12 Events That Will Change Everything, Made Interactive

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created by Zemi Media. Find all our other interactive offerings here.

May 21, 2010 | 65

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1. shawnboike 02:11 PM 5/21/10

Abosultely terrific presentation of these sciences and potential future events. This should be taught in scools instead of remaining ignorant.
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2. shawnboike 02:13 PM 5/21/10

Terrific scentific display of information and future events. This should be taught to all in school instead of ingnoring tremendous things the human mind can improve upon.
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3. shawnboike 03:01 PM 5/21/10

Fantastic Star power to here on Earth-Thank You USA. This opens tomorrows doorway to many energy and propulsion techniques for the future...
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4. amidabuda 09:14 AM 5/22/10

Incredible!
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5. MSc. Jorge Poveda 06:29 PM 5/22/10

I am sure mostly of the persons will react avoiding the urgent reflexion this matters need to act.
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6. motie 03:05 AM 5/23/10

They missed an event with 100% probability of happening within the next 50-100 years. And it will change everything: the exhaustion of the natural resources that are needed to keep industrial civilization running. According to various authors, including Michael T. Klare in "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet", we have about 50 years worth of oil and uranium. Other sources claim that vital precious metals will run out at the same time. Let's say he's off by a factor of two. It doesn't matter. Nine billion people will find themselves in a post-industrial civilization that cannot possibly support all of them. It will be unimaginable. Google "resource depletion".
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7. jj.ferm 06:58 AM 5/23/10

I think the probabilities given by authors are totally misleading, since they are using different criteria.
50% chance of finding extra dimensions and 0% for fusion energy? There are certainly different criteria here.

Getting fusion energy power is very difficult, but theoretically feasible. Having extra dimensions (at low energy) is one of many models of physics beyond the standard model. Saying that there is a 50% chance that we will find extra dimensions is much more than optimism.

The argument the author uses (we might find them, or we might not) is exactly the same that was used by that crackpot who said the LHC could destroy the earth (it will, or it will not).

So let me remind this to you: So far, we have NOT found any experimental evidence of extra dimensions. On the contrary, extra dimensions theories have had to stand some ugly modifications in order to be consistent with experiments. So, for me, this is unlikely, if not almost impossible.
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8. tetrahedral 12:38 PM 5/23/10

What about the implications for religion and morality? It is time to face up to the "absence" of a god, and the human origin of religious ideology. Once we can do that, perhaps we can reconsider the nature of morality and take responsibility for our own future.
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9. johnmcragin 06:45 PM 5/23/10

FROM: John Cragin, 05/23/10
The Earth, in her continued effort to become a perfect
sphere will continue to adjust her surface without any help from man. The pleistocene's million years have seen 4 Glacial ages, each followed by a warm Interglacial age. We are in the interglacial warming following the fourth, Wisconsin, glacial age. I don't know where we stand now but somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 years in the future mankind will experience the loss of his buns to a new "Ice" Age. God help us then -- we will have burned up everything
inflamable for heat and water.
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10. Toxicspud 05:34 AM 5/24/10

What about Polywell or Dense Plasma Focus Fusion, both of which hope to produce net energy this year
John
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11. ettreeseed 09:25 AM 5/24/10

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=363&id=100000730294279&l=653f73ce35
Allow me to be your dimensional guide. As binary switch operator, I have my hands in everything. For instance, did you know Aliens are the stuff religions are made? Did you know we secured the Stones in Cerebus in the Eagle Nebula? Did you know the War in Heaven is over; Uranus, who is Shiva, son of Gaia, rose from the dead atop the Lagoon Nebula and that Judgments of the Primordials and second born are complete; the Rapture was a great success and all returned to earth afterwards; now the War on Earth. Despite the continued agression, we wish to welcome humanity into the Universal neighborhood and it is our hope that in one hundred years or so, when there are no longer wars on earth, you will join us. The Earth and the Lagoon Nebula better known as Hades functions as a Conveyor Belt to evolve all souls. It takes a thousand lives on earth to come for review but it is my feather your heart is weighed against.
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12. randycost 02:15 PM 5/24/10

