Michio Kaku
Michio Kaku
Michio Kakuis a Japanese American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science. Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. He has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and writes online blogs and articles. He has written three New York Times best sellers: Physics of the Impossible, Physics of the Future, and The Future of the Mind. Kaku has...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth24 January 1947
CitySan Jose, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Anything that promotes a kernel of science, even though it's exaggerated and hyped by Hollywood, I think is a step forward. We in the ivory tower ultimately have to realize that in some sense we have to sing for our supper.
Years ago, I picked up figure skating. How hard could spins and jumps be, I thought? It's just applied Newtonian physics. After repeatedly falling on my rear end, I realized it was harder than I thought. But it had an upside. That is how I met my wife, who was ice dancing at the Rockefeller Center ice rink.
Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.
We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.
You cannot create new science unless you realize where the old science leaves off and new science begins, and science fiction forces us to confront this.
Now, we used to think the brain was like a computer. But now, we realize that's not true. There's no programming of the brain. There's no Windows. And we think the brain is more like a large corporation. Because think of the unconscious mind. In a corporation, you have subdivisions which operate independently of the main office.
You see, I'm also a futurist. I dream about the world 50, 100, maybe even 1,000 years in the future. But I also realize I'm probably not going to see it. However, I wouldn't mind having at least a copy of myself see the future, maybe 50, 100, 1,000 years into the future. It would be a fantastic ride.
There's the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, "I want direct contact. I don't want a picture." The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.
The river of time may fork into rivers, in which case you have a parallel reality and so then you can become a time traveler and not have to worry about causing a time paradox.
So often, science fiction helps to get young people interested in science. That's why I don't mind talking about science fiction. It has a real role to play: to seize the imagination.
Reality has always proved to be much more sophisticated and subtle than any preconceived philosophy.
Technologies that may be realized in centuries or millennium include: warp drive, traveling faster than the speed of light, parallel universes; are there other parallel dimensions and parallel realities? Time travel that we mentioned and going to the stars.
Saturn is not going away, ... Neither are the planets. What's the rush? Why not delay our space probes a bit, make them smaller and more sophisticated and use solar power?
Consciousness, there are about 20,000 papers on consciousness with no consensus. Nowhere in history have so many people devoted so much time to produce so little.