I was given the rare chance tonight to see a talk by Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and author of a bunch of books, two of which I’ve read (Hyperspace and Parallel Worlds). My roommate just told me that he was going about two hours after I made it back into the city today, and I figured it was too rare of a chance to pass up. He spoke about his new book called The Physics of the Future, mainly focusing on predictions about the technology of the next 10 to 100 years. The focus was largely on how the internet’s increasing ubiquity and the increasing processing power and reliability of computers is going to spawn new technologies that involve everyone being constantly connected. Stuff like contacts that project augmented-reality 3D images onto your eyes and flexible screens/video wallpaper. The coolest thing about a lot of the stuff he was mentioning was the fact that pretty much all of the apparently futuristic technology actually exists already. He mentioned glasses-free 3D monitors and augmented reality video, both of which are used by the Nintendo 3DS (not to plug, but I did notice that the talk did make the 3DS look very futuristic). And the contact lens thing certainly reminded me of it being over 9000. It was cool to see Michio Kaku in person after reading and enjoying his books so much. It was a good talk – and free!
