In his best-selling book "Physics of the Future," American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.
SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn't that a bit immodest?
SPIEGEL: It's still a big step to go from wizards to gods.
Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.
SPIEGEL: Let's do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?
Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there's electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.
SPIEGEL: We'll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?
Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what's going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we'll drive to work.
SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!
Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.
SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?
Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you're an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.
SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?
Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn't changed in 100,000 years. We're social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who's on first, who's on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they're available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.
SPIEGEL: What's an example of that?
Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?
SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.
Kaku: That's the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, "I want direct contact. I don't want a picture." The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.
SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.
Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn't changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.
SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?
Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a "DNA chip." It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.
SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us -- did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?
Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.
SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?
Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.
SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won't there be more of an urge to create designer babies?
Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.
SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?
Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: "error." The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn't function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that's why we die.
SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?
Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don't wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.
SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?
SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?
Kaku: I don't think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.