I wish we could clone specific parts, such as hearts and pancreas, so I could get a new lease on life for the next 20 or 30 years.
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13. electronimo 02:57 PM 5/24/10

Great Article- Thnx for posting.
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14. ANTIcarrot 06:21 PM 5/24/10

Not too impressive. Fusion doesn't raise polywell. Also hard to see how a strictly local disaster in california will affect 'everything'. Whoever wrote the AI section apparently believes then when a computer becomes sentient it *magically* becomes much faster than the hardware would normally permit. I wish my computer could do that when it was running a really complex programme.

It also makes the foolish mistake of forgetting the importance of experimentation. Okay. Fine. Super fast AI thinks it has a wonderful improvement for itself. Will it work? If it's also super smart (or even moderately smart) then testing even a minor change will take more than 'a few hours'. Science magazines start to look like creationist magazines when they state that experimentation and testing no longer matters 'if you're smart enough'.
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15. boomshadow 11:41 AM 5/25/10

You misspelled "Disappearing" in the title "Dissapearing Florida Coastlines."
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16. yannislykos2 06:25 PM 5/25/10

As Dr Schmidt said, long time ago (did he say 120 thousand years ago?) temperatures and sea level were higher. Human activity effects on the environment were non existent back then. What we are going through environmentally has to do with the periodic climate changes of our planet, not with mainly with human activity. We might be able to stall by cutting down on emisions but I don't think that this will eventually change our future dramatically. That is not to say that a better quality of life will not result from a more environmentally friendly way of living our lives but that's not going to postpone meltdown for ever.
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17. elixir13 01:51 PM 5/27/10

I'm sure the authors of this had to cap the count of world-changing events somehow, but why is Peak Oil not on the list? It's something that when it happens will certainly change our whole world and society, and it's inevitable, though predicting it within the next 40 years isn't certain.
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18. ennui 07:20 PM 5/27/10

When the discovery of the technology of the Flying Saucer can be made available ( and it is patented), we will have an industrial revolution like the world never has seen before.
Fast fuel-less travel anywhere on earth or in space.
A Flying Saucer just "taps" energy out of the aether.
I suspect, that Tesla used it for his electric Pierce Arrow Car in 1931. He did not dare to publicize or patent it, as Morgan and Rockefeller (investors of the Niagara Falls Power Plant) would have had him locked up in a mental institute.
That system can also be used to supply electric power to any dwelling, anywhere on earth...
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19. Dom Amato 12:24 AM 5/28/10

If all od the floating ice at the north pole melts, the level of the worlds oceans will GO DOWN! Ice floats brecause it's less dense than water. A floating chunk of ice displaces it's weight of water. When it melts, the volume of water in that given weight of ice will be less than the original volume of ice. You can prove this at home with a glasws of water half filled with ice. Mark the levels of water before and after the ice melts.
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20. Gentilly4life 10:31 PM 5/29/10

Something to add to the list , Gulf oil gusher. This is sure to change the world.Sad
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21. NewYorker4Ever 12:49 PM 6/1/10

Very interesting! Love the graphics!
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22. NewYorker4Ever 01:01 PM 6/1/10

Fascinating! Love the graphics too!
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23. NewYorker4Ever 01:01 PM 6/1/10

Fascinating! Love the graphics too!
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24. dwbd 07:57 PM 6/1/10

Once again the editors of SCIAM, don't miss an opportunity to take a swipe at the Energy Supply that makes Big Oil shiver in fright - namely Nuclear Fusion Energy. They claim Nuclear Fusion is highly unlikely before 2050. Brian Wang, who actually knows about Nuclear Fusion, and is not on Big Oil's payroll had this to say:

"...almost certain and before 2025. Even partial success can allow fission to close its fuel cycle by allowing transmutation of uranium 238 and enable single stage to orbit space planes. Note vastly better superconductors helps progress to fusion energy. Totally successful commercial nuclear fusion can reduce energy costs by 5-100 times and trigger an economic boom which enables faster technology development..."

