After a failed flight attempt, Wilbur Wright frustratingly said to his brother Orville, “Not within a thousand years would man ever fly” (Wright-brothers n.d.). That was the prediction of 1901. And that was how impossible flying was then, also discouraging. In 1903, however, Orville and Wilbur Wright built the first flying machine. And the rest is history as we know it today.
Napoleon said in the early 1800s: “What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense” (Holley 1997). The first successful steamboat was the Clermont, which was built by American inventor Robert Fulton in 1807.
Whales will be domesticated and used for transportation. Rail tracks will be built at the edge of water and boats will sail right onto these and move on the ground. The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty. Electricity is just a fad. There are hundreds of predictions that proved to be true, can’t count, that prove the clairvoyance of our esteemed ancestors. But at the same time, there were also predictions that went wrong. Dead wrong.
We will slowly but surely dissect Falcon’s life story, the one you read in the beginning. While we will take a deeper look into the future, I want to cover the highlights first. But there are a few important things to consider before we start. First, let me clarify I’m not passing judgments here to say things out of the blue. Informed prediction is different from guesses and far different from clairvoyance in terms of “dismissibility.” Second, predicting the future is difficult. We consider a lot of factors, not just limited to what is technically possible, but also what is socially and politically feasible, among other things. One way to predict the future is to analyze the past trends and extrapolate them into the best possible scenario which is what I try to do here. Thus, the historical context acts as a good launching pad into the future. Third, future predictions are often based on what is available at the time. It’s difficult to predict what will be invented in the future. For example, Wilbur Wright didn’t know that he, along with his brother, would invent an airplane because no artificial thing could fly then. This means we take what is available today and build on that to predict the future. This book will make certain predictions backed by today’s emerging science and technologies; however, I might also make some speculations, which I will call out.
Your T-Shirt Will Talk to You
Look around and describe the things around you. In fact, let me describe to you what I see. One-way communication here is easier than waiting for your answers in my e-mail later. I see a laptop, a cell phone, a refrigerator, a stove, a coffee maker, an oven, a dishwasher, a few chairs, a dining table, a thermostat, a few lights, a pantry, a microwave, a mirror, and a few other things. I am sure you are surrounded by something similar. Now, look at what you are wearing. I am wearing pants, a t-shirt, and a Fitbit.
What does this have to do with artificial intelligence (AI)? Mainly, what does “the BIG future” have to do with how you are dressed now? All inventions, whether daily use or specialized, will have one thing in common in the future: AI. Some of them already have some AI built in; the rest will get their AI sometime in the future.
Last time you shopped online, did you notice the recommendations on what to buy next? Who do you think is sending you those recommendations? These smart marketing gimmicks are called upselling and cross-selling and are powered by AI. An algorithm analyzes your interests through past purchases and your purchase patterns and shows what you may be interested in. Like online retailers, your daily social feeds are also sent to you by AI catering to your interests and usage history. If you use Google maps, they are powered by AI. AI powers ridesharing apps like Uber. From cars to airplanes, AI is dominating the way machines work and, ultimately, humans.
Machines, such as ovens and microwaves, incorporating AI are common. But a smart chair? Smart clothes? People have enough ideas already to instill “intelligence” in these devices. Some car seats are already smart to self-heat themselves and adjust them to the comfort of the driver. They will only get smarter.
Today, mirrors cannot just talk to you; they also teach you important health tips. The company Lululemon has unveiled a smart mirror which projects a human trainer on the person’s mirror and offers smart training sessions live (Suarez 2022). They’re only blooming buds, however. Clothes are already getting smart and developing into wearables. We can expect them to be more sophisticated in the coming days. The smart clothes industry is blooming rapidly and is expected to be a $5.3 billion business by 2024, according to markets-and-markets.com (Marketsand-markets 2022).
Imagine you’re on your way to work and you hear a notification from your t-shirt: High body temperature detected. Take a day off from work. That’s around the corner. Bad news to couch potatoes—your sofa or couch will ask you to take a walk because you have been sitting for too long. Your door will lock itself if you forget. Windows (your house’s), tables, pantries, fans, appliances, switches, light bulbs, frames, accessories—they are gaining intelligence turning your home smarter.
Talking of smart homes, one of the most intelligent human smart-home inventions is in the toilet. A smart toilet or technically a pan or commode is a poop-changing concept I am personally fascinated with, and I don’t think people are taking their poop-bins seriously. Self-flushing or cleaning toilets are not a big deal these days; I’m not referring to them. A smart toilet that analyzes your waste and detects diseases at their early stage would be the ultimate game. For instance, you have COVID but are you asymptomatic? You have a pathology-enabled toilet that can tell you that. I hate to say this, but the most important health diagnoses may not happen in a diagnosis center but in your toilet. Fecal immunochemical tests (FIT) can diagnose colorectal cancer at its early stage (Amitay et al. 2019). The only downside—each time you go to poop, your family members may eagerly wait outside for the results.
So, not very far in the future, AI will be everywhere. There is no doubt AI will dominate our life completely. There’s no denying that something that’s employed on a day-to-day basis from social media applications to self-driving cars will change the way we live, work, and eat. Unless you live in a cave somewhere, you are a beneficiary of AI day in, day out. Well, maybe I should call you a user instead of a beneficiary—that’s the “proper” industry term.
Smart Gets Smarter Over Time
Smart switches, smart doors, smart thermostats, smart stoves, smart garage door openers, smart light bulbs, smart vacuum cleaners, smart washing machines. Smart things here, smart things there, smart things everywhere—even on Mars and outside the solar system. We already live in a smart universe. Today’s world is filled with a myriad of such smart things. Now what do I mean when I say AI will dominate our life? Do I mean they will simply continue to grow more in number?
The word “smart” will be more literal with time, making decisions for us without our intervention. A switch will not be called a smart switch only because it can be controlled remotely from a smartphone. A garage door opener will not be called smart just because it is connected to a smartphone and can be operated from anywhere. The same applies to any future smart things.
Futuristic smart things must be able to learn over time and become smarter through a method commonly referred to as machine learning. A part of AI, machine learning enables machines (things) to learn from their data over time to get smarter and provide an experience of companionship to its masters. For example, a futuristic smart electric switch learns from your past usage pattern and, over time, can turn itself off based on your past behavior. A smart thermostat will learn all your preferences over time and automatically adjust the temperature to your liking, based on the time of the day and your activities. A smart door will automatically know when you are not home and lock itself.
To sum up, everything around you will turn into smart helpers with one and only one goal: to serve their master, that is, you. They will do so not just by being available to you, but also by learning about you to provide that personalized experience.
Smart Is Not Enough; Sharing Is the Key
The term “smart” originates in the information society, Society 4.0. As we saw earlier, smart things will grow not only in number, but also in “brain.” However, it doesn’t stop there. Smart things will connect more people all over the world. But the true smartness lies in their ability to connect nonliving and living things together, mostly everyday things. These interconnected things that can talk with each other over a network are called the Internet of Things (IoT).
An IoT garage door can talk to your car, “ask” it to open it on your arrival or exit. What if your garage door can check with the car when it’s left open and close itself? What if your main door can talk to your car or the garage door and lock itself if you forgot, based on the response from your car or the garage door? What if your car or the thermostat can tell itself to turn off when you are away? What if your refrigerator and pantry coordinate to prepare a grocery list automatically placed by your digital assistant and delivered home? What if other smart things such as washing machine and printer join this team to collectively prepare the list? While we are at it, why not add smart bulbs and smart batteries to join this team to add themselves to the list when they go bad? The idea is these smart things talk to each other to provide an integrated and automated experience to you.
These coordinated experiences will not be limited to your home. Talking objects will traverse the land, fly in the air, swim inside water, and dwell underground. On the road, your digital assistant may read your calendar and book a vehicle beforehand thus passing on your preferences. The ride arrives—temperature adjusted to your preference—and the driver turns off the music and keeps a quiet environment for you because he knows you like silence while travelling.
Imagine your thermostat following you around the world when you travel. Not literally, but digitally. Whenever you enter a prebooked hotel room, you will certainly have that “feels-like-home” experience as your room’s thermostat passes on your preferences to the hotel room’ thermostat.
In short, future machines will not only learn over time, but also coordinate with other machines constantly to provide you with an end-to-end experience.
You May Be Sitting on a Goldmine
I was searching for AI consultants on Google, and the next thing I knew, I had recommendations on Facebook for the same. A post about travel accessories looks interesting to you; you click on it now. The next moment you get advertisements related to these accessories. Such personalized shopping experiences through targeted advertisement are becoming more common these days.
Information technology has existed for over a few decades, but we surely are at an inflection point, with AI growing its footprint rapidly. What is different now compared to a decade ago? How are these AI-bots able to know your preferences so accurately they know you better than you know yourself? The answer is the “I” in the IT, that is, information.
AI can now process the vast number of digital crumbs you leave behind every moment through your actions on the Internet, thanks to technologies like “big data,” thus creating your digital profile. Your digital-existential CV, so to say. The more crumbs you leave, the more information it gathers about you. Knowledge makes you smarter. The more knowledge you gain, the smarter you become. What makes the AI smarter? The answer is the same—knowledge. The other way to say it is “information” also known as data.
Your data are your gold mine. Each day you surf the Internet, AI tracks your data for free, collects your information like a vacuum cleaner sucking dust. Indeed, you have the option not to share your data. And to any rational citizen, sharing limited data in exchange for the “service” the platform offers seems a fair deal.
But is that enough of a reward? Imagine getting a kickback from the advertisement money your e-commerce company earns in exchange for your information it shares with the product seller. It’s not unreasonable to expect it. The more data you share, the more money you make—isn’t this a better business model? This can be a great way to make money from the comfort of your couch, doing things you normally do. I strongly believe we will get there soon.
But there is more.
