Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (57 page)

But we can also calculate how long it would take for our planet to attain Type I classification. In spite of economic recessions and expansions, booms and busts, we can mathematically estimate that we will attain Type I status in about 100 years, given an average rate of our economic growth.

FROM TYPE O TO TYPE I

We see evidence of this transition from Type 0 to Type I every time we open a newspaper. Many of the headlines can be traced to the birth pangs of a Type I civilization being born right in front of our eyes.

• The Internet is the beginning of a Type I planetary telephone system. For the first time in history, a person on one continent can effortlessly exchange unlimited information with someone on another continent. In fact, many people already feel they have more in common with someone on the other side of the world than with their next-door neighbor. This process will only accelerate as nations lay even more fiber-optic cables and launch more communications satellites. This process is also unstoppable. Even if the president of the United States tried to ban the Internet, he would be met only with laughter. There are almost a billion personal computers in the world today, and roughly a quarter of humanity has been on the Internet at least once.

• A handful of languages, led by English, followed by Chinese, are rapidly emerging as the future Type I language. On the World Wide Web, for example, 29 percent of visitors log on in English, followed by 22 percent in Chinese, 8 percent in Spanish, 6 percent in Japanese, and 5 percent in French. English is already the de facto planetary language of science, finance, business, and entertainment. English is the number-one second language on the planet. No matter where I travel, I find that English has emerged as the lingua franca. In Asia, for example, when Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese are in a meeting, they use English to communicate. Currently, there are about 6,000 languages being spoken on earth, and 90 percent of them are expected to become extinct in the coming decades, according to Michael E. Krauss, formerly of the University of Alaska’s Native Language Center. The telecommunications revolution is accelerating this process, as people living in even the most remote regions of the earth are exposed to English. This will also accelerate economic development as their societies are further integrated into the world economy, thereby raising living standards and economic activity.

Some people will bemoan the fact that some ancestral languages will no longer be spoken. But on the other hand, the computer revolution will guarantee that these languages are not lost. Native speakers will add their language and their culture to the Internet, where they will last forever.

• We are witnessing the birth of a planetary economy. The rise of the European Union and other trade blocs represents the emergence of a Type I economy. Historically, the peoples of Europe have fought blood feuds with their neighbors for thousands of years. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire, these tribes would continue to slaughter one another, eventually becoming the feuding nations of Europe. Yet today, these bitter rivals have suddenly banded together to form the European Union, representing the largest concentration of wealth on the planet. The reason these nations have abruptly put aside their famous rivalries is to compete with the economic juggernaut of nations that signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the future, we will see more economic blocs forming, as nations realize that they cannot remain competitive unless they join lucrative trading blocs.

We see graphic evidence of this when analyzing the great recession of 2008. Within a matter of days, the shock waves emanating from Wall Street rippled through the financial halls of London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Today, it is impossible to understand the economics of a single nation without understanding the trends affecting the world economy.

• We are seeing the rise of a planetary middle class. Hundreds of millions of people in China, India, and elsewhere are entering its ranks, which is perhaps the greatest social upheaval in the last half century. This group is savvy about cultural, educational, and economic trends affecting the planet. The focus of this planetary middle class is not wars, religion, or strict moral codes, but political and social stability and consumer goods. The ideological and tribal passions that might have gripped their ancestors mean little to them if their goal is to have a suburban house with two cars. While their ancestors might have celebrated the day their sons went off to war, one of their main concerns now is to get them into a good college. And for people who enviously watch other people rise, they will wonder when their time will come. Kenichi Ohmae, a former senior partner of McKinsey & Company, writes, “People will inevitably start to look around them and ask why they cannot have what others have. Equally important, they will start to ask why they were not able to have it in the past.”

• The economy, not weapons, is the new criterion for a superpower. The rise of the EU and NAFTA underscores an important point: with the end of the Cold War, it is clear that a world power can maintain its dominant position mainly through economic might. Nuclear wars are simply too dangerous to fight, so it is economic might that will largely determine the destiny of nations. One contributing factor to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the economic stress of competing militarily with the United States. (As the advisers to President Ronald Reagan once commented, the strategy of the United States was to spend Russia into a depression, that is, increase U.S. military expenditure so that the Russians, with an economy less than half the size of the United States’, would have to starve their own people to keep up.) In the future, it is clear that a superpower can maintain its status only through economic might, and that in turn stems from science and technology.

• A planetary culture is emerging, based on youth culture (rock and roll and youth fashion), movies (Hollywood blockbusters), high fashion (luxury goods), and food (mass-market fast-food chains). No matter where you travel, you can find evidence of the same cultural trends in music, art, and fashion. For example, Hollywood carefully factors in global appeal when it estimates the success of a potential blockbuster movie. Movies with cross-cultural themes (such as action or romance), packed with internationally recognized celebrities, are the big moneymakers for Hollywood, evidence of an emerging planetary culture.

