The WSJ Weekend Interview with Michio Kaku — Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow

The Wall Street Journal – The Weekend Interview (A version of this article appeared March 10, 2012, on page A11 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline:

Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow: Humans are born with the curiosity of scientists but switch to investment banking by Brian Bolduc (former Robert L. Bartley fellow at the Journal, is an editorial associate for National Review)

By 2020, the word “computer” will have vanished from the English language, physicist Michio Kaku predicts. Every 18 months, computer power doubles, he notes, so in eight years, a microchip will cost only a penny. Instead of one chip inside a desktop, we’ll have millions of chips in all our possessions: furniture, cars, appliances, clothes. Chips will become so ubiquitous that “we won’t say the word ‘computer,'” prophesies Mr. Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York. “We’ll simply turn things on.”

Mr. Kaku, who is 65, enjoys making predictions. In his latest book, “Physics of the Future,” which Anchor released in paperback in February, he predicts driverless cars by 2020 and synthetic organs by 2030. If his forecasts sound strange, Mr. Kaku understands the skepticism. “If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100,” he offers, “you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods.” Nonetheless, he says, “that’s where we’re headed,” —and he worries that the U.S. will fall behind in this technological onrush.

To comprehend the world we’re entering, consider another word that will disappear soon: “tumor.” “We will have DNA chips inside our toilet, which will sample some of our blood and urine and tell us if we have cancer maybe 10 years before a tumor forms,” Mr. Kaku says. When you need to see a doctor, you’ll talk to a wall in your home, and “an animated, artificially intelligent doctor will appear.” You’ll scan your body with a hand-held MRI machine, the “Robodoc” will analyze the results, and you’ll receive “a diagnosis that is 99 percent accurate.”

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Original Article (WSJ: The Weekend Interview) by Brian Bolduc, a former Robert L. Bartley fellow at the Journal, is an editorial associate for National Review — Original Imagery by Ken Fallin