WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD FOR YOUR BABY

By Linda Henry

As you look into your baby's eyes, you surely wonder what the future will bring. What will she be when she grows up? What will the world be like when she starts a family of her own? These questions are no longer the sole province of psychics. Scientists studying physics, bioengineering, and information technology offer surprising prophecies.

In 1980, Ray Kurzweil, inventor of music synthesizers and voice-recognition software, wrote The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, he predicted that within ten years, a computer would defeat a human chess champion, that a new era of economic stability would be created by information and computer technology, and that a worldwide information network would emerge. All of these predictions came true. In his latest book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (Viking, 1999), Kurzweil makes some astounding predictions. Given his track record, we might want to pay attention to what he has to say, which includes some of the following:

Life Expectancy

Your baby could live to be 120 years old, thanks to advances on several fronts:

• Blood-clotting bandages have been developed and are now ready for human trials. These bandages can stop bleeding within a matter of minutes, greatly reducing the number of accidental deaths. For deep wounds and internal bleeding, a self-expanding sealant foam is currently being developed.
  
  
• By the time your Y2K baby reaches kindergarten, scientists will have identified and sequenced the 100,000 genes that comprise human DNA. As soon as they understand the effects of DNA variations among individuals, there will be a revolution in our ability to diagnose, treat, and even prevent the thousands of disorders that affect human beings.
  
  
• By 2020 medical doctors will be able to take a piece of a patient's skin and "read" their genome. Genetic defects, such as genes that predict some cancers or diseases like sickle cell, can then be corrected by injecting the appropriate gene.
  
  
• Also by 2020, 95 percent of all human body parts will be replaceable with organs grown in a laboratory.
  
  
• By 2029, most diseases, including cancer and heart disease, will be preventable and their courses, reversible.
  
  
• Thanks to modern medicine, life expectancy will be of less of a concern. Instead, we will debate the definition of life: Can a computer-generated entity be considered a life form? What if it possesses the downloaded version of a human brain, and is able to express emotions? Kurzweil predicts that by 2099 human beings and their computer-generated counterparts will be indistinguishable from one another. Human beings may live to be 150, but their computer-generated copies might live forever.

Lifestyle

With a long life ahead how will your child fill the years? Kurzweil predicts that by 2029, there will be 12 billion "real humans" in the world. The U.S. Census Bureau's estimates are more conservative, predicting 8.2 billion people by 2030. Either way, in thirty years there will be at least 2 billion more people populating the land, and your child may seek to live in more wide-open spaces such as an undersea community or a space station, or join a commune of settlers on another planet. The First Millennial Foundation is one of many organizations developing an ocean-based community, with the ultimate goal of creating settlements in outer space. (Other organizations working toward these goals include The Freedom Ship Project, Island One; Oceania, The Atlantis Project; and the League of New Worlds, see The IslandOne Website)

Even if your child settles in an earth-bound community, his or her personal space will differ dramatically from the way we live now. Within 20 years, personal computers will be small enough to be implanted in and around our bodies, monitoring health, diagnosing acute and chronic health conditions, and providing recommendations for treatment. Tiny PCs will be able to recognize voice commands and carry out tasks such as business and financial transactions. Individuals may have a dozen of these invisible or nearly invisible computers in and around their bodies. Kurzweil predicts that your child's home will be kept tidy by a robot, and many people will employ a computer-based personal assistant, with custom-designed personality and voice, to solve problems, answer questions, find information, and conduct transactions. By 2019 these programmable personalities will be so appealing that they will take on the role of teacher, caretaker, or even lover.

Leisure

Kurzweil predicts that by 2019, 3-D displays will be built into eyeglasses. These displays will create realistic virtual environments, projected directly onto the retina, allowing friends to meet for coffee at a San Francisco bistro even if neither of them happens to be physically present in the state of California. Care to return to the old family farm or travel to foreign countries? Put on your glasses.

Careers

"What will he be when he grows up?" Your baby's generation may make this a moot question, taking advantage of the Internet economy at an early age. In the next decade, preadolescent entrepreneurs will create successful businesses, such as inventing computer software that are beyond adult imagination. This phenomenon will raise concerns about self-employment law and the rights and responsibilities of minors.

The grown-up world of work will change as well. In The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World (Penguin Putman, 1998), Jeremy Rifkin predicts that agriculture will change dramatically, with food and fiber grown indoors in tissue culture in giant bacteria baths. While this shift will dramatically increase production and lower costs, the technology will displace millions of traditional farmers all over the world. We're already seeing controversy regarding this issue, as large corporations overwhelm the traditional family farmer in a global marketplace.

Ray Kurzweil is more optimistic about work in the new millennium: "The creation of new technology is fueling the expansion of economic well-being." He believes that automation and technology create more and better jobs than the ones they eliminate. Your baby may grow up to invent "virtual experience" software or be a bioengineer who combats viruses for an international or interplanetary security agency. You may see this, and more, for yourself, since biomedical advances will lengthen our generation's life expectancy, too. Stay healthy for a few more years or decades and you'll have much to tell your great-great grandchildren about life before the turn of the century. Seems a bit primitive now, doesn't it?

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