Let’s say you are hitting your bed early, with hours of sleep, eating a healthy diet, and exercising every day. You share these data with your health insurance company. Because you’re adopting such a healthy lifestyle, your health insurance company will send you a bonus check. Do not, however, take that as a favor. You get rewarded because you are keeping yourself fit and doing everything to reduce the risk of catching a disease.
But how does your health insurance company know all of these? Through your wearable devices that track your activity and digital assistant placing your grocery orders. But what if I shop in store? Even if you shop in store, your grocery store, in future, might track your purchases through facial recognition and share that with the health care company. Again, all of this will happen only if you consent to the sharing. But, given the monetary rewards, why wouldn’t you want to share your data?
The possibilities are endless. For example, your smart car can share your driving history with your insurance company. You will get a bonus check before you know it. You let your social media company sell your information to a research firm or a political organization. You get a share of that money. You let Maps track your history, come up with patterns, and share them with businesses around the places you visit. You take a certain route every day. Map applications share your information with businesses on the way to offer you discounts. You get a share of the money your map is getting. This list can go on.
While each transaction may get you only a little, the cumulative amount will become a significant chunk. Will this lay the path for future universal basic income?
The Big Boss Will Have the Smartest AI
Silicon Valley has the best talent in the world and attracts global investments. After all, it’s the tech-capital of the United States and probably the smartest place on earth.
Before you go down that compelling argument, let me tell you: China will be the smartest country in the world.
Let me clarify before things get political here. China is headed to become the smartest country not because it will create the best technology. It is also not because it will bear the smartest people on earth or build the best infrastructures. That may or may not be the case, but that’s not the reason.
It’s because of its data. The more data AI has, the smarter it becomes. We can confidently say Chinese AI will have the richest data compared to any country in the world. Partly, it is due to their huge population. More people generate more data, and more training data means more “intelligent” AI. However, the main reason is the type of data on top of the number. Privacy laws are easier to make in the one-party Chinese government with low chances of decent. Chinese government can obtain the data from all their citizens, an entirely different story in case of a democratic country, such as the United States, where people’s privacy is not only respected, but also protected by law.
In July 2018, the New York Times reported that a Chinese police officer in a train station in Zhengzhou city spotted a heroin smuggler using facial recognition sunglasses. “In Qingdao,” wrote the Times ahead, “cameras powered by artificial intelligence helped the police snatch two dozen criminal suspects in the midst of a big annual beer festival” (Mozur 2018). The article was titled “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: AI, Shame and Lots of Cameras.”
China is embracing technologies, such as facial recognition and AI, to identify and track its 1.4 billion people with a goal to minimize crimes. Most of the tracking is done through the security cameras placed all over the city. Facial recognition is used to prevent even the pettiest of the crimes, jay walking, for example. A picture and the name of the person in violation are displayed on the street for public shaming. Fines are automatically sent to the address on the file. There are massive dashboards in the central government location to monitor these activities. We have also seen reports of how China has used technology to keep people at home during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kharpal 2020). That level of surveillance is simply unimaginable in most other countries, especially the United States.
The Ticket to the Sky
For thousands of years, humans have walked on land to go from one place to another. We invented a wheel that moved us faster, figured ways to use animals for transport, and invented wheel carts. After James Watt improved Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine (Rolt and Allen 1977) and made it efficient, long- and heavy-load-bearing transportation became a reality. Then, the industrial era exploded when eventually a combustion engine made the land transportation faster and better. Meanwhile, we figured out a way to travel for a long time on water as well, using manual boats and ships to eventually turn them into engine-run beasts with the mightiest of the bodies.
Thanks to Wright brothers’ 20th-century invention, people could travel in the air too—the fastest form of transportation thus far. Today, we can travel from one corner of the world to another in a day without feeling like traveling, and flying is now touted as the safest form of transportation ever invented. Could we imagine this prior to the invention of an airplane? Traveling across oceans used to take months.
This is all about to get better. As of 2022, a new dimension is taking shape in the transportation realm, in addition to land, water, and air—the space.
In a matter of few years, you will be able to travel from Bali to Raleigh or North Pole to South Pole in less than an hour. Traveling from one corner of the earth to another in hours, not days, will no longer be a surprise. Imagine getting your breakfast at home, attending a meeting entirely on a different side of the world, and being back home for lunch. That day is coming soon, all thanks to advancements in space travel. Here is how.
Elon Musk declared in 2017 that his company Space X will build rocket-powered vehicles that’re expected to be tested soon, which will enable intercity travel in a matter of minutes (Wall 2022). You might go to a “spaceport” where you will board a spaceship or a space bus, similar to an airbus, but launch yourself to the space rather than just the air. Once you reach space, the lack of air resistance will make you travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour (Jones 2017). When you reach your destination in space, you re-enter the atmosphere and reach the spaceport. As crazy as it sounds, this form of transportation is not very far in time. Buckle up and get ready because future travel will be superfast.
Flying Cars May Never Fly
This may come as a surprise to some. Flying cars have been a thematic part in several science fiction movies, a concept thrown around for decades. But sadly, flying cars may never hit our roads on a commercial level.
In fact, flying cars have been in our airway for a while now. They are called helicopters. Not just cars, flying buses have also been carrying hundreds of passengers at a time; they are called airplanes. Long-distance transport vehicles with dedicated places to take off and land are practical and easy to make, at least today. The challenge is making a vehicle that can land on any land as well as fly in air.
The flying car driver is now a pilot-driver and needs to have a flying license and an extensive training on both. What if we make the ones hitting the lower skies electric and self-driving to work around the pilot training requirement? You can call it a car-drone. It may cost a fortune today to buy one; only mass production, driven by massive demand, may eventually reduce the costs.
The battery technology needs significant improvement to cover a decent amount of distance to make it practical. The best prototype model today flies for under 30 minutes without having to land for a recharge. That’s a nonstarter, given they need around 30 minutes of reserve power just in case of landing delays. However, extensive research on energy storage/battery technologies may ultimately fruit, producing lighter but higher energy batteries.
However, tougher challenges will hit after we cross the first set of barriers. Imagine your life with a bunch of cars or drones flying around. How would you feel? At what height will these cars fly? Who will own the air space? We certainly don’t want any foreign objects on the top of our houses, especially those with a flat roof you can walk on. What control do homeowners have? Meaning, how much of the air space above the house is owned by the homeowners? Most importantly, how do we regulate massive amounts of traffic in the air when regulating well-organized roads? Do I see practical use cases for flying cars? Yes, ambulances, for example. Airlifting patients is a common practice in several parts of the world today. However, let’s just call them helicopters and not confuse them with flying cars.
But what about the flying taxi the media has been filled with lately? Dubai has tested an autonomous air taxi (AAT) that can fly up to two people at a time over a short distance. While the challenges I outlined earlier also apply to them, these are not meant to be flying cars; instead, they call them flying taxis. The best way to understand them is to call them autonomous helicopters or passenger drones.
One thing we all hate is traffic jam. Not sure about you, but I haven’t met a person who loves traffic jams, unless he is facing his boss’ wrath the following day.
“Beating traffic jams” next to “flying cars are not possible” might sound contradictory. But flying cars won’t be the solution to traffic jams despite the number of vehicles and people being added to the streets. If not them, then what?
Two major revolutions will contribute the most to this multifold question’s answer. The first is autonomous vehicle revolution. I think it’s safe to say that future roads will be filled with autonomous vehicles—not just cars, but vans, trucks, and buses. The day human driving is not allowed in the major super/highways is around the corner. It may not happen within a decade or so because it will take a while for the regulations and infrastructure to forge, but it will happen eventually.
What are the best features of autonomous cars? They are best drivers, most certainly better than average humans, especially in a well-controlled environment filled with other autonomous vehicles. Most accidents are the products of human errors. When we take humans out of the driving equation altogether, think about how safe our roadways will become. For example, look at how safe airplanes are in their auto-pilot mode. But other than being safe, autonomous cars will follow a structured approach to driving, making traffic jams less likely.
However, autonomous cars will not eliminate traffic jams completely. There will still be congestion on our roadways, especially during peak hours. There will still be traffic lights, causing delays and alleviating jams, especially around cities. How do we overcome this problem? This is where the second revolution comes in—what I call the Boring Revolution, owing to Elon Musk.
Instead of flying in the air, The Boring Company is working on flying under the ground using a technology they call “The Loop” (Park 2022). This technology will eventually turn traveling a truly 3D experience, enabling flying under the ground. But what does it even mean to fly under the ground? The concept is pretty simple (yet difficult to implement). Areas experiencing heavy traffic jams can take the underground route and bypass the excess. This concept is no different than the tunnels we have been digging for decades now. The devil is in the details.
The Boring Company describes the Loop as “an all-electric, zero-emissions, high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported via compatible Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEVs) at up to 150 miles per hour through Main Artery Tunnels between stations” (The Boring Company 2022). The Loop is projecting speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, for example (Cheng 2018). They have bored a tunnel to travel from Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay in 3 minutes, which usually takes 30 minutes (“Projects” 2023).
These 3D tunnels are smaller in diameter compared to traditional tunnels that are easier to dig. The smaller diameter is to do with how these tunnels operate. Traditional tunnels work the same way as open roads. We drive our car into the tunnel and out of it on a lane. On the contrary, 3D tunnels will be autonomous. Multiple options are being considered to make them efficient. One option for the Loop is to use a self-driving car’s tires. However, several variations of this have been discussed that work for nonautonomous cars as well. In one variation of this model that could apply to any vehicle, once the car reaches the tunnel, it will enter a small elevator that takes it inside the tunnel. Similar to suitcases put in small bins in airports while passing through the security or toward the baggage claim, the car becomes the suitcase and the bin, a giant moving “bin” inside the tunnel, which moves it to the other side. The car is not driving at all. It is being carried in a bin at a high speed. Another elevator brings the car back to the ground, at which point the car’s pilot system takes over. Regardless of specifics, underground flying is the future for sure.