Robert Bussard, actually described how to achieve practical fusion within a 5-10 yr timeframe, in a letter to Congress:

http://www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/1995-6-6%20Letter%20to%20Congress.pdf

Fast-Track to Fusion options that I can pretty much guarantee you that SCIAM has refused to even look at:

Bussard's IEC Fusion:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/new-pictures-and-updated-goals-for-emc2.html

Focus Fusion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVif4hUAJ8c

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&q=Google+tech+talks+lerner&pr=goog-sl

Super Marx Deuterium & Laser Fusion-Fission Hybrid:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/10/winterberg-compares-super-marx.html

Reversed Field Pinch Fusion:

http://www.sciencecodex.com/upping_the_power_triggers_an_ordered_helical_plasma

General Fusion (Shockwave Fusion):

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/general-fusion-will-leverage-computer.html

DARPA's Handheld Nuclear Fusion Reactor:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/darpas-handheld-nuclear-fusion-reactor/

Muon Catalyzed Fusion:

http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2009/10/05/the-new-cold-fusion/

Kolic Spherical Plasma Fusion:

http://www.prometheus2.net/

Tri-Alpha Energy's Aneutronic Colliding Beam Fusion:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/06/tri-alpha-energy-raises-40-million-in.html

Similar to Tri-Alpha, Helion Energy:

http://www.helionenergy.com/

Another Dense Plasma Focus Fusion System:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/another-large-dense-plasma-focus.html

Winterberg Impact Ignition Fusion:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/attaining-high-velocities-for-impact.html

Magneto-Inertial-Fusion (MIF):

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/12/magneto-inertial-fusion.html

Excellent summary on the future of Commercial Fusion Energy:

http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/page_fusion051.pdf
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25. sa-commenter 03:53 AM 6/2/10

This was amazing.
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26. robert schmidt 09:42 PM 6/3/10

@Dom Amato, the problem is that heat doesn't only melt floating ice, it tends to affect glacial ice as well, which isn't displacing ocean water...yet!
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27. robert schmidt 09:47 PM 6/3/10

@ennui, and when we genetically engineer flying pigs we will be able to fly anywhere in the universe on their backs and have a ham sandwich on the way!

I think you are tapping too much imagination from your joint.
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28. robert schmidt 10:06 PM 6/3/10

I don't think the creation of life will have as much impact on the world as actually understanding the genetic code. We have already made synthetic cells but still do not understand how some of the genes work. When we are able to program living things like we program computers (without as many bugs hopefully) we will change the nature of human life. For a select few, death will only occur as a result of trauma. Disease will not exist or will be treatable to the point that cancer will be no more of an inconvenience than a cold. Nonfatal injuries will be repaired as good as new. But for this to happen we will need to understand the complex interplay of genes, proteins and the environment. Since this can only be done via massive computing power the rate of medical discoveries will closely match the pace of Moore's law. The fact that computer processors are plateauing in speed is actually beneficial as this is forcing an increase in the number of cores per processor which works well when modeling biology as they are inherently massively parallel systems. Out of all the things listed I believe this will have the greatest impact on humanity in the coming decades.
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29. amaterasu 03:05 PM 6/4/10

Japanese scientists have already figured out how to grow watermelons in the shape of squares so they stack and ship easier. If I'm not mistaken, that means this technology is already in use. I had a friend teaching there in the last 3 months who saw this with his very own eyes.
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30. amaterasu 03:25 PM 6/4/10

