Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions, Second Edition

The Socio-Technological Age Progression
Agricultural Age
Developed machine vision will have
capability far beyond the range of
the human eye (infrared, ultraviolet,
multispectral). Robotic systems
equipped with machine vision will
recognize, classify, sort, and manipulate
objects and respond to changes
in their environments in unique
ways. They will be put to a wide variety
of industrial, laboratory, and
surveillance uses, such as automatic
guidance systems for vehicles and
accident avoidance systems for machinery.
5. Robot Technology
We are now in the process of developing
human-directed, virtual
presence machines capable of
remote-controlled movement and
manipulation of objects. These devices
are often called robots, which
they are not. The technology to build
real robots is on the way, however.
In the near-term future, our world
will be driven by two emerging technologies
that are advancing simultaneously:
robotics and biotechnology.
These technologies will overtake information
technology and give us a
new Socio-Technological Age around
the year 2025. This new age will continue
for 50-plus years.
The technologies needed to build
Robotic-Biotech Age
Information Age
Post-Industrial Age
Industrial Age
4000 BC AD 1740 1960 1995 2025 2050 2075?
robots that can perceive their surroundings,
move themselves, and
perform tasks without human oversight
should reach fruition between
2015 and 2025. By 2040, robotlike
machinery will inhabit the world
alongside people, doing much of the
work.
As robots enter the mainstream,
they will probably exert major economic
and societal impacts. On the
positive side, labor productivity will
vastly increase, which could be lifesaving
as populations of retirees will
swell in the developed world. Replacing
the retiring labor force with
high-tech robotic equipment will ensure
that economies remain productive
enough to support their retirees.
Additionally, hundreds of thousands
of new jobs could become available
for human professionals who possess
the skills to program robot-tohuman
interface systems, movement
control, harm-avoidance systems,
vision packages, tasking systems,
and speech-recognition programs.
At the same time, major disruptions
of the world’s workforces
could result. Studies estimate that
robots could replace as much as onethird
to one-half of human labor in
some industrial and service sectors.
Additionally, robot technology could
almost completely take over agriculture
and displace most, if not all, of
the world’s farm workers. Even
worse, this precipitous fall in human
labor will probably occur at a rapid
pace: in about a five- to seven-year
period.
6. Telecommunications
Revolution
Mass interconnection of computerized
data systems has enabled
people and machines to talk to each
other at high data rates. These data
rates will get progressively higher
over the next half century. Optical fiber
network transmission systems
will continuously increase their capacities
and reach transmission capabilities
as high as 100 terabytes per
s e c o n d o n c e n e w p h o t o n i c s
switches, photonics circuit elements,
optical routers, and plasmon
switches—all now under development—go
into widespread use. This
will ultimately produce a seamless,
all-optical network for data communications
four to five times more
powerful than the current one.
The next telecommunications revolution
will offer mass sharing and
transfer of databases, unrestricted
worldwide communications and an
ability to locate and communicate
with anyone, a much higher diffusion
of work via telecommuting,
rapid and widespread dissemination
of knowledge (unlimited access for
everyone to the sum total of knowledge
of the human race), and a much
wider variety and availability of education
and entertainment.
7. Fullerene Chemistry
In September 1985, Nobel Prize–
winning chemist Rick Smalley discovered
the original C 60
molecule,
buckminsterfullerene (“buckyballs”),
which comprised 60 pure carbon atoms.
In 1990, a means to mass produce
buckyballs was discovered,
making them available for largescale
study and establishing the new
field of fullerene chemistry. Since
then, chemists have learned not only
how to form fullerene molecules, but
also how to attach other kinds of
molecules to them and build new
structures and materials, such as
nanotubes and graphene.
Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions 11