A faster mass transportation version of it called the Hyperloop estimates speeds of up to 760 miles per hour (Huang 2021), the speed of an airplane, operating in a vacuum-sealed tunnel. Hyperloop is more sophisticated than the Loop and will carry passengers faster and farther than it. With speeds like this, do you still need flying cars? The other way to look at this is: these will be the underground flying cars.
One Charge Will Take You 1,000 Miles
Electric vehicles (EVs) are the latest add-ons in the automobile world. Smart cars, self-driving cars, autonomous driving cars, moving robots, green cars, clean-energy cars: whatever you call them, they’re dominating the streets and for the better. While smartness has nothing to do with the type of fuel used, such as electricity, all of today’s futuristic smart cars run with electricity. Smart or not, self-driving or not, it’s clear the future of cars is electric.
In August 2021, NBC News wrote: “Biden signs order aiming for half of new vehicles to be electric by 2030. Automakers’ expected quick transition from gas-burning cars and trucks to electric is a key part of the White House strategy to fight global warming” (Lederman 2021). In addition to scientists pushing the technology, there are also several governments formulating plans and policies to adopt clean energy transportation in the coming years.
Cars can easily be manufactured to run with electricity. In fact, replacing old-fashioned combustion engines with electric moving parts is not difficult. We have been building electric cars for ages, of course the miniature ones: kids’ toys. My point is: at least we have the technology. The dominant name in electric cars is none other than Tesla, which can run from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just 1.99 seconds, insanely fast (Lambert 2021).
The more powerful the engine, the easier the build. What is the issue then? The biggest electric car challenge is power storage. The lithium-ion battery technology we use today is from the 1990s and has two major issues apart from safety, which car manufacturers have figured out how to handle. It takes a long time to charge, but discharges the power fast, making your long-distance travel less than ideal. If you take Model X Plaid as an example, it takes around 45 minutes (as of October 2022) for a full charge on a super charger and gives around 348 miles of range. This is a bigger car and I know there are other models that provide a better range, but not significantly more.
Well, this is all going to change in the future. As I mentioned, the battery technology we use today is old. There has been a battery revolution lately, giving rise to several alternatives to lithium-ion technology. One interesting technology I want to introduce here is the solid-state battery technology. Solid-state batteries provide very long ranges on one single charge as well as support fast charging. The two fundamental EV challenges are currently expected to be addressed by this technology. Toyota is presently leading the charge in this area with over 1,000 patents (Toyota IE 2022).
In fact, Toyota is only claiming 700-km range on their solid-state batteries that could be charged in less than 15 minutes (ibid). Solid-state battery has the potential to provide ranges up to multiple hundreds of miles on a single charge. But this is only one of the many battery technologies under development. Also, it’s certain we will have some major breakthroughs soon because of the investment pouring into this area. Many players are in a race to create revolutionary battery technologies, including a ton of startups. This laser and major focus is what gives me the confidence that we will soon build much better batteries.
In case you’re wondering why all these advances to this technology are happening now, the answer is: because such magnitude of power was unnecessary. Batteries best serve to power portable devices such as lap-tops and flashlights. The need for electricity storage is growing like never before owing to the growing innovation in electric vehicles and a constant push toward renewable energy in general. The biggest challenge your utilities company faces is matching the demand for electricity and the supply. They operate as “just-in-time” manufacturing companies of electricity because current electricity storage options are not very practical. What will solve that problem? A better electricity storage or battery technology.
Speaking Machines
Computers only understand zeroes and ones. How do we tell it to do something? Engineers created a text-based interface to interact with computers. In the early days, they had to type commands for every interaction with the computer. For example, moving a file from one location to another needed a command like “MOVE [/Y | /-Y] [drive:][path]file name1[,...].” Imagine writing such commands to every operation you perform daily.
Then came along the graphical user interface (GUI), originally created for commercial use by Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, and reimagined by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, that changed the computing world. These gentlemen created a user-friendly abstract layer for the complex workings of the computers to make computer interactions fun and faster.
It became not only easier to interact with computers this way, but also much faster, which opened up a new world of possibilities on what could be done with and through computers. Take any daily operation you perform—browsing, being on social media, playing video games, or simply typing. Either of these tasks would have been painfully difficult or impossible.
Although this GUI of the 1980s and 1990s went through a significant upgrade since then, we still depend heavily on GUI to date. Indeed, smartphones brought in touchscreens. The fingers and the stylus pens became the keys and the cursors. Technologies that let developers build applications to interact more easily with laptops, smartphones, and tablets emerged, although, fundamentally, these are variations of GUI as the base four decades is a long time for any technology to survive in today’s world, and we are due for a huge revolution that brings more comfortable computer-interfacing technology to compliment the long-standing GUI.
Then came along speech-to-text technology, which took a turn in the right direction, allowing us to interact with computers through voice commands instead of having to type or using the mouse. We have seen this technology evolve in the last decade or so.
Alexa, remind me to turn on the pool heat at 4.30 pm. Siri, what’s the weather today? Tesla, take me to the nearest shopping mall. We can now perform such operations hands-free with personal assistants and car computers. We can also dictate our thoughts on Microsoft word and other programs. When was the last time you used the type function for search on your Apple TV, Roku, or the Fire TV? Talking has become the new word for doing and can save a lot of time, which will only grow in the future.
This technology when enhanced to a certain level will benefit billions of people and potentially save a lot of lives. A field worker working on a hazardous electricity line or a factory worker working with perilous machinery can speak to machines without the hassles of checking it in a device.
Is voice assistance perfect today? Not by any means. At certain times, it’s a sophisticated listener, while at other times, it’s a toddler. Dictating a full paragraph, even worse, the entire book, does come with challenges. Other challenges include a heavy accent and background noise. However, with machine learning and other advanced AI, speech recognition will be more refined and clever. It won’t be long before we get to a point where talking to computers will become the primary mode of human–computer interactions. You can even argue with them if you feel like it. The day is near when graphical interface would be limited to viewing and noise-free operations.
Bad Day for Typing and Speaking
A text-based interface is better than manipulating numbers on a computer. And graphics-based interface is better than writing those complex commands. Likewise, touchscreen-based graphics are better than keyboard and mouse-based operations. A speech-based interface is faster than a graphics-based interface. However, all these interfaces are doing one thing. They are converting the thoughts from our brain into commands the computer can understand. What if we can cut these intermediaries and directly connect our brains to the computer? Wouldn’t it be easier and faster? That’s the idea behind the brain–computer interface, the concept that lays the foundation for the technological telepathic superpowers.
“A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a computer-based system that acquires brain signals, analyzes them, and translates them into commands that are relayed to an output device to carry out a desired action” (Shih, Krusienski, and Wolpaw 2012). For example, a BCI detects the signals of a driver falling asleep behind the wheel, analyzes them to detect such drivers, and converts them into a meaningful output such as activating a vibrator in the seat to wake the driver up.
BCI is not a new phenomenon. Also referred to as brain–machine interface (BMI) or mind–machine interface (MMI), BCI has been around since the 1940s, even before the discovery of a computer, although coined only in the 1970s. The origins of BCI are deeply rooted in the medical field, with most of its uses still in the field to this date. BCI is being considered for uses outside the medical field only in the recent past.
The Sunday Post in April 2018 titled “Mind-Reading Headset Can Understand the Voice in Your Head” writes:
A team of researchers from MIT in the U.S. have created the AlterEgo, wearable tech which uses built-in electrodes to pick up neuromuscular signals in the user’s jaw and face that are prompted by internal verbalization—or speaking “in your head.” (Furmage 2018)
It is then able to translate these signals into words using AI and respond to commands in the same way as current virtual assistants. Although certain functions may require implanted devices, there has been tremendous investment in this field to eventually control machines through your thoughts. Watch this space.
Telepathy
“Two rats, about 3900 miles apart, cooperated on a task telepathically using their brain implants”—NBC News reported this development on February 28, 2013 (Subbaraman 2013). This experiment conducted by Duke University implanted brain chips in two rats, one located in North Carolina and the other in Brazil. The rats were trained to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they performed the task correctly, they got a drink of water.
The scientists conducting this experiment had the light only in one location, in this case, in the United States. When the light came on above the rat in the United States, the brain signal from this rat got transferred to the one in Brazil, and the rat in Brazil pulled the lever. The experiment also proved communication from the rat in Brazil to the one in the United States. When the rat in Brazil failed to pull the lever, the team didn’t reward the rat in the United States. They noticed that the rat in the United States adjusted its behavior to make it easier for its partner to pull the lever this time.
The key takeaway from this experiment is that telepathy is not science fiction any longer. This technology has improved tremendously since this 2013 story. For example, Neuralink, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company, has been doing wonders, not only proving this technology is effective, but also safe. As of late 2022, they are in the process of getting ready to test these out on humans. If successful, the company claims that this technology can help people with paralysis, spinal injuries, Alzheimer’s, and other yet-incurable diseases (Neate 2022).
The most important thing is this “brain chip” technology is bidirectional, meaning it helps output brain signals and inputs them, as seen with rats communicating across two different continents. Telepathic communication is a many-fold faster mode than conventional texting or touching and can soon become an everyday reality. If rats can do this today, humans can do this tomorrow.
Imagine a world where you think about someone, and she gets a ring tone inside her head. If the recipient accepts your call, both of you simply think of what to communicate. No more speaking on the phone. No more typing your messages. Dial someone inside your head and transfer your thoughts. Speaking to someone through that invisible Bluetooth headset in a crowded environment today confuses people around you so much. You can imagine how people around you would react when you think on those telepathic calls. This is how Falcon communicated with his brother Dragon on his way back from the doctor’s office. The technology is in the beginning stages and it may be a while before such telepathy is enabled, but it is shaping up nicely. Although today’s “brain chip” technology needs a brain implant, research is underway to make it less intrusive in the future.
