Michio Kaku #devlearn opening keynote

These are my live notes from today’s devlearn keynote.  Forgive typos and omissions!

Michio Kaku: author of Physics of the Future. http://mkaku.org/ (co-founder of string theory, a physicist)

Today – a guided tour on the future of the elearning process.  An authoritative look into the future (he says, while making making jokes about our abilities to predict the future).

Education hasn’t changed much in 2000 years.

Automation has reduced everything in price – except education.

Moore’s Law – computers double in power every 18 months. Your cell phone today has more power than all of NASA in 1969 when they guided Neil Armstrong to the moon!

In 2020, computer chips will cost a penny.  The computer will disappear.  It will be everywhere and nowhere. (Like electricity – which is everywhere and nowhere). Computer power will be in the ground, the walls.  How do we pay for electricity? We meter it? And that’s how we’ll pay for computer – metering through the cloud.

Glasses with facial recognition and can tell you the person’s biography. Glasses will be able to translate languages for you. We’ll be wired to the internet through our glasses. Your home office will be in your glasses! Your glasses ring and it’s your boss.

And if you don’t like glasses – we’ll put the internet in your contact lenses.  You will blink and go online.

Tourists walking through Rome – seeing the history of Rome resurrected as you walk through Rome!  No need for teleprompters! College students will wear these while studying for and taking their tests!

“In the future…!”

This is augmented reality. Virtual reality is for children.  Augmented reality – everything you look at is annotated. Just like in the Terminator. That’s how we will learn in the future.

In the future – information will appear in all shapes and sizes. Your wrist watch to a wall screen. You will choose how you want to ineract.

Cell phones with flexible intelligent screens – even paper will become intelligent (we have plastic transistors)

This is the future of wallpaper! Even the wallpaper will be intelligent.

Our walls will be intelligent -- “mirror mirror on the wall!”

People say the Internet is cold.  The Internet was created to fight the cold war.  Today the Internet is female. Today it connects us.

Learning will change: learning in the Holodeck (the Matrix) – we will be immersed in 360 degrees by wall screens.

Disposable computers that can be discarded like paper. You scribble on a computer in one room and the scribble will follow you (the cloud) – everywhere you go.

Hardware will become dirt cheap, but software will be valuable.

The future of TV – 3D without glasses using Lenticular Lenses.

In the future, cars will drive by themselves. So, instead of driving, you can sit back and read and learn. The car becomes a classroom.

Doctors will change -- “robo docs” animated TV images that can answer 99% of your questions!

Smart chips in a pill – shrink a tv camera and put it in a pill – no more colonoscopies! In the future, intel will always be inside.

Your toilet will be a computer – it will analyze and discover long before the tumor even grows.

In the future, an MRI will be the size of a cell phone.

In the future, you will have more computer capabilities in your home then a current hospital.

30 years in the future – we will have direct brain interface.

All of us will have a CD with all of our genes on it – an owner’s manual of our body! And only $100.

With this genome we can grow new organs from our own cells…

Today we can grow skin, bladders, blood…

Learning will be everywhere – in your car, in your living room, in your bathroom…

In the year 2020, when computer chips cost a penny – we can grow organs, we can revolutionize learning itself!

New technology like this can cause fear –

• phase 1: “I’m too old for this!”
• phase 2: “wait a minute, I can use this at my work, to socialize…”
• phase 3: “ha! I invented it!”

What was the reaction to electricity or to the telephone? It shocked the world! There were editorials denouncing Edison as a madman.

The Internet, Facebook and Twitter – spread democracy.

But will machines get so intelligent that they won’t need humans anymore?

When Watson beat Jeopardy – people said we wouldn’t need people anymore – but Watson is so stupid, that he didn’t even know that he won. They lack creativity, talent, leadership, the ability to engage people.  They are adding machines. They take the drudgery out. It’s not about replacing humans; it’s about expanding the range of our capabilities.