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Prognoses of the future technical development
Nobody really can say in which direction our science goes. There are so many different subjects that can revolutionise the whole world.
Here are some examples of these future technologies:
Gene engineering:
The scientists think that they will have completely decoded the DNA (Desoxy Ribo Nuclein Acid) of humans in 50 years. After that we will be able to create a human with all the attitudes we want to give him. (more intelligent or good looking, for example). Today we are able to clone an organism and force bacteria to produce medicine. It sounds simply you just put the gene (building plan) for the enzyme (medicine) into the DNA of a bacterium and you let this bacterium multiply itself. After a certain time you have millions of bacterias which produce the medicine you want.
Fusion energy:
This technology can change society completely. We would have unlimited energy for the whole world. The sun is the best example. It has been burning for billions of years just with the help of fusion energy.
With further researches perhaps it will be possible to replicate any atomic element, connection, molecule and material we want.
Robots:
Today many people could not imagine working without their computer. This computer technology is the base of Robots, Computers that can walk and talk. Today we are far away from this technology but there are programmes that can talk with you or machines that can walk.
Space Ships:
If you had asked a person 200 years ago if mankind would fly to the moon someday, he/she would have laughed at you. Today it is possible to fly to the moon so perhaps in the next 200 years we will fly beyond our solar system to other planets. In contrary to the other technologies I have mentioned before the scientists haven't started to research the theories for flying faster than the light. With our technical status it is not possible to check the theories the scientists have in mind.
The internet and virtual reality
This result of our modern computerized society is certainly a future technology. The net grows and people are communicating with each other all over the world. The internet connected with virtual reality is the next step. Perhaps in the future business meetings 5 men and women will sit in front of their computers with I (Intelligent) -Glasses on 5 different places over the world but their eyes will see each other on a big table where they discuss problems.
Nanotechnology a combination of VR technology, computers and gene engineering and Bio Cybernetics a combination of Computer technology gene engineering and nanotechnology.
I will explain these future technology further down. It is impossible to summarize them because these technologies are too complicated and there are so many possibilities, which result out of these technologies that a summary could not be satisfy.
Explanation and the future of gene technology
Today we are able to influence and add information to the DNA Code. When the scientists will have decoded the whole DNA of an organism, it will perhaps be possible to configure or create this creature as we want it to be.
But what is DNA?
We can see the genes which consists of DNA in three ways:
1) Genes as structural units: DNA, the chemical basis of genes, can be modified, cleaved and legated etc. In this sense it is about as interesting as sugar, lipids and other constituents of the cell, - putting it bluntly, relatively boring, or at least, no more interesting than chemical substances in general. However, what is exciting is the fact that it can be reintroduced into living organisms. DNA, as such, has nothing to do with life. It is dead. It is as \'inert\' as salt. It does not create life, but it can be integrated into life processes. Results like those I have described demand further investigation and research. Identification of the 2,500 genes required for eye formation, their functions and interactions is a tremendous challenge for generations of molecular biologists. Identification and elaboration of the chromosomal organisation of the 80 - 100,000 genes of the human genome, their functions, regulation in time and space will keep researchers busy for decades. And all the work, all the experimentation, is set to follow the very same scheme: manipulation and engineering, - for we live in the age of \'invasive biology\'. At this point these reflections could easily deviate into ethical and moral concerns, but I trust these will be considered later. Suffice it to say here, this first level of reality could be called the \'technical instrumentalisation\' of life.
2) Genes as informational units: Genes are carriers of information. From a given sequence of genes, the primary structure of proteins, its amino acid sequence, can be deduced. The flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein can be unequivocally predicted, but is by no means sufficient to draw any conclusion on function. Indeed, any undergraduate could derive the protein primary sequence from a given stretch of DNA, but the genome projects show beyond any doubt that the function of a protein cannot simply be read from its amino acid composition. We are thus left with the problem that either the molecular approach to life does not grasp the entirety of living beings or that there exists occult information in the gene besides that of the genetic code. We either embark on DNA mysticism or acknowledge the limitation of purely genetic explanations of life.
3) Genes as functional units: Let us presume that we have identified a gene and elucidated the function of its product. We have already seen in the example of the eye formation that the function alone is not sufficient to explain its \'meaning\' or \'significance\' for the organism itself. More importantly, most of us are familiar with the poorly understood situation in animal model systems, where human disease conditions are simulated. Often enough, transgenic animals with the correct genetic changes can be generated, but the expected traits are lacking. One of the most important examples is the retinoblastoma gene. It is essential for cell cycle regulation in man and in its mutated form results in the formation of eye tumours. Mice with the very same genetic change develop a number of abnormalities, but retinoblastomas have not been detected in a single animal. If the gene had first been discovered in mouse it would not have been called the retinoblastoma gene. The genetic condition is necessary, but is obviously not sufficient for the formation of the organismic, phenotypic characteristics.