You Become the Internet
A brain chip is a computer inside the head, similar to any other computer, just miniscule. We can call this a silicon-computer attached to our bio-computer, the brain. And this computer is connected to the outside world wirelessly. Until now, we have only discussed connecting the chip to other brains. What stops us from connecting this mini-computer inside our head to the vast Internet? Nothing. In fact, that would be an easier thing to do.
With access to the Internet, there will be endless opportunities. We would not need an Alexa or Siri any longer. We would have them inside our heads. We won’t need our smartphone apps anymore. They’d be installed in our heads. Need to solve that complex math problem? The brain chip would compute it using Internet resources. Need to find the closest pizza place open in the middle of the night? Just ask the computer in your head. It will give you the results with a simple Internet search and take you there if you want. Your extended brain opens up a whole new world in the area of education and learning. Facts would be worthless to learn, worst to rote-learn. Knowledge will be so accessible that teachers will have to find analytical and creative ways to teach. If the Internet knows the answer, you know it. Conducting exams would have to turn those devices off mandatorily or at least restrict access to the Internet until then.
Essentially, you become the Internet; the Internet becomes you. This will enable the true merger of humans and machines. Some call this the further evolution of humans. They also depict this (not scientifically accurately though) in the form of monkeys evolving into apes, apes into humans, and humans into “humachines,” also referred to as cyborgs. This will take some time, no doubt, especially for widespread adoption. But the technology is certainly evolving.
That’s not the end, however. A brain will not only connect to the Internet, but multiple brains connect together to form a brain-net. What can all these connected brains do together? A lot. Take the example of the two rats again. Those rats were able to effectively communicate near-real-time and pass on crucial skills as well. What if a neuroscientist makes her brain entirely or partially open-source? You suddenly become a neuro-scientist as well. If one swimmer in the world makes his swimming skill an open-source, you suddenly know how to swim as well. You can write computer programs if some computer programmer keeps her skill on this brain-cloud. You can fly an airplane if a pilot puts his brain on the brain-cloud. Suddenly you have access to skills you wouldn’t have been able to gain in your lifetime.
Brain-net can be used not just to learn new skills, but for various other purposes. Teamwork and collaboration become more effective, as seen in the case of rats. Collective brainpower can be used to solve complex world problems. Important thoughts can be broadcasted to the masses. A reliable source can influence the public on important public measures, such as public health.
However, there are many shady sides to it, too. The government, for example, can get into people’s heads to align or influence them to a desired task. This also comes with security risks. While the technology may be ready soon, it depends on how quickly we can make it safe for general consumption, whether the governments will allow it for general use, and how quickly people adopt it, among other factors.
We Will Continue to Play God
Thanks to genetic engineering, in human’s pursuit to be on par with nature, we have created cats that glow in the dark, red strawberries with fish genes making them frost resistant, glow-in-the-dark rabbits, vitamin-A-rich golden rice, nutrient-rich veggies, bug-killing corn, non-browning apples, vitamin-rich super bananas, antioxidant-rich purple tomatoes, pollution-fighting plants, virus-resistant rainbow papaya, caterpillar-killing venomous cabbage, fast-growing Salmon, glittering-gold sea horses, singing mouse with bird genes, glowing fish, and many more. These are just a few examples of the products of genetic engineering.
November 29, 2018. James Gallagher writes in an article for the BBC: “He Jiankui shocked the world by claiming he altered the genes of twin baby girls so they could not contract HIV” (2019). Another news by the same source says: “Speaking to the Human Genome Editing Summit at the University of Hong Kong, [He Jiankui] said…[Lulu and Nana] were born normal and healthy, … there [are] plans to monitor the twins over the next 18 years.” Lulu and Nana are the genetically modified twins.
Another news article on BBC News published in August 2020 reads:
Florida mosquitoes: 750 million genetically modified insects to be released. The aim is to reduce the number of mosquitoes that carry diseases like dengue or the Zika virus. …the plan is to release the male, modified mosquitoes who will then hopefully breed with wild female mosquitoes. However, the males carry a protein that will kill off any female offspring before they reach mature biting age. Males, which only feed on nectar, will survive and pass on the genes. Over time, the aim is to reduce the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the area and thereby reduce the spread of disease to humans. (2020)
December 5, 2020. NBC News reported, “National Security Correspondent reports that China is conducting human tests to create biologically enhanced super soldiers” (Dilanian 2020). The details read: A top U.S. intelligence official says China has conducted human testing with hopes of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities. NBC’s National Security Correspondent Ken Dilanian says, “Imagine a sniper who can see twice as far as a human being. Just the idea that China is studying these things is pretty troubling.”
Let’s have a look at one more example. Scientists at the University of Vermont have taken the cells from the embryos of a frog species and created new organisms through stem cell technology: “living robots” (Brown n.d.). They used a cluster of two types of cells: one type of cell that moves, that is, the heart cell, and the other, that doesn’t. The contracting and expanding mechanism were exploited through their cell DNA and were used to create motion, similar to what a motor would create, but obviously a slow one. A bunch of these heart cells and skin cells were arranged in an optimal fashion to form a new living organism that can swim with these heart muscle cells and carry small loads such as medicine through a hole in their structure. This is not reprogramming the DNA of any existing species. This is not the creation of a mechanical robot. This is not even the regeneration of cells in our body. This is the creation of a new species altogether, a living organism. Isn’t that amazing? This organism is said to have enough protein inside of it to survive for a week. Moreover, in a protein-rich environment, it’s said to last longer, similar to any other living being. This organic bot can heal itself if damaged. And once dead, this organic bot turns into dead cells.
We are only beginning to scratch the surface of what biotechnology and genetic engineering has to offer. We will beat several genetic diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa, sickle cell disease, and Down syndrome. We will truly be able to “play God” to adjust our genetic code. This technology can also be used to enhance your abilities and turn you into a superhuman, as it was allegedly done in the case of Chinese soldiers.
Our first few ancestors walked on all four. The quadruped humans became bipedal through millions of years of evolution. Evolution simply means rewriting the source code—the genome sequence—that produces all of us. The source code is adjusted to adapt to the natural conditions and passed on to the next generation. However, this process is so slow, no living being lives to see it.
But when science has given us the ability to tweak into the biological source code, should we accelerate or slow the evolution altogether? Instead of waiting another million years through the natural evolution to grow that third eye at the back of our head, what if we are able to figure out a way to modify our DNA to do that instantly? Will we produce designer babies?
The question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is ethical and, most importantly, safe. As much hope genetic engineering offers in solving some of our most critical problems, it also has some dangerous possibilities. There are indeed several social and ethical questions associated with it; the risks this technology poses are far more dangerous, ranging from designer babies experiments going wrong all the way to purposefully creating bioweapons that can erase a portion of humankind or rogue leaders forcing the formation of a certain race to exhibit race superiority. The ethicality of this pursuit is certainly debatable. But at the same time, it is also true that what is seemingly possible will be made possible, if not by one, then the other.
To summarize, I see us continue to play God, but at a slow, but steady pace. This area is strictly regulated by several governments around the world and also by international agreements. However, if we use our modified version of Murphy’s law, “If something is possible, it will eventually happen,” someone somewhere will use genetic engineering in their self-interest. We should all be prepared for it.
You Can Live Forever If You Choose
Let’s say you hire someone to make your robotic look-alike—call it Canopus—a humanoid with almost identical somatic features as yours, though not a clone.
Now, using the brain-chip technology, what if we map your brain’s computational network and memories, upload it on a drive, and download them onto your robotic look-alike to engineer a robotic twin? Canopus could have your voice as well. We have your twin ready that looks like you, talks like you, and acts like you, only immortal. Your robotic twin could live forever, provided it is regularly serviced. Pixel, Falcon’s mom in our tale, is one such mind-upload.
This certainly brings several questions to the table, as any new technology does. If the mind-upload onto another robot or even human is possible, who and what else can we upload our minds onto? Onto an animal? Granted, the “hardware” or the animal brain circuitry may not be compatible with the software, that is, your brain map. But if we develop a compatibility-enabling software, those sci-fi feats they show in movies will come true: we might actually have a cross-conscious species, an animal-human. Possibilities are as many as your imagination: What if we upload our minds into some weird-looking machines? What about a car with a human mind? What about an unnerving, giant, sturdy metallic robot with your mind?
However, are we counting too much on the brain-chip technology? What if the brain-chip technology fails to deliver this mind content extraction? Will that be the end of this dream of technological immortality? Can we employ the currently available technology instead of relying on something that is under development? There’s a way out; though it is not a full-proof solution, there is a way to create our replicas.
Let me ask you a question. “Who knows you the most?” Your mom? Your dad? Your spouse? Your sibling? Your best friend? Or yourself? Nobody knows me better than myself. All of that may be true, but in the past. Someone—or rather something—spying on you all day and night probably knows the most about you, even better than yourself? It’s the Internet. Let’s call him Mr. I.
Mr. I knows how you look because it has your pictures you uploaded on social media, shared through those chat applications, or even through e-mails. He knows where you live, which school you went to, whether you’re married, what you do, if you have kids, which school your kids go to, who your friends are, who your spouse’s friends are, who your best friends are, who your neighbors are, your direct family details, your extended family details, your daily activities, including their locations, and hundreds of other answers. But this is nothing compared to who you stalk, who stalks on you, what are your fantasies, what your pass time is, what medicine you’re taking, what’s your mood, which political party you belong to, whether you’re angry today, among others. You are in Mr. I’s fingertips.
You liked and disliked some posts on social media or commented on them. You followed people, joined groups, and watched videos based on your interests. You shopped several products on the Internet. Mr. I has your entire online shopping history. Even if you use your credit card for purchases in stores and not online, you left a trail for Mr. I to follow. Mr. I will track your expenses.
