“By 2020, there will be chips everywhere because chips will cost a penny. After 2020, it will be the post-silicon era, with quantum computing.” This is how theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku opened his speech on the last day of Andicom (check out all stories), the largest ICT event in Colombia.
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The future he presented was quite impressive: Kaku predicted that the Internet will be in our contact lenses, fully-integrated with other platforms, such as maps. Augmented reality will be everywhere. Chips in our toilet will detect if we have cancer even 20 years before it appears. And computers will disappear; they will come from the cloud. “PCs will only be found in museums,” he said.
Kaku said the Internet will follow the same path as electricity and water. “It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. No one talks about electricity or water. No one asks from where they come from,” he said.
The future of cellphones, according to Kaku, will include much more flexible and intelligent screens. “E-paper will become a reality because chips will only cost a penny,” he said. “And computers will be thinner and as cheap as paper.”
To support all these predictions, Kaku recalled the past, big waves in science. The first wave was steam power and locomotives; the second was electricity and automotive — with a crash in 1929; the third was high tech — with a crash in 2008. “The fourth wave is a combination of telecommunications, computing, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and the quantum era,” he said.
The audience was surprised and excited after Kaku’s speech, although some were frightened by his vision of the coming tech revolution.
