1) The document discusses past and future developments in science and technology over the past 100 years and next 100 years. 2) It highlights major innovations after World War 2 like the establishment of NSF, transistors, computers, and emergence of new technologies like radar and sonar. 3) Looking ahead, it predicts advancements in areas like artificial organs, genetic engineering, automated vehicles, ultra high-speed internet, and AI-assisted design. Storage of renewable energy is also highlighted as a key challenge.

1. Semiloka Internasional, 5 Oktober 2012
Science & Technology
Past and future developments
RICHARD MENGKO
Kelompok Keahlian Teknik Biomedika
Institut Teknologi Bandung

2. Prolog
 IEEE Proceedings have just published a Centenial Special Issue,
(vol 100, May 13th,2012) – celebrating its 100 years after the
Institute of Radio Engineers was founded (May 1912)
 This presentation will focus on one of the topics published in this
special issue :
100 years in the past and 100 years in the future
(Peter Cochrane)
 After a brief discussion on the above issue, at the end of this
presentation you will find some of my thoughts to be discussed
especially for developing countries including Indonesia
grabbing attention & awareness to what we are facing …….
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3. A wave of innovation powered by a war
 The world have experienced a tremendous S&T development
after the 2nd world war :
• setting up of the NSF in US
• the first rocket more than 100 miles into space
• penicillin went into mass production
• the first transistor from Bell Labs
• emergence of sonar, radar, microwave
• semiconductor devices & computers
No one was seriuosly predicting pocket calculators,
mobile phones, PCs, iPad, internet ……
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4. a world with full of optimism
 right after this innovation wave, movies, magazines, books,
comics were full of visions depicting space travels, levitating
vehicles, intelligent robots, instant communication etc ….
 but …..the future did not exactly work out like that …
 we found new things to do with our technologies & time,
creating new devices, new industries, new doors to discover
enriching our knowledge base
the key element of discovery was
electronics, computing power &
instrumentation
……up to present …..
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5. acceleration by creative feedback loops
 Our thinking is largely predicated on slow linear growth and
quantities within our span, grasp & time scale
 Over the past three decades we have experienced an
exponential change due to the ‘creative feedback loop’ –
where the the creative users (amateurs, hobbiests, gamers)
became the lead in new products ….
Interviewer :
Dr Cray have you heard that Apple are buying your latest
Computer to help them design the next generation of laptops ?
Seymour Cray :
That’s interesting, because I just bought one of their laptops
to help me design my next generation of super computers !
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6. internet push innovation to the edge
 www, cloud computing, social net will push innovation further
to the edge, facilitating the complex creative feedback loop
 Bright individuals are now augmented by powerful machines &
networked teams migrating from singular to multidiciplinary
activities
 Linear independence of the past has been overtaken by the
complexity of networking (non linear & complex)
 Without computing power & networks, no hope of being able
to understand the world we now live in, and worse no chance
of managing the migration into the future …..
English language become a must for every one,
more than 80% in the internet is in English
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7. the next industrial revolution
 Today, we live in a ‘digital everything’ world. Our transistors
are now smaller than a flu virus
 What of the future ?
 The biggest threat to mankind is not the new technologies &
associated serious errors, but our inability to change, adopt
the new & to let go the past :
Economic growth  sustainable futures
food to waste  food to waste to food
 Some of the prediction before : nuclear fision & fusion supply
all of our energy needs, wireless power over distance,
underwater cities, supersonic transport etc
 Why it did not happened ? – optimistic beyond our ignorance
level ? – economics, politics, public opinion subverted the
opportunity ? – fundamental physic law could not be
circumvented in the time frame ?
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8. the next industrial revolution
 However, there were far more discoveries than anticipated :
 The microprocessor has changed everything from agriculture
to industry, communication, computing, medecine, commerce
and entertainment
 Computer chips, www became the base of human networking
today
 Bio engineers have created medical instruments (MRI, CTscan,
Digital Angiography, etc) and also some body spare parts
seen as an ‘almost science fiction’
Can we say what will be 100 years in front ?
not in detail for sure, but
we can map some interesting trends ….
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9. the next industrial revolution
 It is possible to extrapolate the visible technology trends with
reasonable confidence, but from our past experience we are in
many cases pesimistic & mostly achieve far more than we
imagine
 We do not have any idea how societies in the future will
change on what will be acceptable or not
 So, the best what we can do is making an expert (educated)
guess …….
We are bordering science fiction ……. !!