If you are one of the very few who uses cash, you make it harder for Mr. I to paw you, but he can still figure it out. For example, most of us research on the things we want to buy online before heading over to a store, unless they are smaller day-to-day items. You already told Mr. I what you like. If you extensively researched on a washing machine of brand “A” for a few weeks, read its online reviews, spent more time on clicking on links related to its particular model, and, all of a sudden, stopped doing any research on washing machines, Mr. I can assume with some level of certainty that you bought that particular model of washing machine, even if you paid cash. You make it easier for Mr. I if immediately after stopping to search for “which brand is the best,” you instead search “why does my washing machine smell.” Another way Mr. I knows you bought that washing machine is by tracking your cash withdrawal pattern to match with the cost of the washing machine to confirm its assumption. Mr. I will be fully laid back to enjoy your purchase confirmation if you post about your new washing helper on the social media.
Using all these data, Mr. I can easily formulate your profile drawing from the information you gave: your likes, dislikes, and interests. Mr. I, through his advanced AI algorithms, can predict how you respond to various situations. For example, if you consistently commented positively (with positive word connotations) on pro-choice-related posts, it’s clear you are “pro-choice.” Even if you don’t comment and just read them, your level of engagement with the content tells Mr. I how interested you are in the topic. Add your video-watching habits to it. If you are “pro-choice,” it is likely you’ll watch pro-liberal videos. Depending on the amount of time you spend on pro-choice versus pro-life posts and their comments, Mr. I can come to a reasonable conclusion on your viewpoint, if not the first time, but upon reading patterns of your behavior. All of this is possible, only if you allow Mr. I to track you, although most of us enable these features knowingly or unknowingly.
These are only meant to be examples of how every move you make on the Internet leaves digital bread crumbs for Mr. I to pick up, put pieces together, form the whole, and read your mind. Let’s take a few more examples. You checked in and out of various places you visit on social media. You created posts from those places. You used maps to get to your destinations. You drove your car that knows where you go and at what time. This became easier with smart cars. You used telepay applications in various places. You did some research on Google to find places you wanted to visit at various times of the day or the week. You checked for weather before you wanted to go out. Using an AI algorithm, Mr. I will be able to put together your entire daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly schedule, even better than you can do it.
You share your emotions on the Internet. You tell random people when you are happy, sad, angry, or feel low. Even if you don’t explicitly express your feelings, your video-watching patterns, search patterns, and shopping patterns can tell your mood. What made it even easier? Personal assistants such as Alexa. You ask Alexa to play relaxation music when you are stressed. Songs with dance beat when you are happy. That mood can easily be mapped to the other activity, snippets of which you leave on the Internet. For example, when you are stressed, you may end up taking a nap or you may go to the gym. You may eat out or go small-shopping when you are happy. You may go big-shopping if you are super happy. There is mapping of mood to weather patterns, geopolitical events, economy, and so on, over patterns of our behaviors. The point is: each one of us is so predictable even though we consider ourselves as the most unpredictable.
Putting all these together, Mr. I can easily map your brain and create your digital twin. The interesting thing is: it will create your persona better than you can because you do a lot of these activities through your subconscious mind. Your mind profile, as collected by Mr. I, can be uploaded onto your robotic look-alike to create your robotic twin that will share your interests, the one that will think and behave like you.
Your twin will not get everything right. However, the AI algorithm Mr. I added to your twin’s brain will learn as it goes, to fill any gaps. A good example of this was how Pixel learned what happened when her memory was erased in Falcon’s tale. The AI can persuade others to provide that missing information and learn from it. If our mind is what defines us, did we just recreate ourselves into an immortal version? However, there is one major missing piece here, that is, consciousness. The problem with consciousness is that it is as difficult to define as to achieve. Lately, there have been multiple philosophers and scientists writing books, one after the other, in consciousness raising further questions than answering the existing. After all, the axiom seems to be true—the more books are published on a topic, the less people understand what it is. Other than that, today’s Mr. I can recreate you and give you a technological immortality. And who knows where the field of artificial consciousness is headed in the coming years.
Internet Connectivity Through Space
I went to a boarding school around 800 km away from home in a small town called Nagarjunasagar, India, to complete my high school in the 1990s. I still remember how we gathered and waited for the postman every afternoon, hoping we would get a letter from home, which my parents wrote and posted. These letters took days to arrive. By the time I would have responded, the letter would have taken almost 10 days to do a round trip. Urgent messages were sent using telegram. It took hours to reach, instead of days, but that used to be expensive and limited to serious, emergency messages. Telephone was a remote idea to us.
Fast forward a few years. I went to another boarding school in the northern part of India in a town called Pilani for my undergraduate studies. While connectivity was still not widespread, we had access to telephones. My parents would call on a public phone once in a while and we would chat for a few minutes. That was a major upgrade from the previous modes of communication.
Slowly, Internet became available in the early 21st century, but its availability was extremely limited. This was back in India and I know Internet was available in the United States during the last quarter of the 20th century. However, we had to make a trip to an Internet cafe and pay per minute to use it, which ran, as we all know, at snail’s pace. It was predominantly dial-up based and in-home Internet was limited to a few major cities at a premium price.
Today, broadband Internet is widely available in many parts of the world. We rely less on cable TV, depend more on video streaming for entertainment. Compare today’s Internet speeds of few to thousands of mbps to back in the day. We made a significant stride, all thanks to fiber optic-enabled broadband Internet cable installed in several parts of the globe.
However, this story only applies to well-developed areas of the world. The speeds are much lower in a large chunk of population with an estimated 37 percent of the world—2.9 billion people—still without Internet connectivity, an international telecommunication report says (2021). We don’t have to go far to understand this. The evidences may be intertwined within our experiences. My wife and I own a vacation rental space in the Lake Tahoe area, not underdeveloped by any means, but there is no broadband connectivity. Our guests constantly complain about the lack of Internet access.
However, the good news is: this is all about to change. The world will likely and soon get consistent Internet access in its every corner.
SpaceX is planning to send 42,000 satellites as a part of its Starlink initiative to provide high-speed Internet to every corner of the world, from forests to poles (Mann, Pultarova, and Howell 2022). Kuiper Systems LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon (sister company of Blue Origin), has received approval to launch more than 3,000 satellites with the same goal (Smith 2022). The advanced space technology made satellite launching much easier as compared to even a few years ago; we will see exponential growth in the number of satellites orbiting us, providing global connectivity like never before. Starlink Beta has already been launched and has been taking reservations for satellite-based high-speed Internet. Our world will soon become truly connected from North Pole to South Pole and all around, meeting the heightened connectivity needs of future “things” alongside humans.
Your reaction would probably be: tablets are already smart. I have a smart iPad and my friend has a Samsung Galaxy Tab. They are just bigger smartphones.
I am not referring to those tablets. I am talking about pills. Yes, the pills we swallow. What if those pills become smart? These smart pills are the future of medicine. In the story you read, Falcon took a pill that diagnosed the issue that allowed Pixel to 3D-print the medicine for him. That is a smart pill.
Smart pills do exist today and we’re not in a movie script.
No, not on the dark market.
Not in any country with an authoritarian rule where it’s easy to impose such things on people.
What if doctors in the United States can prescribe a smart pill for patients, fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? This is already happening. Susan Scutti writes for the CNN:
FDA approves pill with digital tracking device you swallow: A psychiatric medication system in the form of a pill with a built-in digital tracking device gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday. Abilify MyCite, a form of aripiprazole and a first-of-its-kind product, has an embedded ingestible sensor that records when the medication is taken. Made by Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., the medication system is intended to treat schizophrenia, bipolar 1 disorder, and depression in adults. (Scutti 2017)
This is where I believe the future of medicine is headed. Let’s say you have flu-like symptoms. You take a “smart” pill connected to your smartphone. It may contain nanobots made of, say, metals, nonmetals, or proteins that do their job and come out the next morning when you use the restroom or, even better, dissolve inside your body—biodegradable xenobots. Their job is to analyze the problem and make a diagnosis. They will be able to check your blood sugar levels, detect bacteria, search for viral DNA, and even do a biopsy. They transmit their findings to the smartphone that triggers the 3D printer that can print the actual pill based on the diagnosis. Your doctor’s office will be notified on all this, provided you authorize it. How does this future of curative medicine sound?
Now, let’s extend these smart pills to preventive care. What if you periodically take a smart pill that does an end-to-end body checkup and sends the results back to your smartphone as well as the doctor’s office? The idea is very similar to annual checkups but without blood work, urine tests, and long anxious anticipation times—the annual checkup in a pill, essentially. All good, if there is nothing wrong. If the issues are minor, your smartphone can give you a treatment plan using an advanced FDA-approved AI algorithm, and an FDA-approved 3D printer will print the designated medicine for you. If the issue is serious, you go to see a doctor. Sounds good?
Back to the pills: what if these smart pills or intravenous fluids enter our body, identify cell damages proactively through advanced AI algorithms, and repair them or assess for a treatment plan such as proactive stem cell therapy? Your heart cells are wearing out. The bots can detect them early. All you need to do is grow their clone in the lab to produce new ones. The same will be true for other organs. Wouldn’t that improve the quality of our life or even reverse aging? We may or may not be able to live for 500 years like those sharks, but wouldn’t it be a huge win if we can expand our life span?
In extension, these smart pills or injections filled with nanobots can go and repair all kinds of bodily damages. For instance, they can clear plaque on the walls of our arteries or tear up a clot. This is the future of medicine and all the excitement lies right at the intersection of biotechnology and high technology.
Magic Cell, Not Magic Pill
Diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disorders, and Alzheimer’s have been tied to aging and premature death for a long time. These diseases take millions of lives each year. According to WHO, ischemic heart disease, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were the top three causes of death in 2019 (2020). For years, we’ve tried to control them but couldn’t eliminate their risks altogether. What does the future hold? Can we eradicate these diseases like we eradicated smallpox? You probably are aware of someone who would have been alive today had we figured out a way to cure their diseases.
Can a diabetic patient eat what she likes without having to worry about shooting up her blood sugar levels? Would a heart patient be able to live peacefully without having to worry every day? Can cancer patients live a normal life without having to go through those painful chemotherapies? Can improved cognition capabilities help do things without assistance? The point is: the quality of life would drastically improve.