We saw this after World War II when, for the first time in human history, an entire generation of young people possessed enough disposable income to alter the prevailing culture. Formerly, children were sent into the fields to toil with their parents once they hit puberty. (This is the origin of the three-month summer vacation. During the Middle Ages, children were required to do backbreaking work in the fields during summer as soon as they were of age.) But with rising prosperity, the postwar baby boom generation left the fields to head to the streets. Today, we see the same pattern taking place in country after country, as economic development empowers youth with ample disposable incomes. Eventually, as most of the people of the world enter the middle class, rising incomes will filter down to their youth, fueling a perpetuation of this planetary youth culture.

Rock and roll, Hollywood movies, etc., are in fact prime examples of how intellectual capitalism is replacing commodity capitalism. Robots for decades to come will be incapable of creating music and movies that can thrill an international audience.

This is also happening in the world of fashion, where a handful of brand names are extending their reach worldwide. High fashion, once reserved for the aristocracy and the extremely wealthy, is rapidly proliferating around the world as more people enter the middle class and aspire to some of the glamour of the rich. High fashion is no longer the exclusive province of the privileged elite.

But the emergence of a planetary culture does not mean that local cultures or customs will be wiped out. Instead, people will be bicultural. On one hand, they will keep their local cultural traditions alive (and the Internet guarantees that these regional customs will survive forever). The rich cultural diversity of the world will continue to thrive into the future. In fact, certain obscure features of local culture can spread around the world via the Internet, gaining them a worldwide audience. On the other hand, people will be fluent in the changing trends that affect global culture. When people communicate with those from another culture, they will do so via the global culture. This has already happened to many of the elites on the planet: they speak the local language and obey local customs but use English and follow international customs when dealing with people from other countries. This is the model for the emerging Type I civilization. Local cultures will continue to thrive, coexisting side by side with the larger global culture.

• The news is becoming planetary. With satellite TV, cell phones, the Internet, etc., it becomes impossible for one nation to completely control and filter the news. Raw footage is emerging from all parts of the world, beyond the reach of censors. When wars or revolutions break out, the stark images are broadcast instantly around the world as they happen in real time. In the past, it was relatively easy for the Great Powers of the nineteenth century to impose their values and manipulate the news. Today, this is still possible, but on a much reduced basis because of advanced technology. Also, with rising education levels around the world, there is a much larger audience for world news. Politicians today have to include world opinion when they think about the consequences of their actions.

• Sports, which in the past were essential in forging a tribal and then a national identity, are now forging a planetary identity. Soccer and the Olympics are emerging to dominate planetary sports. The 2008 Olympics, for example, were widely interpreted as a coming-out party for the Chinese, who wanted to assume their rightful cultural position in the world after centuries of isolation. This is also an example of the Cave Man Principle, since sports are High Touch but are entering the world of High Tech.

• Environmental threats are also being debated on a planetary scale. Nations realize that the pollution they create crosses national boundaries and hence can precipitate an international crisis. We first saw this when a gigantic hole in the ozone layer opened over the South Pole. Because the ozone layer prevents harmful UV and X-rays from the sun from reaching the ground, nations banded together to limit the production and consumption of chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigerators and industrial systems. The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and successfully decreased the use of the ozone-depleting chemicals. Building on this international success, most nations adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to address the threat of global warming, which is an even greater threat to the environment of the planet.

• Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet. During most of human history, it was common for people to live out their entire lives within a few miles of their birthplace. It was easy for unscrupulous leaders to manipulate their people, who had little to no contact with other peoples. But today, one can go around the globe on a modest budget. Backpacking youths of today who stay in budget youth hostels around the world will become the leaders of tomorrow. Some people decry the fact that tourists have only the crudest understanding of local cultures, histories, and politics. But we have to weigh that against the past, when contact between distant cultures was almost nonexistent, except during times of war, often with tragic results.

• Likewise, the falling price of intercontinental travel is accelerating contact between diverse peoples, making wars more difficult to wage and spreading the ideals of democracy. One of the main factors that whipped up animosity between nations was misunderstanding between people. In general, it is quite difficult to wage war on a nation you are intimately familiar with.

• The nature of war itself is changing to reflect this new reality. History has shown that two democracies almost never wage war against each other. Almost all wars of the past have been waged between nondemocracies, or between a democracy and a nondemocracy. In general, war fever can be easily whipped up by demagogues who demonize the enemy. But in a democracy, with a vibrant press, oppositional parties, and a comfortable middle class that has everything to lose in a war, war fever is much more difficult to cultivate. It is hard to whip up war fever when there is a skeptical press and mothers who demand to know why their children are going to war.

There will still be wars in the future. As the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once said, “War is politics by other means.” Although we will still have wars, their nature will change as democracy is spread around the world.

(There is another reason why wars are becoming more difficult to wage as the world becomes more affluent and people have more to lose. Political theorist Edward Luttwak has written that wars are much more difficult to wage because families are smaller today. In the past, the average family had ten or so children; the eldest inherited the farm, while the younger siblings joined the church, the military, or sought their fortunes elsewhere. Today, when a typical family has an average of 1.5 children, there is no more surplus of children to easily fill the military and the priesthood. Hence, wars will be much more difficult to wage, especially between democracies and third-world guerrillas.)