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10. Luxuries for the next 100 years …
 What technologist and engineers can realize is almost entirely
dictated by the fundemental laws of physics and the
discoveries of science by human being ……
 Two fundemental discoveries that we are likely to see before
2112 will transform every aspect of the future :
• Grand Unified Theory, of all the forces & the relationship
• Genomics & Proteomics and their interactions
 Detailed knowledge of these two aspects of physics and
biology would open the door to the creation of smaller
structures, programable materials in a hybrid material world.
A hybrid material world
where the interface between nano & bio is blurred
 Another luxury is the full understanding, control & stabilization
of plasmas, the impact on chemistry & physiology of living
organism
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11. Foundations of future progress
 Based on the full understanding of the two fundamental law
mentioned above, it is likely to see in the future a number of
discoveries in the intersection of bio, nano, information
technology and artificial intelligence
 It is also clear that the world peace and economic harmony
will not be achieve by the models of the past
 A continuation of existing knowledge will be develop through
two different paths :
• Flight of fact – logical extension & extrapolation of what we
know – the same but smaller, cheaper, lighter, better
• Flight of imagination – based on the existing scince &
technology outcomes, extending for different purposes
We have to move from producing more and more for the few,
to a model that sees sufficient made available for the many
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12. changes to come
 Implants & tagging human :
• by 2112 most of the today’s implants (pacemakers,
respiratory stimulators, pancreas etc) will be replaced by
artificial organs.
• more electronics into our body, location tags, passports,
ID, medical records
• many enhancement offers for eyes, ears etc
• self diagnostic chip implants
• Drug designs for customized individual body specifications
• Robotic surgery & automated procedures
• Best of the best expertise in the planet to the point of need
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13. changes to come
• The capability to cure vital infections and cancer by
inhibiting a foreign body or reprogramming the
communication between protein and genome
 With the decode of genome & protein, we can produce a
body simulator to identify a range of tendencies & specific
disease and propose a body specific drug & treatments
 Automobiles & transports :
 Unless a GUT reveals, our aircraft will still burning some
kind of synthezised fuels, far less damaging to ecology
 New materials is likelyto be used to minimize drag.
 Train with levitation up to the speed just below the sound
barrier
 Ultralight electric vehicles with high efficient batteries and
programable ‘skin’ with any color, self repairing all minor
damage, mostly driverless with programmable destination
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14. changes to come
 Telecommunications :
• Optical fibers will be installed to every node in order to
deliver 10Gb/s to anything for monitoring, communication
& control
• The whole radio spectrum is becoming ‘one’ singular big
bandwidth categorized by the intended use and demand
with intelligent ‘repeaters’
 Education :
• Internet with all of the accesible information will act more
and more as the ‘world brain’
• A more ‘open’ education system is likely to be chosen as
the system of the future, with ‘the guide at the side’ and
all materials online
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15. changes to come
 Design :
• Today CAD will be augmented with AI systems, based on
previous experience to create the new generation of
machines that design machines with a great detail and
complexity, displacing a large part (if not totally) of human
hand and mind.
• This will automatically lead to the creation of human-
robotic ecosystems which will raise a new set of ethical
tension.
• Perhaps the most problematic of these will be the
inclussion of biological ‘living’ elements in the design
 Energy :
 Storage is the key problem of the progress. We have no
shortage of energy or the means to produce it, but we have to
focus on those solutions that minimize ecological damage
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16. changes to come
• Our battery technologies belong to the previous century
and our big energy storage (city level) needs civil
engineering in a massive scale
• Energy consumption has its huge peaks in every form
(industry, automobile, train etc). Our eco-friendly source
(wind, solar, tidal wave etc) are also sporadic, incosistent
and unreliable. Some form of demand – supply ‘smoothing’
is therefore necessary
• At a city level we can expect to see ‘subsurface’ liquid
metal energy storage combined with other energy supplies
including solar and algae based systems
 Human interface :
• Will we be able to input and output directly to and from the
brain ? Can we augment our natural abilities by directly
linking to others or the global network of machines ?
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17. changes to come
• Undoubtedly the answer has to be yes, but to what degree,
we can only guess
• Information input rate to the brain far exceeds our output
• Faster input through our visual cortex are possible using
direct laser and electronic interfaces, but how do we get
more out verbally ? – the only logical connection without
wire tapping is using scanning technologies able to probe
down to a neuron level
• At this time, no such scanner exist and to create will
demand new understanding of electromagnetic fields and
the biology-chemistry of thinking
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18. discussion
Our job is not only to ‘engineer’ the best system and outcomes, but to guide
our managers, politicians and society to the best workable solution,
towards a sustainable future
Danger :
In many countries, a huge & fast development is obtained in
the political and economy sector, with less priority for
building the ecosystem for S&T development
In most of the developing countries, many ‘old’ problem still exist,
re-evaluation is needed, to set up a strategy of
‘old-new problems vs old-new technologies
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