Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter Two

1.  Michio Kaku introduces the future of artificial intelligence by asking, “Will this usher in the end of humanity?”  He talks about the abilities and limitations of Honda’s robot, ASIMO.  But Kaku points out two major problems with robots: pattern recognition and the lack of common sense. 

- What are the present barriers to achieving these in robots and machines? 

2.  In the near future (present to 2030), introduces the field of “heuristics.”  These are “expert systems, software programs that have encoded in them the wisdom and experience of a human being…following a formal, rule-based system.”  These have given us Google internet search engines and the like.  Kaku believe the greatest application of these advances will be experienced in the various fields of medicine. 

- What were some of his projections and how would you respond to them?

3.  By midcentury (2030 to 2070), we may benefit from tiny modular robots, robot surgeons and cooks, and (oh my!) emotional robots.  

- How might we benefit from this assortment of robots?

4.  Kaku describes the challenges of reverse engineering, modeling, and taking apart the brain. 

- For the sake of review, what are these challenges?

5.  In the far future (2070 to 2100), Kaku anticipates a time when machines exceed us in intelligence, but AI researchers are split on the question of when this might happen.  “A large part of the problem with these scenarios is that there is no universal consensus as to the meaning of the word consciousness.  But if I were to venture a guess, I would theorize that consciousness consists of at least three basic components:

1. Sensing and recognizing the environment

2. Self-awareness

3. Planning for the future by setting goals and plans…

    that is, simulating the future and plotting strategy.”

- What are the roles and the complications of each?

6. Finally, Kaku raises some hypothetical scenarios of when robots exceed humans.  He believes the most likely scenario involves “friendly AI.” 

- What did he mean by this?

7.  “In addition to friendly AI, there is also another option: merging with our creations. Instead of simply waiting for robots to surpass us in intelligence and power, we should try to enhance ourselves, becoming superhuman in the process. Most likely, I believe, the future will proceed with a combination of these two goals, i.e., building friendly AI and also enhancing ourselves.”

- How might this play out?

- In this new world, what would it mean to see ourselves as “created in the image of God?”

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter One

1.  I bought my first personal computer in 1994 and paid a small fortune to get the latest and greatest. In fact, I still use my original email address with AOL.com.  My kids call me a dinosaur. 

- When did you finally break down and purchase your first computer? 

- What was that experience like and how have you integrated computers in your life up to the present?

2.  “Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles about every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, this simple law has helped to revolutionize the world economy, generated fabulous new wealth, and irreversibly altered our way of life.”

- Where have you seen “Moore’s Law” played out? 

- What are the pros & cons of such rapid change for individuals and for society?

3.  “Today, we can communicate with the Internet via our computers and cell phones. But in the future, the Internet will be everywhere—in wall screens, furniture, on billboards, and even in our glasses and contact lenses. When we blink, we will go online.”

- How would this change your daily life?

4.  “In the near future, you will also be able to safely surf the Web via your contact lens while driving a car. Commuting to work won’t be such an agonizing chore because cars will drive themselves.”

- Where do we see this beginning to develop today? 

- Would you prefer this mode of transportation?

5.  Kaku goes on to discuss the emergence of four wall screens, flexible electronic paper, virtual worlds, medical care in the near future, and living in a fairy tale. 

- Which of these offer the greatest promise & application?

6.  Midcentury (2030 to 2070) will give us the end of Moore’s Law, the mixing of real and virtual reality (augmented reality), universal translators, and holograms & 3-D.

- Briefly discuss the impact of each. 

7.  Far future (2070 to 2100) will offer mind over matter, mind reading, photographing dreams, tricorders and portable brain scans, telekinesis and the power of the gods…oh, my!   

- What are the practical and ethical challenges of such potential?

- What role might the Christian faith play in such a culture?

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Introduction

1.  As a young child, Michio Kaku had lofty dreams of what he wanted to be and do as an adult. 

- During your childhood, what did you dream of achieving as a grownup?

2.  “The key to understanding the future,” Kaku writes, “is to grasp the fundamental laws of nature and then apply them to the inventions, machines, and therapies that will redefine our civilization far into the future.” 

- What makes Kaku’s book different from most books that claim to predict the future?

3.  “The prototypes of all these technologies already exist. As William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer who coined the word cyberspace, once said, ‘The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.’”

- What is meant by that statement, and where do we witness it?

4.  Kaku introduces us to the four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the two nuclear forces, weak and strong.  (The recently discovered fifth force of nature is Donald Trump…but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion!) 

- How does the sum of these four forces of nature contribute to our lives today? 

- What has our limited understanding of them allowed us to do…both for good and for harm?

5.  “Now dare to imagine the world in the year 2100. By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshiped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions, but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory, which is the foundation of the previous technologies.”

Kaku’s question: “But where is all this technological change leading? Where is the final destination in this long voyage into science and technology?” 

Kaku’s answer: “The culmination of all these

upheavals is the formation of a planetary civilization, what physicists call a Type I civilization.”

What might that Type 1 civilization look like to you?

6.  Kaku concludes his introduction: “The point is: whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time. That’s the Cave Man Principle.”  He concludes, “So unless we genetically change our basic personality, we can expect that the power of entertainment, tabloid gossip, and social networking will increase, not decrease, in the future.”

- Seriously, can it get any worse?

7.  “Of course, science is a double-edged sword; it creates as many problems as it solves, but always on a higher level. There are two competing trends in the world today: one is to create a planetary civilization that is tolerant, scientific, and prosperous, but the other glorifies anarchy and ignorance that could rip the fabric of our society. We still have the same sectarian, fundamentalist, irrational passions of our ancestors, but the difference is that now we have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.”