On the issue of room temperature superconductors... has everyone failed to consider this would require political agreement the world over? If you look at any slow progress the UN might make, you should know this is simply impossible. What desert countries will you convince to supply power to the US? There are military conflicts in the vast majority of resource-rich locations already! And even if this was successful on some smaller platform, it would also centralize too much power over our lives and put it in the hands of greedy investors. No government could take on the entire cost of providing power itself and no private company could be trusted with the health and happiness of every resident in the world. Just look at the fighting over oil pipelines when they cross from one country to another. This is the reason we suspect a revival of the Cold War due to Russia's ambition to move deeper in the market. They are already fighting Canada on her boundaries for undersea drilling. And let's look at the tension in any African countries or throughout the Middle East. Whether science makes this option a consideration or not, humans will not let it proceed. If we did, this would only create poverty the world has never known yet - and certainly a beginning to an end of many races of people. I find science irresponsible when it doesn't consider the daily impact of their discoveries. These aren't just theories we can toss around carelessly and this one in particular would create more war and starvation than anyone could afford!
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31. amaterasu 03:53 PM 6/4/10

I'm also disappointed with the authors of these articles. I'm wondering if the only science they study is American!! Because a handful of these great 12 discoveries have already been built upon in a other areas of the world. As I said before, synthetic genes have created the square watermelon in Japan. And as for artificial intelligence, China has a working robot that can teach kindergarten children and respond to all their emotional questions or situations by using it's own reasoning in a real life atmosphere (without human teachers to assist). That is the base of machine self awareness already in action. Not to mention Xbox 360 is putting out an operating system called NATAL and the computer characters involved can identify facial expression and relate it to a person's mood. Then it can take that information and spawn it into a totally spontaneous, self thinking conversation. In one demonstration a user stands in front of the screen. She looks sad and the character says, "You look sad, did something happen today?". At this point the person holds a paper up to the screen and the character looks at it. He responds by saying, "Oh I see you failed a test, that's too bad" and continues to discuss her situation with her. The character was never told how she felt or what was written on the paper. In the most human of ways it tried to show empathy and help resolve her unpleasant day though. The character is self thinking enough to suggest going fishing at his pond to get her mind off everything. The mood then switches to one more curious and the character can see she's having a hard time getting a worm on her hook. He then thinks to assist her and demonstrate how it's done. After they'd been having fun the character notices the person fidgeting and acknowledges she must be bored and suggests something else to do. It's no different than speaking to your husband or children really... except it's like video conferencing. So not only does this technology exist, it's already being used in schools and within 3 months will be released for sale to all North American and Asian households (the Xbox example anyway). What bothers me most however, is the fact Scientific American is relying on authors who only think this might be possible but can't go out on a limb and say it's almost certain. It's so certain that it already IS.
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32. kaminigangurde 02:31 AM 6/6/10

i would like to know more about this!
the presentation is realy impressive
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33. Garythemessage 10:45 AM 6/7/10

Might, would, could, all nonsense. And America hasn't lost any noticeable coast line. Some might not be aware, but there are buildings built near the Atlantic shore that are 100+ years old. They are in NO danger of being swallowed by the oceans. The polar ice caps are currently experiencing a GROWTH spurt and are at highest levels in a very long time. The rest of the bullet points are all things that MIGHT happen, or COULD happen. But the title of the piece utilizes the word "WILL." Rubbish. Complete rubbish.
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34. verdai 06:52 PM 6/7/10

COULD is not will.
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35. lolita 12:01 AM 6/8/10

The thing that disturbs me the most is how people do not think for themselves.They let this society feed them everything . People actually think that this world system is for our benefit.Maybe at one time we had great men ,but time has changed i can sense it everywear.God bless you for being a light in the darkness.I HEARD YOU PRAY AND I WAS BLESSED,
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36. myarbrough61 02:30 PM 6/8/10

You left one out: #13...Jesus Christ returns to the Earth!
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37. cygnusalbus 10:57 PM 6/8/10