How about developing a magic pill that cures these ailments? Here you have to present your idea of why magic pill won’t work.
Let’s get to the point. I believe the future lies not in magic pills, but magic cells. These cells are named stem cells. Part of what is called regenerative medicine—a medical field that uses our body’s own healing process to cure diseases—the stem cell therapy holds significant promises to curing diseased organs without extreme intervention.
Have you ever gotten injured? I am sure you had at least one instance of a paper cut or some other injury to your skin. Did it heal? How long did it take? Your skin healed because the cells regenerated, thanks to your stem cells. If we break our bones, they will rejoin. Our body constantly produces new blood. Your body contains enormous healing power. Stem cell therapy uses this power to treat serious diseases.
The Promise of mRNA Vaccines
The history of human civilization is riddled with pandemics, each one leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. From the 1918 Spanish Flu to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the threat of infectious diseases has been a constant companion to humanity.
One of the most devastating of these was the 1918 Spanish Flu, which claimed an estimated 50 million lives worldwide and a quarter of the world’s population. Even more recent outbreaks, such as the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic and the 1967 influenza A (H2N2) virus, claimed millions of lives. And let’s not forget the devastating impact of pandemics such as AIDS, cholera, bubonic plague, and the ongoing cancer epidemic.
These outbreaks have not only claimed countless lives, but also left distressing trails of warnings for humanity. The 2005 bird flu caused by H5N1, once estimated to kill up to 150 million people if not contained, is a chilling reminder of the constant threat of pandemics.
In the face of these deadly outbreaks, one of the most promising new technologies in this field is mRNA technology. Unlike traditional vaccines, which use the pathogen itself to generate an immune response, mRNA vaccines work by instructing the body to create the spike protein of the virus, which is then recognized by the immune system as foreign. This approach has been proven to be both effective and adaptable, as creating a booster for various COVID variants has been proven much simpler than conventional methods. The use of bioinformatics and AI has further streamlined the process and increased its effectiveness.
However, this technology is not limited to COVID-19. Research is currently underway to develop mRNA vaccines for a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including other coronaviruses, influenza, HIV, herpes, and malaria. Additionally, mRNA technology is being explored as a treatment for diseases such as cancer and cystic fibrosis, as well as for gene therapy to repair defective genes.
Furthermore, mRNA technology will also be used to treat existing diseases like cancer that will teach the immune system to attack malignant cells. This technology could also be used to repair defective genes to treat diseases such as cystic fibrosis. For instance, Penn Medicine researchers are using mRNA technology to modify liver genes, thereby permanently reducing cholesterol levels and protecting against heart attack and stroke (Source: Pennmedicine.org. 2021. “World-Changing mRNA Vaccines From Penn Medicine.” www.pennmedicine.org/mrna (accessed January 14, 2023).
In short, the future of vaccinology is looking bright. mRNA technology has proven to be a powerful and adaptable tool in the fight against infectious diseases, and its potential applications are far-reaching. With ongoing research and development, we may be able to create a world where pandemics are a thing of the past.
Inorganic Workers
We’ve seen how AI has been advancing and will continue to advance, along IoT. There is a parallel field witnessing an equal growth—the world of robotics. Robots are extensively used in factories to perform various manufacturing and assembly tasks. Those inorganic factory workers will only multiply and become smarter.
The domestic and institutional use of robots is a growing trend. We can expect these inorganic workers to rapidly replace humans everywhere. From self-checkout store counters to humanless parking systems, this is already happening. Let’s take a few more examples.
Amazon Go is a completely human-free retail grocery store. You can walk into it, pick things up, and walk out. Your activity is tracked through advanced facial recognition and IoT sensors. You will be charged automatically, and the bill will be sent to you after your visit. This is seen as a model for future retail stores. According to Scrapehero.com, there are 27 of them active as of July 15, 2022 (2022).
There is a completely human-free coffee shop in San Francisco where robots prepare coffee. The international airport in Seoul, South Korea, is full of guide robots roaming around. They inform and escort you to different places within the airport, such as bathrooms, shops, and other areas. When they walk ahead, remember to follow them.
There are fully automatic hotels in China operated by bots. Several modern restaurants in Beijing use robots to bring food to the table. There is at least one fully automated restaurant where robots take order, prepare food, and even deliver them. Humans are present, but their job is to provide a personal touch for the customer experience.
Our roads will soon fill with robots in the form of autonomous vehicles. Stores will be full of robots working the shelves, taking payments, and providing guidance inside. Airways will witness more flying robots, in the form of drones and air taxis. We already have arguably the biggest robots in our airways—airplanes. When in autopilot mode, an airplane is nothing but a colossal, flying robot capable of carrying people. These carrying robots will transport people and things to space in the form of spacecraft and ferry them underground through underground technologies, for instance, the Hyperloop and other technologies. Our waterways will carry autonomous yachts or water robots as well. A baby version is the Tesla Model Y Super Yacht. And finally at home, we already have digital assistant robots like Alexa and vacuum cleaner robots like Roomba. Not very distant in time, Tesla’s bot might also join with promises of its own. Our lives will be filled with more of these robots, as they did in Falcon’s life.
You Will Soon Become a Cyborg
I am a cyborg. I love technology so much that I turned myself into a cyborg. And be prepared to hear when and why I turned into a cyborg. No, it was not when Elon Musk started Neuralink which you might already suspect because of my repeated mentions of his companies. But that’s just a reportage of the ones in the forefront.
I have been a cyborg since my childhood, and I can say it is not a dream by any means.
Perhaps, we should define the term cyborg first. I became a cyborg the day I received a calculator.
My point is we are all already cyborgs, as long as we use some sort of technology to improve our natural abilities. Yes, you are a cyborg, as long as you use a phone, computer, or any other technology. The calculator enhanced my math skills tremendously. My smartphone not only gives me information the most powerful person on the earth could only imagine getting a few decades ago, but it also lets me control my home and the world on my palm.
We are all convertible cyborgs, meaning when we use our smartphones, we become one. Yes, we’re detachable. We are cyborgs when we wear our glasses or contact lens and convert back to our normal state when we stop using them. What if we start becoming permanent cyborgs of some sort? What does that even mean? That simply means we implant technology in our bodies to enhance our abilities.
But these technologies only turn us into a one-major-step-away cyborgs. And that major step is the biomechatronics—the marriage of biology with mechanical science. True cyborgs are biomechatronic organisms with deep levels of human–machine interaction.
The brain-chip we discussed earlier makes us a “true” cyborg. But we don’t have to go that far. Humans have been medically turned into cyborgs as early as 1960s when the first pacemaker was invented. If you’ve met someone who has a pacemaker, you’ve met a cyborg. Anyone with an artificial body part is a permanent cyborg. The interesting aspect of this topic is how this field is progressing.
Let’s review this 2016 NBC story:
“Brain Chip Helps Paralyzed Man Feel His Fingers” (Fox 2016). “Nathan Copeland, paralyzed from the chest down for 12 years, can feel his fingers again. And he fist-bumped President Obama with a robotic hand.”
Copeland had been paralyzed from the waist down. The University of Pittsburg implanted a brain-chip to read his thoughts through brain signals, interpreted them through AI, transferred them over to a robotic arm, and put his thoughts to action through it. Brain implants are beyond animal-based experiments and are being used on humans already.
The brain-chip technology has promising benefits. Artificial hands and eyes connected to the brain through interfaces are just examples. The prospects this area offers are fascinating. For example, humans are in a dire need of eyes with an ability to detect wavelengths normal eyes cannot. Do you feel like flying in the air like a bird? No problem. Brain-chip technology through gaining control of our brain offers hope that you can attach synthetic wings that can be connected to your brain one day. Do you want to become invisible? That’s possible, too, except that we don’t need to wait long for this fiction to become a reality. “Harry Potter”-style invisible blankets are available today, although they have some Is to dot and Ts to cross. While they are being developed for use by the soldiers at the moment, it doesn’t look like it will be long before I can order my magic blanket you can hide in from Amazon. Not sure what I would do with it, but I guess it will be a cool thing to at least play around with.
The Future Is All About Space
You probably might have heard of the space race of the 20th century, especially the Sputnik Moment of 1957, the first one ever, named after the satellite Sputnik 1, Earth’s first artificial satellite launched into orbit by the Soviet Union. Sputnik 1 marked the beginning of the space era. The space race became so historical that the term Sputnik Moment is now commonly used for the need to catch up with major breakthroughs, especially brought about by other countries or societies. The United States decided to catch up to this space race and landed a man on Moon in 1969. Twentieth century was an era of space race between the political powers.
Space exploration was fully owned and executed by governments or its bodies, for instance, NASA in the United States, which started back in the 20th century. The nature of space exploration has completely changed in the 21st century, with private companies actively participating or even leading in the process. Some media outlets characterize the current space exploration initiatives as the “space race of the billionaires,” although I do not agree with that characterization. Multibillionaire entrepreneurs are investing their fortunes in space exploration, and that’s a very good thing.
Steve Gorman reported for the Reuters on July 12, 2021: “Billionaire Branson Soars to Space Aboard Virgin Galactic Flight” (2021). Another such news by Reuters reports Jeff Bezos’ success in flying 66.5 miles (107 km) above the Texas desert in his company Blue Origin’s Shepard launch vehicle (Johnson 2021). The vehicle returned back to earth safely after taking “a historic suborbital flight.” The key here is the safe return back to earth, which was not possible before. Although these missions barely touched the space, they mark a new era in the world of space race.
According to Boeing, “Space industry is expected to be a total $2.6 trillion market this decade. The United States represents nearly 60 percent of the total market, with the rest coming from allied nations around the world.” We are undoubtedly entering the never-seen-before space era. The investments pouring into space missions seem to substantiate this story. Billionaires around the world are literalizing the catchphrase: follow the money and so should the common man, as far as possible and ethical.
