer ever fathomable. For instance, cracking the most advanced code in the world would take a 100 years in digital computers, but quantum computers may do this in seconds.

2030-2070

Shape-shifting: like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, we will be able to turn physical objects into liquid, then back to solid by a push of a button. Construction workers will love this.

2070-2100

Holy Grail, the replicator: this machine will be able to create literally anything with the trillions of nanobots inside into anything you want. Money, jewelry, quantum computer, you name it and it’s yours.

Social impact of replicators: be careful what you wish for with a replicator, because all of our beliefs will be turned on our heads. Religions and capitalism will be altered into unknowns..

Future of Energy

Present-2030

Solar/wind/hydrogen economy: it’s estimated that the technological advances of solar/wind/hydrogen will continue to drop in cost as oil/coal will continue to rise, crossing the two curves in ten to fifteen years.

Electric cars: Tesla is already making this more applicable to average people with their new Model 3. Electric cars will start to become the norm in the coming decade once Tesla comes out with their truck series.

Nuclear fusion: nuclear power will have to stay around for our ever-developing world as demand for electricity will only grow, while combating climate change. This won’t be the long-term solution, though.

2030-2070

Global warming: by 2050 we will see the full repercussions of climate change, the U.S. will manage well enough (not economically speaking), but will the rest of world be ready?

Technical fixes: launching pollutants into the atmosphere, creating algae blooms, carbon sequestration, genetic engineering and fusion power.

Fusion power: unlike fission power’s large waste amounts, fusion power creates more energy and less waste. Fusion energy also cannot suffer meltdowns like today’s nuclear plants. This will be the greatest game-changer in global warming, assuming it will be created in time.

2070-2100

Age of magnetism: driving in a magnetic car people will be traveling hundreds of miles per hour using almost no fuel. Trains will again become the main source of transportation as magnetic trains will become the fastest way across the country rather than air planes, causing no pollution whatsoever.

Energy from the sky: space solar power (SSP) will finally become cost efficient. The concept is to have geostationary satellites (they orbit at same speed as Earth’s spin, 22,000 miles above) absorbing radiation from the sun and then beaming the energy back down as microwave radiation.

Future of Space Travel

Present-2030

Extra-solar planets: we already are opening an encyclopedia of thousands of new earth-like planets through robotic exploration. The Kepler Mission telescope and the COROT satellite are to thank. We’re now discovering how common rocky planets are within the Goldilocks (habitable) zone in other solar systems across the galaxy.

Europa: the Goldilocks zone isn’t the only way for life to establish, though. Just take a look at Europa, one of Jupiter’s 16 moons. The surface is completely covered with ice, but beneath it is a liquid ocean. This is because of Jupiter’s massive gravity squeezes the moon in different directions, creating energy (kinetic) for the liquid water. In the 2020’s we’ll be exploring it much more closely, and maybe witness the greatest discovery ever -- life elsewhere.

LISA: Galileo’s telescope opened up the science of astronomy, radio telescopes post WWII revealed a universe of exploding stars and black holes, and now LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) will detect gravitational waves. LISA will find colliding black holes, higher dimensions and perhaps prove the multiverse theory (what I believe to be true). It’s set to launch in 2018-2020.

Permanent moon base: this is only a maybe, but could be the next manned mission into deeper outer space.

Landing on a moon of Mars: before going to Mars itself we could set up a base on one or both of Mars's moons. This could help spring forward to exploring the red planet.

2030-2070

Mission to Mars: this will finally happen in the 2030’s. It will suck to live there for the astronauts, though, due to subfreezing temperatures and ferocious dust storms.

Space tourism: wealthy civilians will get to go up in space and view the planet from above at zero gravity, then happily return to the ground that same day.

Wild cards: lowering the cost of sending goods and people into space will be revolutionized. Companies like Dyson will have developed laser propulsion systems that lift heavy payloads into earth orbit for only $5 per pound, compared to today’s $10,000 per pound.

2070-2100:

Space elevator: with nanotechnology and carbon fiber we will be able to simply take a ride up an elevator to space.

Starships: it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star with today’s rockets. Yet 100 years from now we believe we’ll have other starships, such as; solar sail ships, ramjet fusion rocket, antimatter rockets or nanoships. It may only take 23 years to travel to our next star system, but that means the astronauts would age 23 years and Earth itself would age 2,000,000 years! That’s because of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Let’s just stick with the nanoships, that’s less of a trip -- pun intended.

Future of Wealth

Present-2030

Bubbles and crashes: capitalism has created economic crashes since it’s existence. The great crash of 1850, the Great Depression of 1929, Black Monday in 1987 and more recently the crash of 2008. These aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

2030-2070

Winners and losers in jobs: common talk today is that robots will be taking jobs away from people, and they will. It's just not going to be as bad as some people think. We’ll still need blue-collar jobs like garbage collectors, police officers, construction workers and plumbers. White-collar jobs such as acting, artwork, writing software and scientist will be human, too.

2070-2100

Entry-level jobs: these jobs will be forever gone, or at least not as common as they were in the 20th century. Kaku frequently refers to intellectual capitalism, which means our school systems need to start prepping students for the major changes that will happen throughout this century.

The future is up for grabs: will America stay on top? That’s uncertain, but most of the brightest minds in America are foreigners. 50% of all Ph.D. students in physics are foreign born and so is Silicon Valley employees. These students are going back home and using their talents for their countries. Also, the foundations for developing countries are being built with the best tech and practices. America’s old infrastructure is already costing us to rebuild to a sustainable and modernly functioning society.

In Conclusion

This was a very summarized version of the book. If any of this peaked your interest I advise to read the book yourself. Michio Kaku does a great job for people like us to understand the science behind it all.

As for his claims, you can do the research yourself and have your own opinion on what it means for society and the future of our planet. I know I’m excited for it, as long as we’re closer to world peace rather than an apocalypse.