Frank Drake and SETI are still talking about radio signals from ET? Surely it doesn't require much belabored thinking to realize an advanced ET species would not be using 21st century physics! What scientists are still refusing to acknowledge due to self-censorship and fear of peer ridicule is the massive data accumulated over the 80s years that contemporary UFOs have been sighted on this planet. The declassified government documents; the military and airline pilots encounters are just two testaments to the reality of this ongoing, consistent verifiable phenomenon. What are the pilots encountering? The planet Venus? Or 'ships' displaying abilities to dogfight with them with impunity - if it's 'ours' why would they put our pilots and/or passengers in harm's way? Drs. Vallee and Hynek and a host of other scientists have labored long and hard to uncover the data. Why would military officials come forward with testimony about what they have witnesssed and uncovered? But the more important questions is this: Why is mainstream science continue to stick their heads in the ground in regard to UFOs? There is plenty of evidence, plenty of data. It is now rightly called willful ignorance and arrogance.

"They" are already here . As Hynek once stated, the UFO data is 'an embarrassment of riches' - radio signals....indeed.
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38. Luqi 09:39 AM 6/12/10

Extremely enlightening and thought provoking. As a firm believer in God, the power of God, and in His purposes for mankind, I am certain that there is no truth which He will withhold from man, and that it is His intention to bring that to pass as mankind matures enough to deal with its realities. It is His intention that we become like Him which manifestly includes a knowledge of all things.
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39. vendicar9 12:20 PM 6/12/10

"I don't know where we stand now but somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 years in the future mankind will experience the loss of his buns to a new "Ice" Age. " - Kleptofartis.

We have already committed to a global warming high enough to avoid that.

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40. James Smith 08:08 AM 6/16/10

The word you want is "affect", not "impact". As in: "The meteor impact shook the mountain. It will affect the environment for decades. Its immediate effect was to flatten trees and destroy everything in a one-mile radius."

Other than that grammatical goof, great page. Well-done and simple to understand. Unfortunately, the people that should be learning from it will reject it our of hand. Facts have no effect upon the "no climate change" crowd.
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41. cecbur 05:24 AM 6/18/10

Polar meltdown is already happening unless we can stop it. It is not the melting poles that will be the real problem however, but the deserts that will also be crated by global warming:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2697/26971701.jpg

(Another thing that WILL happen is peak oil. If we also reach peak energy, that will very likely change the world. I think that change is also more likely than many of the ones above. The biggest effect fusion energy is likely to have, is to preserve this world.)

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42. kilianguntner 07:07 AM 6/19/10

Thank you for the well made presentation.
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43. kilianguntner 07:13 AM 6/19/10

Thanks for a well made presentation.
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44. Kent Otho Doering 04:03 PM 6/22/10

Has anybody ever considered what would happen if a small metoeorrite 10 to 140 meteters i diameeter were to hit a nuclear power plant with a deuterium oxide heat modulator
sytem. How would the heavy water behave in such circumstances.
Looks like the "doomsday bomb" from "Planet of the Apes to me. Solution, convert all nuclear to very deep geothermic
power over the next 20 years.

Kent Otho Doering
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45. Kent Otho Doering 04:07 PM 6/22/10

What would happen if a small meteorite between 10 and 140 meters were to slam into a nuclear power plant with heavy water modulator. How would the modulator behave under such circumstances. The sdafest bet is to shift all nuclear
pwoer to deep geothermic A.S.A.P. A deuterium oxide modulator nuclear power plant is very dangerous due to the reasons I just descrbied.

I wish scientists would take thadt particular aspect more seriously. I survived caesium oxide dumps from Tchernobyl, but I don`t think anybody or anything would surive a small meteorite direct hit on a deuterium oxide modulator nuclear power plant for very obvious reasons that nuclear siceintists are well aware of existing.

