Professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York and co-author of the string field theory Michio Kaku visited SVSU on Monday, Oct. 24, to give a lecture on “The Next 20 Years, How Science Will Revolutionize Medicine, the Economy and Our Way of Life.”
The talk was part of the Dow Visiting Scholars and Artists Series and The William and Julia Edwards Lecture in Philosophy and Religion and was open to the public free of charge.
The event quickly filled the Malcolm Field Theatre and Kaku wowed the audience with his lecture regarding the technological advancements the world would make over the next 20 years.
Kaku started off the lecture making the crowd laugh with many lighthearted jokes about his profession and the current state of the world, then transitioned to the extraordinary rate at which technology and science is progressing and how it will affect us in the future.
Starting with the future of the mind, Kaku explained how in the future everything we need will simply be programmed into a contact lens, and in fact the U.S military is already doing this.
“It will be a frictionless future,” Kaku said. “No more forgetting who someone is, forgetting where your car is parked, or any other daily hassle. The massive computing power of the future will be at your disposal at all times.”
From there, Kaku moved on to the future of medicine.
Kaku said that the future will simply consist of interactive wallpaper, that an individual can walk up to, explain his or her symptoms and get a diagnoses from a robotic doctor. There will also be human body parts shops where you can simply replace an organ as easily as you can replace a car part, and it is in fact already happening on a small scale today with 3-D printers, Kaku explained.
Lastly, Kaku focused on the future of the economy, and how science will revolutionize it.
“The future will have perfect capitalism,” Kaku said. “Everyone will have access to unlimited knowledge about every product, resulting in competition never seen before, and also every producer knowing the exact demand for a product, will result in the economy functioning in perfect harmony.”
Kaku ended his speech with a small background of himself and how he was inspired to go into physics and more specifically, research string field theory by the unfinished work that was left on Einstein’s desk when he passed away.
Sophomore chemistry major Codey Cook was very impressed with the speech.
“For myself I loved it from the start,” Cook said. “I grew up watching Dr. Kaku and I couldn’t believe it when I saw he was going to be a guest speaker here at SVSU. It was a great time and I’m very proud of my university for having such an amazing guest on campus.”
All Dow Visiting Scholar and Artist Series are open to the public and free of charge. For more information, visit svsu.edu/publiclectures.
