How might the explosion of knowledge of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR) change our world?
How many people in the year 1900 could have foretold some of the amazing scientific inventions of the 20th century? Only a very few. Perhaps visionaries such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells could have imagined a world of flying and submersible machines or spaceships going to the moon. But certainly even they could not have envisioned a world driven by computer and atomic power. Now, in the year 2000, it is indeed an intrepid soul who dares to predict what the 21st century will hold. Yet some scientists are already boldly drawing a rough outline of the future. “The past hundred years began with the horse and carriage, the ink pen and ledger,” reports the French Agency Press (AFP). “Knowledge was confined to libraries and a tiny elite, and diseases, epidemics and deformities could brutally truncate lives. It ends with robot emissaries from the earth to the farthest bound of the solar system; e-mail and live satellite TV; the democratization of knowledge through the Internet; and medical br
