It's rare to come across a book that causes me to think so rapidly and abstractly about the future of human technology. This is one of those books -- Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku (ISBN: 978-0-307-27882-1). Michio Kaku is a physicist who is one of my favorite modern thinkers that delves very deeply into the possibilities of our universe, and more importantly humanity's place in it. He brings to the attention the human-universe dynamic in a Sagan-esque way, except he focuses a little more on technology. What's great is he does it all in a very intelligible and relatable fashion, providing enough examples, context, and history of a topic. His book is testament to that.
Physics of the Impossible explores what possible technologies may lay upon the horizon for humanity. Be warned, however, as the title is somewhat of a misnomer and no actual nitty-gritty textbook physics are present here (it's not the purpose of the book to teach you physics). There is more than enough detail to pass his message along though. It is moreso describing what is impossible today but may potentially become a reality at some point in the future, and he breaks it down into categories. The book is pleasing to read because he gives a cultural context, a bit of real history, some technical information, and finally some possible methods of how we (when I say "we" I'm referring exclusively to the scientists and engineers who make things possible, I am excluding all you non-contributing Zeros who complain when their iTelephone takes longer than 2 seconds to load your stupid webpage -- IT'S GOING TO SPACE! GIVE IT A MINUTE!) might achieve their reality.
He separates our possible technologies into three manageable categories (which I personally relate to the Kardashev Scale, and if you know me at all, you must know about it, haha, I have certainly annoyed everyone by explaining what it is in an otherwise casual conversation): Class I, II, and III impossibilities. What distinguishes the classes are the reason as to why their containing items are impossible. Class I impossibilities are "technologies that are impossible today, but that do not violate the known laws of physics" (yeah I stole it from Wikipedia -- what do you expect from my generation?!). These are likely to become possible soon (couple hundred years or so). They are only impossible because we are simply not technologically advanced enough. An example is invisibilities. Sure, we have a pretty solid understanding of how to do it and all the math adds up (maybe a few imaginary numbers here and there), but how the hell do you create a superconducter that can operate at 27 degrees celcius!?! That's all we need! Gah! So close... yet so far! Another example would be a laser gun. They're slapped all over the place in science fiction and they seem pretty straightforward -- Lasers? Check! Guns? Check! Put those badboys together already! Well he explains the missing element which is essentially a large enough portable power source! So unless you feel like plugging in before your futuristic Duel, we're gonna stick to explosively-propelled solid rounds. They seem to be pretty effective (albiet not as "green" as lasers could potentially be). So yeah. No laser guns because our batteries suck. Go take it up with Energizer, I'm sure their inbox is FULL of complaints like this.
Class II impossibilities are things that are just outside our understanding. We can prove they're possible with the Almighty Math Diety, but there's impediments along the way to these technologies. Maybe there's a few numbers missing as well. That's OK because all you jerks who got A's in math will have to deal with that crap, just make it snappy! Class II is on its way but not for a while, in other words. I refuse to provide examples out of sheer laziness.
Class III are the really difficult ones. These technologies are just plain IMPOSSIBLE. Physics just says "No" and according to our current understanding, will never happen. HOWEVER! They wouldn't be in this book unless there was some way to achieve them! Well that's the good news but the bad news is -- Einstein has to be wrong. Yep, that's the only problem. Relativity and quantum mechanics must be at least not the whole story, and at best, we're doing something wrong and gravity is false. One such technology that falls in this category is a perpetual motion machine. For anyone who knows the first thing about physics, they know this is impossible. However those type of non-creative and negative thinkers will never win a Nobel prize and thus, I am not relying on you to figure this one out.
Personally I think the more we advance in technology, the closer to mimicking the natural laws of the universe we become. Right now our technology is so utterly primitive it's shameful when compared to even the most basic abilities of their natural counterparts. Such as computers. Sure, they can crunch numbers like a machine (get it?) but if you made it Forrest Gump it'd have no clue as to what he means when he says "Momma always said 'life is like a box of chocolates, y'never know whatch'ya gon' get'." Or any other "common sense" element that humans are so quick to understand. A chief problem with technology is energy consumption. More powerful things require more wattage but where are we gonna get this? If you haven't been living under a rock you must be aware we're in a bit of an energy crisis. Our fossil fuel consumption is damaging the planet, and last time I checked it's the only place we're able to live currently. So unless the folks at NASA figure out how to get our butts over to Mars sometime soon, we're going to have a very big problem. When I look around though, I see very powerful beings that inhabit nearly every corner of the Earth and not only do they coexist peacefully, they actually provide much of the oxygen we breathe. I'm talking about trees. They get energy from -- oh I dunno, that massive ball of fiery fusion that heats up a ball of mud about 93 million miles away. My point is if we could learn to integrate ourselves into the natural cycle of energy such as plants do, we will be much better off. And my more general point (which I was trying to make earlier) is that our more advanced technologies will look a lot like the natural goings-on of our home planet. Houses tend to corrode without maintenance in opposition to the weather. Trees thrive because of it. Maybe we should grow our houses?
If you believe that, then it won't seem so farfetched to think that other more radically advanced civilizations may be all around us, except we can't distinguish their activity from natural cosmological phenomenon. It's not a ridiculous idea either, I'm not the only one to think of it (and here is why I suck at research papers because I fail to remember my source -- I think that would be a Type III Civilization thing, just google it). I think Vonnegut even alluded to this idea in some of his novels. Perhaps in the future, like the year 2000 or something crazy like that, we're gonna develop technologies that transform the very substance of humanity, and make it a thing of the past (if we still believe in silly concepts such as "Past" then!).
In any case, you should read the book. It's damn good and if you want to borrow it, just ask me. Kindlers and nookers sorry but it won't fit inside your device.
