Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100, Michio Kaku Doubleday, New York, 2011. $28.95 (389 pp.). ISBN 978-0-385-53080-4
Michio Kaku’s latest book, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100, is based on an appealing premise: Since the laws of physics are not likely to change between now and 2100, they can provide insight into how our world will. Kaku explores this observation through interviews with “more than 300 of the world’s top scientists, thinkers, and dreamers,” who are asked to base their forecasts on technologies that exist at least in prototype form today.
The result, alas, is a kind of future by committee. We’re told that in the future there will be real-time spoken language translators; in the present there’s...