Developing world and science: 'Quo vadis'?

Developing world and science: 'Quo vadis'?

By Omar Halim

This is the first of two articles inspired by predictions of
the direction science will take in the 21st century.

JAKARTA (JP): The world has just entered the third millennium.
During our history, great empires have risen and fallen in
Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was only in the last 400 to
500 years that the great European explorers and conquerors
discovered the rest of the world, colonizing and exploiting
practically all territories they encountered.

After the end of World War II, the world saw most of these
colonies attain formal political independence. At the global
level, the industrialized countries established international
alliances comprising a number of multilateral political and
economic institutions, with the United Nations at its pinnacle.

Although the General Assembly of the United Nations is
technically the parliament of the world's nation states, the most
powerful body in the UN is the Security Council. The Security
Council, is the only body whose decisions are legally binding on
the member states. But these decisions can only be agreed
provided the "permanent members" do not veto them. The permanent
members are, except for China, comprised of the industrialized
powers that emerged as victors from World War II.

Within the multilateral system are a plethora of economic
institutions, the most powerful are the World Trade Organization
(formerly General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, all of which are
dominated by the industrialized countries.

At the national level, the mighty economies and most powerful
military forces of the world all belong to the industrialized
countries. The system by which the industrialized countries
dominate the world is complete.

What lies ahead for the world? According to Michio Kaku, a
Japanese-American physicist who presents an emerging consensus
opinion of about 150 renown scientists in his Visions: How
Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (Anchor Books, 1997),
the rapid progress in understanding matter, life and the mind
will enable human beings to be the 'choreographers of nature'.

He contends that with the three scientific revolutions in the
20th century -- quantum, biomolecular and computer -- humans were
able to discover nature, and that humans are on their way to
mastering nature during the 21st century.

The birth of quantum theory in 1925 has "given us an almost
complete description of matter, allowing us to describe the
seemingly infinite multiplicity of matter we see arrayed around
us in the same way that a richly decorated tapestry is woven from
colored strands".

The culmination of the quantum theory is "the Standard Model,
which can predict the properties of everything from tiny
subatomic quarks to giant supernovas in outer space". In this
century, the quantum revolution "may open the door to the next
step: the ability to manipulate and choreograph new forms of
matter, almost at will".

In 1944, one of the creators of quantum theory, Erwin
Schroedinger, conjectured that "life could be explained by a
'genetic code' written on the molecules within a cell". Later,
James Watson and Francis Crick proved this conjecture true when
they analyzed the "pattern of X-rays scattered off a DNA
molecule, they were able to reconstruct the detailed atomic
structure of DNA and identify its double-helical nature".

Kaku further states that "the complete human genome will be
decoded by the year 2005, giving us an 'owner's manual' for a
human being. This will set the stage for 21st century science and
medicine. The bimolecular revolution will ultimately give us the
nearly god-like ability to manipulate life almost at will".

The discovery of the transistor in 1948, and later the laser
-- both are quantum mechanical devices -- made possible the
modern computer. The continued miniaturization of microchips will
change human lifestyles when "intelligent systems are dispersed
by the millions into all parts of our environment. In the past,
we could only marvel at the precious phenomenon called
intelligence; in the future, we will be able to manipulate it
according to our wishes".

Furthermore, in the 21st century there will be synergy or
"cross-fertilization between all three fields, which will mark a
sharp turning point in the development of science. The cross-
pollination between these three revolutions will be vastly
accelerated and will enrich the development of science, giving us
unprecedented power to manipulate matter, life, and intelligence"
and "one of the consequences of this intense synergy between
these revolutions is that the steady pace of scientific discovery
is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate".

Although these are not absolute time frames, the following
prediction is based on the expectation that certain technologies
and sciences will reach fruition:

By 2020, "microprocessors will likely be as cheap and
plentiful as scrap paper, scattered by the millions into the
environment, allowing us to place intelligent systems everywhere.
This will change everything around us, including the nature of
commerce, the wealth of nations, and the way we communicate,
work, play, and live, creating an 'intelligent planet'".

In biomolecular research, "what is driving the remarkable
ability to decode the secret of life is the introduction of
computers and robots to automate the process of DNA sequencing.
This process will continue unabated until roughly 2020. This will
have profound implications for biology and medicines. Many
genetic diseases will be eliminated by injecting people's cells
with the correct gene. Because cancer is now being revealed to be
a series of genetic mutations, large classes of cancer may be
curable at last, without invasive surgery or chemotherapy. Our
molecular knowledge of cell development will be so advanced that
we will be able to grow entire organs in the laboratory".

From 2020 to 2050: Computer power is "driven by packing more
and more transistors into microprocessors, while DNA sequencing
is driven by computerization. Obviously, these technologies
cannot indefinitely continue to grow exponentially.

By around 2020, both will encounter large obstacles. Because
of the limits of silicon chip technology, eventually we will be
forced to invent new technologies whose potentials are largely
unexplored and untested, from optical computers, molecular
computers, and DNA computers to quantum computers.

If these difficulties in computer technology can be overcome,
then the period 2020 to 2050 may mark the entrance into the
marketplace of an entirely new kind of technology: true robot
automatons that have common sense, can understand human language,
can recognize and manipulate objects in their environment, and
can learn from their mistakes".

Before 2020, the focus in biotechnology will "shift away from
DNA sequencing to understanding the basic functions of these
genes, a process which cannot be computerized, and to understand
polygenetic diseases and traits. The shift to polygenetic
diseases may prove to be the key to solving some of the most
pressing chronic diseases facing humanity, including heart
disease, arthritis, auto-immune diseases, schizophrenia, and the
like.

It may also lead to cloning humans and to isolating the fabled
'age genes' which control aging processes. Beyond 2020, we also
expect some amazing new technologies germinating in physics
laboratories to come to fruition, from new generations of lasers
and holographic three-dimensional TV to nuclear fusion. Room-
temperature superconductors may find commercial applications and
generate a 'second industrial revolution'. The quantum theory
will give us the ability to manufacture machines the size of
molecules, thereby opening up an entirely new class of machines
of unheard-of-properties called nanotechnology".

The writer is a former senior staff member of the United
Nations. He resides in Jakarta.