Life changing - no life ending in that particular ugly scenario.
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46. Daniel35 01:17 AM 6/23/10

Maybe we won't have to wait long to find out which it will be, (and there were a few not mentioned). I'm looking at early 2013 as a likely crisis time. First, Sarah Palin may run for president, and may win, though it looks less likely now. For the Mayans, 2012 may have been just a round number, but some people think it might be more and they're going to be behaving differently, financially and otherwise. Some people want to see some big change and they'll figure this is the time to help it along. And last, recent news is that in 2013 the sun is going to have a big eruption and fry much of our electronics. Did the Mayans maybe calculate this, and maybe more?
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47. Daniel35 in reply to amaterasu 01:26 AM 6/23/10

Anaterasu, actually I hope the watermelons are in the form of cubes. I like to eat then, not just look at them, in spite of the fact that they're not as compact to store.
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48. jclark 06:12 PM 6/23/10

An interesting and actractively presented program dealing with some complex issues. There is a slight glitch in the AI section that prevents the user from seeing all of the scroll text. Hey! It happens.
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49. Ternan Kaugh in reply to tetrahedral 01:06 PM 8/4/10

You seem to be missing the point about God and religion. God, Religion and Faith are Ideas. They are as real to those who believe, as the air that you breath is to you. We each interpret our experiences and reality in a way that makes sense to each of us. The fact that the Physicality of God has not been proven or even can be proven, has nothing to do with the affects that God has on people. The fact that people believe in God and that God plays a meaningful role in their lives makes the existence of God real.
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50. elron in reply to motie 02:37 PM 8/4/10

@motie
Wow, that is quite short-sighted. Even if you assume that fossil fuels, uranium and precious metals will run out shortly, that doesn't mean new discoveries and technologies are standing still! That's like saying in the early 19th century, "Well, we've used up all the trees, I guess we won't have every be able to have a locomotive again!"
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51. cincyphys 05:46 PM 8/4/10

You know what will change everything? Me getting married! Please vote for me to win an engagement ring. http://tinyurl.com/RicardoandJoniece
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52. velocity 09:22 PM 8/4/10

What about nano-technology? Producing new materials manipulated at the nano-level will yield hundreds of applications. Potentially superconductors, smaller ultra capacitors, and miniature machines that can heal us.
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53. brand404 11:05 AM 8/6/10

Wonderfully well thought out presentation of ideas. I was completely ingulfed in this reading...even the "ET Life" event got me reading despite finding the idea of aliens corny (i think its because of the corny ufo subculture) -- i believe in life out there and hope we find it but the method we are doing so is fruitless (a good movie on the matter was Contact -- great book too)
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54. hamidsadeghipour 03:08 PM 9/8/10

In one of my articles I mentioned the effect of air pollution on earthquakes:
http://www.hamidsadeghipour.ws
In the faults one problem is the washable soil like like lime content that can cause porosity and less strength. Another is fatigue of soil. we can inject the concrete and even enforcing the soil in some manner. for energy produced by friction or magma up coming we can cool down the earth. I refer to one of my articles. we can reduce the impact anyhow everywhere.
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55. Nikkiro 11:48 PM 9/12/10

Interactivity makes this presentation fun to learn from. I've learned a lot of new things that I plan to dive right into!

... the text in "Machine Self-Awareness" is cut short.
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56. maryjd 01:58 PM 3/4/11

I believe this should be taught to all in school instead of ingnoring tremendous things the human mind can improve upon. This opens tomorrows doorway to many energy and propulsion techniques for the future. Terrific scentific display of information and future events. Check some comments here: <a href="http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1092340/pg1">12 events that WILL change everything</a>
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57. Bossy909 in reply to motie 08:09 AM 5/10/11

The exhaustion of naturals resources is an illusion. there may be limited resources we are currently working with but, the idea that, on a Six Sextillion Ton ball of earth, we could run out of resources is laughable, by our current methods, maybe, but there is plenty of coal, plenty of iron, plenty of carbon, plenty. the idea of limited resources is an illusion.
As for the exhaustion of oil and uranium, Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and we will have nuclear fusion within fifty years, let me repeat that, we WILL have fusion in the next fifty years. I am certain of this. when we have the energy of hydrogen fusion we will never ever run out of any form of energy. there will be fusion plants 100,000 times safer than Fission plants with no hazardous waste and, not only that, but we will be able to make helium, a resource which is not in great abundance of earth, although, not in enormous quantities.
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58. Bossy909 08:39 AM 5/10/11