NASA’s next lunar mission aims to launch the first woman and the first person of color to the moon (Gohd 2021). Artemis missions, as it’s called, plans to “establish the first long-term presence on the moon,” learn from these endeavors, and finally use that knowledge to send the first astronauts to Mars (2022). Watch this “SPACE.”
Your Car Is the Next Cash Cow
The east valley of Phoenix, Arizona, United States.
You open your smartphone app and request a taxi. It comes to you in within minutes. You get in and settle down. The driver greets you. You greet him back. You get busy with your phone, watching your favorite Netflix show. The car starts moving toward your destination. The driver drives you to the destination very carefully, following all the traffic laws and lights. He maintains all the speed limits, evades the traffic around him, slows down at speed bumps, stops for any pedestrians crossing the road, and safely takes you to your destination.
You had one of the best driving experiences and are impressed. You thank the driver for such a wonderful ride and wrongfully extend your hand for a handshake. But you realize there’s no one in the driving seat. The 1s and 0s are the driver: say hello to Google Waymo, the smart, electric, autonomous “ghost” driver in town.
Another artificially intelligent “ghost” already dominating the domestic market is Tesla with many more existing and upcoming players.
We already had a lot of car talk thus far in this chapter. Let’s do some more, especially summarizing the future of cars. Three letters S-E-A describe the future of cars: smart, electric, and autonomous.
Smart
With minor connectivity options as of 2022, in the years to come, your car will be able to connect to other machines, talk to other cars and traffic lights on the road, shop for you, and make all the payments autonomously (with your permission) to provide a coordinated experience. This includes paying your bills, reminding you of upcoming appointments, and even making appointments for you, like a personal assistant. You can talk and argue with your car. If it wins, it will play your favorite music to calm you down. Most new features will come to you through updates. Your car will have a digital twin and she will be smart enough to ensure you reach your destination effectively and safely.
Electric
As a part of the green revolution, there is a constant push to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and thus promote renewable sources of energy. Electric-powered cars are already the future and there’s no stopping their sales. In August 2021, American President Biden signed an order “aiming for half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric powered” (Ewing 2021). It said, “Automakers’ expected quick transition from gas-burning cars and trucks to electric is a key part of the White House strategy to fight global warming”—NBC News reported (Lederman 2021). Almost 95.4 percent cars on the streets of the United States are gas-run and only 4.6 percent are plug-in electric vehicles (Blanco 2022). The dream of replacing fossil fuel with electric cars and lessening the carbon burden in the atmosphere needs to invert the 95.4 percent to 4.6 percent statistics of their respective distribution. You will have time to transition, although gas-based cars are not entirely going away. The current clean energy push is for new cars and by the way it’s progressing, one can safely predict that the transition will happen over decades, not merely in few years.
Autonomous
My Tesla—we named it “The Autonomous Vanka”—drives herself in most circumstances and is a great relief for people like me who don’t enjoy driving, especially long distances. I just sit behind the wheel, punch in the destination, and she does most of the work. But today’s Tesla still requires the driver to be behind the wheel, just like how airplanes still require the pilot to be there, although airplanes are autonomous for the most part. The future cars will be completely self-driving. The technology in the car is ready for the most part, although it will continue to improve. The part that needs revamping, and is the longest pole in the tent, is the infrastructure to support autonomous cars such as smart signaling lights and smart roads compatible for autonomous cars. There is already a huge push for that and the growing number of patents indicates things are promising.
Think about what an autonomous car can do. It will take the “Uber revolution” to an entirely new level, transporting people and cargo autonomously everywhere. Your car will drop you off at your workplace or the shopping mall and immediately can go work as a taxi when you don’t need her, making you some extra cash. In the long run, your car will not be a depreciating liability but a growing asset. Future cars will travel on the road by detecting other cars and things through a direct connectivity through IoT as compared to today’s computer vision and other sensors. For example, your car will slow down because she knows that Deaver’s car is right in front of her and is about to slow down through direct communication between the two. She will stop at the traffic light not because she read the light through computer vision, but she has been notified of the red light directly by the traffic light IoT sensor, again through direct communication. That’s the future of transportation connectivity.
Travel to an Alternate World in a Split Second
Getting bored of our day-to-day life happens occasionally for all of us and that’s entirely normal. Back in the day, our ancestors talked to each other to kill their boredom, meaning, they used to immerse themselves into a different world through communication. Then came the time when people read books in addition to simply talking to other people, followed by pictures and videos, from black and white to “kind of” color to full color. The quality of this colored motion picture significantly evolved over time, taking forms such as high definition and blue ray. We have 3D motion pictures that take us a bit closer to reality, creating an “immersive” experience. In addition, some theaters add dimensions of seat movements and climactic controls and take it to a whole new level.
But these technologies struggle to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds completely. The 21st-century technology that gives us a closer, native feeling of reality is called virtual reality (VR). If it’s developed right, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the real world and the VR world. That’s why it’s called virtual “reality.” Although the definition is evolving, this merger of the physical and virtual worlds is also known as the metaverse. The selfies you take on your cellphone morphing your face is a primitive example of the metaverse in action.
It’s a given that the future of gaming and entertainment is in the hands of VR. However, there is much more to it. Imagine attending a school field trip from your home without moving an inch. When this world will look as real as the real world, why not just attend it from the comfort of your bed? Most of the future field training will be through VR, avoiding all the dangers of the real world. Beyond training, you could also operate heavy machinery belonging to the dangerous field from the comfort of your desk, without the physical dangers in its virtual digital twin. Future work-meetings could be remote, bringing all the participants into a virtual meeting room in the metaverse. Online shopping experience will significantly improve through at-home trial rooms. You can do several tasks at home, those you need to go out to do. The gap between the virtual and the real worlds will significantly reduce, allowing you to switch back and forth in no time.
Web 3.0 May Not Be What Everyone Imagines
Web 3.0 is a buzz word that is going viral lately. First, what is it? While this is just an idea at the moment and is evolving, the concept calls for democratization of the Internet. Web 1.0: Internet in its early days was mostly a one-way communication tool through publishing of information on websites that was consumed by users. Advances on the Internet gave rise to Web 2.0 where interactions with the Internet became common through the likes of social media. The idea is that the World Wide Web will evolve further into version 3.0 where the Internet will be democratized and everyone will profit from it. How?
First, the data will be decentralized through blockchain as compared to sitting in Big Tech’s data center. You control your data and sell them if you want. Your every action on the Internet could make you money. The argument is that this will also be secure. Second, beyond selling your data, you also participate on the Internet to make money by doing what you like, such as playing video games or showing your other talents to your followers. It will all be controlled through blockchain technology and the financial medium through which you make the money: cryptocurrency.
The current definition of Web 3.0 was coined with cryptocurrency in mind and it has been embraced by crypto enthusiasts. I am not sure how successful that will be. More on crypto coming up under the future of money. Besides, I don’t believe we are ready yet to move our Internet completely onto blockchain technology. Performance will be one of the roadblocks.
However, I absolutely see the fundamentals behind Web 3.0 materializing, that is, taking control of your data and profiting from the Internet. While it may not happen through democratization of the maintenance of data through technologies such as blockchain, there will be more transparency in how our data are managed by organizations, driven by competition, public demand, and perhaps through regulations. Remember, sitting on a gold mine we discussed earlier? Profiting from our data is absolutely in the near future. Coming to profiting off our talents? Isn’t that happening already? Content providers get paid off the views and likes on YouTube. Some influencers make millions. Some video gamers live off playing games. See these trends grow by not only getting paid for more activities on the Internet—post engagements and so on as examples, but also expect more transparency.
Bored of This World? Move to a Different One
Our world used to be small in the past, about 2.5 million years ago. People lived in small caves or basic huts and would only go out for primal needs. They hunted and gathered using sharpened stones and bones. They searched for food on land and in water and fed on what was already there in nature.
Slowly, they felt the need for more sophisticated tools and a need to leave home for survival. After millions of years, they were able to extend their march from their cave-home to across the oceans. And the rest is known.
Our presumptions have been repeatedly shattered. We thought the sun was the biggest. It rather turned out to be average in size. We thought the sun was alone until we found billions of other stars. We thought our galaxy was alone until billions of other galaxies shimmered in the eyes of the telescopes like sand particles. Now we’re left with one “truth” and it is one of the most consistently held “truth” that hasn’t been shattered yet: our position in the universe. What if we’re wrong, again? What if we’re not alone?
This exact feeling fuels our drive for surfing through the space in the early attempts of dominating it. Space travel, space economy, and Internet connectivity are just a few immediate benefits we will be experiencing here on the earth, directly resulting in this space race. But as clearly stated by a lot of these missions, the eventual goal is to make humans a multiplanetary species. It will be unwise on our part not to discuss this or act on it. The space is massive and there are lots of opportunities to make a place our home, just a little challenging.
Where will we eventually build our new home in space? Will we colonize the Moon? Will our children play on Mars? This question lingers in the minds of a lot of people.
Our ancestors thousands of years ago migrated from Africa to Asia, Europe (Gugliotta 2008), and eventually to the entire planet (well, pretty much). The question we are asking on space colonization here is similar to asking our ancestors where they were planning to settle when they first started off. They had no clue that thousands of years later their subsequent generations would colonize a place and make it today’s America. While it’s not entirely clear, scientists have the consensus that humans started out in Africa and the trigger for migration was a scarcity of resources such as food, amid a growing population. Sounds familiar?
The case is similar for space colonization. The current space colonization is in the exact same spot as the case for early human migration from Africa. We can only discuss our first destination, driven by the most pragmatic, immediate options. But there’s a significant difference in motive for major changes between the ancient era and today. First, scientific innovations, today, are not just driven by genuine, collective human needs, but also a need to be superior in terms of resources. Second, more than the needs, they’re driven by whether it’s commercially feasible in short, fairly long, or long-term scenario. So, predicting the human space journey is not that difficult provided the options we have.