But there are far more possibilities to use gene engineering:
The book "Jurrasic Park" shows one example how we can use gene engineering in it's on one hand fascinating and on the other hand dangerous way.
Summary:
Scientists develop a means of bringing dinosaurs to life using DNA taken from dino\' blood, which has been preserved inside insects encased in amber. Whilst Hammond is showing off his dinosaur \'theme park\' to a selected audience [a lawyer (Gerrano), mathematician (Malcolm), dino\' expert (Grant), palaeobotanist (Sattler) and his grandchildren (Tim & Lex)],
What the company has built there, we gradually discover, is a theme park inhabited by living dinosaurs cloned from fossils. As the project\'s presiding madman, John Hammond, explains: the obstacles to making a profit on genetically engineered pharmaceuticals have proved insurmountable. \"Now, think how different it is when you\'re making entertainment. Nobody needs entertainment. That\'s not a matter for government intervention. If I charge $5,000 a day for my park, who is going to stop me?\"
You fool, says Hammond\'s resident Cassandra, Ian Malcolm, who is described as \"one of the most famous of the new generation of mathematicians who were openly interested in \'how the real world works.\' \" One can\'t clone hundreds of prehistoric dinosaurs, put them in an environment, and expect to control the results. Chaos theory tells us that a big complicated system like that defies understanding. \"There is a problem with that island,\" Malcolm warns. \"It is an accident waiting to happen.\"
And this accident happened when Nedry (computer expert) disables the security system so that he can make his escape with some stolen embryos. This enables all the dinosaurs to escape their enclosures.
Robots:
I want to explain the future of robots by 2 examples. "Data" from "Star Trek" and Asimov's "I'Robot":
Data has 100,000 terabytes of memory (equiv to 100,000,000 one-GB hard drives). When on trial, he stated that he had a storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits (100 quadrillion bytes). Data processes 60 trillion computations per second. If you\'d like to compare Data\'s 100,000 terabytes of storage capacity to something real-world, someone mentioned a chart that set the maximum storage capacity of the human brain to approximately 3 teraBITS, which would mean that Data\'s brain could contain everything from over 260,000 human brains.
The television program Star Trek: The Next Generation included an android character, Data, who we are specifically told (in the episode \"Datalore\") was created in an attempt to bring \"Asimov\'s dream of a positronic robot\" to life. Unfortunately, the producers of the show locked onto the \"positronic\" aspect as if that were the key quality to Asimov\'s robots. Asimov\'s view was exactly the opposite -- his robots are \"positronic\" because positrons had just been discovered when he started writing robot stories and the word had a nice science-fictiony ring to it. The use of positrons was just an engineering detail and relatively unimportant to him.
Asimov\'s key insight was that, inasmuch as we engineer our tools to be safe to use, we would do the same with robots once we start making them -- and that the main safeguards for an intelligent being are its ethics. We would, therefore, build ethics into our robots to keep them going off on uncontrollable killing sprees.
In some sense, the specific Three (Four) Laws are themselves an engineering detail, the robotic equivalent of the Ten Commandments -- it is a specific ethical system but not the only one possible. In Asimov\'s universe, they are the basis for robotic ethics and so absolutely fundamental to robotic design that it is virtually impossible to build a robot without them.
Asimov tended not to let other people use his specific Laws of Robotics, but his essential insight -- that robots will have in-built ethical systems -- is freely used.
In particular, Data is an \"Asimovian\" robot because he does have an in-built ethical system. He does not have the Three Laws, however (witness the episode \"Measure of Man\" in which he refuses to follow a direct order from a superior officer [Second Law] without invoking either danger to a specific human [First Law] or the higher needs of all of humanity [Zeroth Law]). Moreover, his ethical programming is not fundamental to his design (his prototype, Lore, lacks it altogether, and Data\'s ethical program is turned off for much of \"Descent, part II\").
What are the Laws of Robotics, anyway?
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
(From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot.)
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the \"Zeroth Law\" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly: 0. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.
Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov\'s stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly.
The Three Laws did not appear in Asimov\'s first two robot stories, \"Robbie\" and \"Reason\", but the First Law was stated in Asimov\'s third robot story \"Liar!\", which also featured the first appearance of robopsychologist Susan Calvin. (When \"Robbie\" and \"Reason\" were included in I, Robot, they were updated to mention the existence of the first law and first two laws, respectively). Yet there was a hint of the three laws in \"Robbie\", in which Robbie\'s owner states that \"He can\'t help being faithful, loving, and kind. He\'s a machine - made so.\" The first story to explicitly state the Three Laws was \"Runaround\", which appeared in the March 1942 is sue of Astounding Science Fiction.
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