Although tricky, the fusion, and subsequent containment of fusion energy will be a never ending supply. Our power plants will distribute it to every home in the United States, the world will have all the energy it needs, cars will run on Hydrogen fusion power cells like batteries and as safe as batteries. Only they will not run out like batteries and inferior electric cars and useless hybrid technology. Even hydrogen fuel cells require a fill up every couple hundred miles. Fusion power cells will last for decades, for longer than the life of the automobile. We will also have space crafts, and that is a very important piece of this puzzle. Not air-crafts, like our planes and space shuttles (that move on and in air), but space crafts (which will move space itself) The final piece is the understanding of "dark matter" and the physics of black holes, we will bottle black holes and use them for faster than light travel. A ship traveling through space cannot travel faster than the speed of light, but if a craft were to create a "pressure" differential of space, and ride the subsequent moving space, the craft would be moving on a wave of space that could be pressed toward the speed of light.
Dark Matter doesn't exist either, it is merely a property of space we haven't discovered yet, although the dark flow theory is on to it.

Also, the AI theory, it is true that robots will not "magically" become smarter and smarter exponentially without the hardware to allow for it, just like the human brain. Our brains are already physically evolved to the point that we can mentally evolve every generation without one change to the physical make up of the brain. Our brain's "hardware" capabilities are at least five to ten times what our current usage is. That is, five times smarter than Einstein, Feynman, bohr newton and Aristotle (the greeks had thought of atoms before we had ANY kind of modern physics or calculus, merely by deduction and logic) combined!
If we create the machines with the capacity for learning (just like us) then they will. They will be very stupid at first, but, hey, when all you understand is true/false, a child-like intelligence is a huge leap. Let's start with an insects intellect, or a lizards reasoning.

as for destabilizing events, disease, asteroid strike, pacific quake. The Quake will effect California greatly, but we'll get over it. Disease is more difficult, if we can't stop it before it kills Two Billion people, it would be bad, but it won't; millions at most. Lastly, Asteroid, we will be stable 200-500 yrs.
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59. Bossy909 08:46 AM 5/10/11

At LEAST two hundred to five hundred years, and by that time we will have everything we need to prevent/avoid/protect against a celestial collision.
our civilization is fragile now, but it won't be in one hundred years. We can make it that far and we will.
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60. Chimacintosh 01:36 PM 5/10/11

I posted this article on my blog and also this:
These are good examples of major things that can change significant changes, but feel a little unreal. Like extraterrestrial intelligence. How long have we been waiting for that? To me, several other things far more likely to cause major changes.

For example: DNA re-sequencing to cure diseases, ubiquitous wireless internet connectivity, automated food production (hydroponics), universal worldwide healthcare, and lifetime employment. I think those are far more likely.

Also interesting are these 10 dying industries.
http://chimac.net/2011/04/05/top-10-dying-industries-via-start-up-blog/
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61. smugdog in reply to tetrahedral 05:41 PM 7/2/11

Amen.
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62. smugdog in reply to tetrahedral 06:05 PM 7/2/11

Amen.
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63. ColeSavona in reply to shawnboike 02:04 PM 7/12/11

agreed^
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64. projectpeace 02:10 AM 10/13/11

Ending the so-called "drug war" will make the most ancient, completely nutritious, industrially useful, potentially abundant, globally distributed, ecologically significant, and safely therapeutic agricultural resource on Earth available. Cannabis agriculture manufacture and trade will revolutionize the global economy, making the free market "Gaiatherapeutic" rather than "Gaiacidal."
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65. fresh_baff 04:48 PM 3/10/13

If machines were to gain further processing of understanding the world around them like humans through coding, with further grants of autonomy, would they try to hide their new acquire skills from us? How possible could this be, even though we come to think that machines can't break out of their "cognitive boot-trap"?
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notscientific Epidemiology in four words: Frequency Distribution Determinants Data By @cherrymakes http://t.co/xJmBiBwXRP #scilogs
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