Despite all the energies, space settlements are not going to be a onetime event but a continuous process with ever-growing expansion. And it’s not going to happen overnight. The first settlement, wherever it ends up happening, is important, and that immediate goal is what the key stakeholders involved in space exploration are referring to. The sky is the limit from there; well, perhaps I should say the space is the limit instead, as we continue to expand our footprint into the infinitely large void of the universe.
The Moon
Being the closest giant rocky structure, it’s not a surprise that Moon has been human’s spatial holy grail for a while now. As mentioned, NASA is planning the next mission to Moon with a goal to send humans by around 2024, this time to stay and explore.
The question is—what do we do when we land there? There will certainly be further exploration to determine what can and cannot be done because we know very little about Moon even though we’ve been there a couple of times.
But one thing we know for sure is that Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, unlike Earth, and with it arises two major risks: dangerous radiation exposure and lack of oxygen. The primary goal is not to die and definitely not by radiation because that’s the most widely known risk. Also, on a lighter note, moving to the Moon will prove to be the best diet plan: it will be the fastest way to lose one-sixth of your weight because the gravity of the moon is approximately one-sixth of the Earth’s.
But, in all seriousness, questions we do not have answers to include how abundant frozen water is there on (inside?) the Moon. There are signs that the water is more abundant than we originally thought. We have many signs of underground lava tunnels. Once we explore them further, they may be ideal options for our first lunar colonies. There is definitely a lot of work to be done such as figuring out a way to set up solar plants, but we are getting closer to making our way to the Moon, not just to plant a flag but to settle down this time.
The Mars
If you’re someone who loves science and movies, chances are you know about Mars exploration missions, especially in the last few decades, led by NASA and other agencies.
Mars’ atmosphere is thinner compared to Earth but thicker than that of the Moon, making it slightly a better option to colonize. Bad news for those with quick weight loss ambitions: you would only lose two-thirds of your weight on Mars, compared to five-sixths on Moon. But extreme care should be taken not to opt for the Mars mission just to see your weight reduced, by the way.
Scientists have already found signs of water, including large amounts of underground ice. Ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support living microbes, including the existence of sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon—key ingredients necessary for life.
Futurists out there have created a blueprint to reach Mars, including a plan to run shuttles back and forth between Mars and Earth. We have identified an ideal location to start our Mars colony along with a blueprint to build dome-like structures, with detailed interior designs. We planned out the type of food to carry, plants to grow, and eventually atmosphere to nurture which doesn’t require us to live inside dome-like structures at all times. Welcome to Mars by Buzz Aldrin has outlined these plans. Strap yourself for the journey Earthlings!
However, we still do not know a lot about Mars, more so than the Moon. The Martian lava tubes may be a better choice for human explorer colonies; we will only find out once we reach there. They essentially act as natural domes protecting from space radiation more than artificial structures. The longer-term solution is to build an Earth-like atmosphere on Mars that would naturally block the lethal radiation.
But how do we do it? Scientists are exploring several options. One option is to develop greenhouse gas factories. These are the same greenhouse gases that have polluted Earth and exacerbated global warming. However, Mars, being a cold planet, has a different problem. The temperatures on Martian surface can reach as low as −81 degrees Fahrenheit. We could use a temperature rise, which in turn releases more greenhouse gases over the years, creating a thick atmosphere that blocks most of the harmful radiation. Global warming is a problem on Earth, but on Mars, it’ll be a mission. Your weakness in one environment may turn out to be a strength elsewhere.
While it is a viable option, this is expected to take a long time. One option is to place several mirrors around the Martian orbit to direct sunlight at certain spots and heat the surface. Over the years, these mirrors are expected to heat the Martian surface releasing greenhouse gases trapped in it. While this option may work slightly faster than the previous, it is still expected to take a long time.
The third option scientists are considering is a nuclear option, in which we direct ammonia-rich asteroids toward Mars using powerful nuclear-propulsion rocket engines. Eventually, these asteroids will crash into Mars, releasing ammonia and water. Ammonia raises greenhouse gas levels, might vaporize the ice, improves water levels, and would terraform Mars. These are all theoretical options at this time, and we are far from even landing on Mars, let alone living on it. But our future on Mars sounds promising. It may or may not occur in our lifetime, but the groundwork we are doing will surely lay the path to Mars for our future generations.
Floating Space Colonies
Look into the sky and imagine giant floating cities (or countries?) in the wide-open space. They may look tiny from the surface of the Earth but can be gigantic accommodating millions of people in each floating city. These cities can be modeled after the cities on the Earth. In fact, we can bring the best of multiple cities. If you have ever been to Las Vegas, imagine a floating Las Vegas in the sky, built for human habitation, instead of gambling and recreation.
But how can cities float in the space? Are these only food for sci-fi movies? This sounds like Hindu mythology where the homes of Gods float in space and could be accessed through a space vehicle. These “homes,” however, do not have superpowers. They can be as real as our homes back on Earth, just more sophisticated. Let me explain this further and convince you that this is probably the best of the near-term space colonization options.
First, floating cities in space are not new. We currently have one of those “cities” floating and rotating around the Earth’s orbit. It has been around since 1998. It’s called the International Space Station (ISS). It’s only the length of a football field, small compared to the city we want to build, but we have some precedence. City-sized ISS built for human habitation is not a problem of science but logistics and technology. We can plan the entirety of the structure beforehand and build working models and work out solutions to the problems gradually. There will be everything a human on earth needs in these floating colonies. Schools, parks, transportation systems, water, electricity, and other necessary amenities—you name it. We will have a large city with all the facilities required to lead a comfortable life. This city will have its own economy, although it can be an extension of the economy on Earth. Sounds simple? Not really.
First, the city will be orbiting the Earth in the outer space prone to lethal radiation and debris that can destroy life in an instant. Moreover, it is cut off from the direct sources of water and oxygen. We need to cover this city with a dome-like structure to protect from all the dangers. That’s not an issue though because there’s the technology to do that.
The problem is very low gravity in space. Moon and Mars are massive objects and hence offer certain level of gravity. Any astronaut who has spent considerable time at the ISS can tell you how life on low gravity can be. Nothing would stick to the ground. There’d be no east, west, north, and south. Bones would lose strength and muscles wouldn’t flex much.
Luckily, there is a conceptual solution. This city will rotate onto itself to generate artificial gravity, a concept coined by American physicist O’Neill in his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space in 1976, and these colonies are called O’Neill cylinders or O’Neill colonies.
O’Neill colonies can be built much closer to the Earth with the ability to reach in hours as opposed to months when compared to Mars or Moon, which takes days, with today’s most advanced technologies. These colonies will make inhabitation in space possible without having to completely leave the Earth for good, that is, we can travel back and forth from Earth easily. You can have a vacation home in this colony or can live there, yet visit your relatives back on Earth as frequently as you visit your relatives on the other coast of the United States. This makes the first step into space for everyone relatively small and manageable.
However, the question is, how do we transport the materials to the space to build these gigantic cities? Do we build them on Earth, take them to space, and assemble them there? That’s going to be a humongous task to lift them off of Earth’s gravity. Luckily there is a concept built to address this problem.
The Moon Base
Apart from being a candidate for true human colonization, scientists believe that Moon can be our base for further reach into space, especially to build the O’Neill colonies. It’s almost certain that Moon is rich in several resources, including the soil that can be used to build the O’Neill colonies and potentially as a radiation shield if we end up colonizing lunar lava tunnels. It is indeed possible to construct the O’Neill colonies on the Moon but the question is—do we need to cross-train astronauts and construction workers?
Not necessarily on a huge scale, though significant training is essential. The idea is to use advanced robots and 3D printing technologies that minimize human interference. We might have to blend the intersection of the advances in AI, robotics, and 3D printing and produce more cross-disciplinary talents. There could be temporary moon colonization just for construction workers for construction purposes. Essentially, we need space workers, but not necessarily astronauts with extensive space training and experience, as the temporary colonies will have Earth-like conditions.
Other than the abundance of natural resources, there is another major advantage of a Moon base and Moon-based construction. Moon structure can be used to build concrete. Helium can be used for fusion reactors. It’s much easier to lift these off of the lunar surface than the Earth’s. Remember, the Moon’s gravity is one-sixth of the Earth’s, which means it is six times easier to lift off a load from the lunar surface. Transporting cargo to the space can be facilitated by building a space elevator, which is essentially an elevator from the lunar surface into the space and back. That will ease the construction of the O’Neill colonies in space, much easier than building them on the Earth’s surface.
But why limit with O’Neill colonies? The Moon can act as a base for radio observatories and telescopes. Moon bases sound like a promising first step into space exploration, even if the second one is something other than a floating colony.
Other “Space-Stop” Candidates
Scientists are looking at options other than Moon and Mars as our destinations, whether or not to stay there permanently. In fact, the former U.S. President Barack Obama had aimed to land on an asteroid and explore it. Some of the other candidates include Mercury that could be used for mining. Venus could be a candidate as well, although the colonies have to be floated way above its hot surface where the temperatures are similar to that of Earth. Some near-earth objects (NEO) can be moved into a safe orbit and artificially rotated for gravitation. The concept is similar to O’Neill colonies, except for the asteroid ground used instead of constructing another skeletal structure altogether.
Again, these are just a few options. There are so many moons and asteroids in our solar system that could become future candidates for space colonization. We haven’t even discussed other solar systems, such as our neighboring star system Alpha Centauri and beyond.
We may not be able to settle in space in this third decade of the 21st century. It may not even happen in the fourth decade. It may, in fact, not happen in this century at all. Why should we care about all of this now? The reasons are simple. First, this will eventually happen. It’s essential to understand what’s coming in the space of space. Second, we are not going to flip a switch one day and decide to go settle in space. The work has to build over decades. And most importantly, all the research work that goes into space exploration will benefit the life right here on Earth.