- As Christians, what role will we play in addressing these two competing trends? 

- How does our understanding of human nature (sin) and God’s redemptions through the death and resurrection of Jesus (salvation) prepare us for the swift currents of change ahead?

Surprised by Hope, by N. T. Wright

Chapter Fifteen

1.  Wright has a beef with the way Easter is typically observed.  His corrective:  The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.

What might this new Easter expression be for you…for us?

2.  The mission of the church must therefore include, at a structural level, the recognition that our present space, time, and matter are all subject not to rejection but to redemption. Despite the tendency in some parts of the emerging church to marginalize space, time, and matter, I remain convinced that the way forward is to rediscover a true eschatology, to rediscover a true mission rooted in anticipating that eschatology, and to rediscover forms of church that embody that anticipation.

What value do we give to space, time, and matter in our context?

3.  What I am saying is, think through the hope that is ours in the gospel; recognize the renewal of creation as both the goal of all things in Christ and the achievement that has already been accomplished in the resurrection; and go to the work of justice, beauty, evangelism, the renewal of space, time, and matter as the anticipation of the eventual goal and the implementation of what Jesus achieved in his death and resurrection. That is the way both to the genuine mission of God and to the shaping of the church by and for that mission.

How does this statement mirror the Apostles’ & Nicene Creeds?

4.  Wright provides a brief outline of six central aspects of Christian spirituality that arise in the light of our Easter hope.  They include: New Birth & Baptism; Eucharist; Prayer; Scripture; Holiness & Love.

Discuss the role that each of these plays in directing our lives.

Surprised by Hope, by N. T. Wright

Chapter Fourteen

1.  The resurrection isn’t just a surprise happy ending for one person; it is instead the turning point for everything else. It is the point at which all the old promises come true at last: the promises of David’s unshakable kingdom; the promises of Israel’s return from the greatest exile of them all; and behind that again, quite explicit in Matthew, Luke, and John, the promise that all the nations will now be blessed through the seed of Abraham.

What are the promises of these individual periods and people?  How do they coalesce to form a unified promise for all people of all times?

2.  In this story, fishing seems to stand for what the disciples, like the rest of the world, were doing anyway whereas shepherding seems to stand for the new tasks within the new creation. To develop that as a metaphor, it seems to me that a good deal of the church’s work at the moment is concentrating on fishing, and helping others to fish, rather than on shepherding.  Those who find the risen Jesus going to the roots of their rebellion, denial, and sin and offering them love and forgiveness may well also find themselves sent off to be shepherds instead.

How do we characterize “fishing” and “shepherding” today in the context of the Church’s mission?  Which do you feel called to do?

3.  Paul declares that the speculations and puzzles of pagan theology and philosophy can now all be put on a different footing because the one true God has unveiled himself and his plan for the whole world by appointing a man to be judge of the whole world and has certified this by raising him from the dead. This is what the resurrection does: it opens the new world, in which, under the saving and judging lordship of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, everything else is to be seen in a new light.

How has your understanding of Jesus resurrection shed new light on your life and the lives of others?  How has it shed new light on God’s work in the world today?

4.  We can sum this up in the following way. The revolutionary new world, which began in the resurrection of Jesus—the world where Jesus reigns as Lord, having won the victory over sin and death—has its frontline outposts in those who in baptism have shared his death and resurrection. The intermediate stage between the resurrection of Jesus and the renewal of the whole world is the renewal of human beings—you and me!—in our own lives of obedience here and now.

What does this require of us today, as baptized followers of Jesus?

5.  But at the start of Colossians 3 he focuses on what it actually means to share, here and now, in the resurrection of the Messiah. Paul insists that if you are already raised with Christ—in other words, if you through baptism and faith are a resurrection person, living in the new world begun at Easter, energized by the power that raised Jesus from the dead—then you have a responsibility to share in the present risen life of Jesus. “If, then, you are risen with the Messiah, seek the things that are above; set your thoughts on things above, not on things of the earth.” It is no use simply saying, “I’ve been baptized; therefore God is happy with me the way I am.” Paul’s logic is: “You have been baptized; therefore God is challenging you to die to sin and live the resurrection life.”

What does this mean for us?  What does this resurrection life look like?

6.  Part of getting used to living in the post-Easter world—part of getting used to letting Easter change your life, your attitudes, your thinking, your behavior—is getting used to the cosmology that is now unveiled. Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock. Jesus is the ultimate such point. We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him. The Spirit, the sacraments, and the scriptures are given so that the double life of Jesus, both heavenly and earthly, can become ours as well, already in the present.

In Jesus, you and I become points where heaven and earth intersect and interlock.  When and where do you acknowledge and experience this?

7.  Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good, but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls “myself.” Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well.

Where is the wisdom and challenge in this powerful statement?

Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright

Chapter Thirteen

1.  That is the logic of the mission of God. God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there.

So what are the possibilities ahead for us?

2.  But if God really does intend to redeem rather than reject his created world of space, time, and matter, we are faced with the question: what might it look like to celebrate that redemption, that healing and transformation, in the present, and thereby appropriately to anticipate God’s final intention?

3.  As far as I can see, the major task that faces us in our generation, corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago, is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world, whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable Third World debt.  We must learn, therefore, to recognize the complex arguments against debt remission as what they are. People tell you it’s a tricky and many-sided subject. Yes, it is; so was slavery. So are all major moral problems. The fact remains that what is now going on amounts to theft by the strong from the weak, by the rich from the poor.

What is our Christian response to this?

4.  This is the point where a genuine biblical theology can come out of the forest and startle both those who thought that the Bible was irrelevant or dangerous for political ethics and those who thought that taking the Bible seriously meant being conservative politically as well as theologically. The truth is very different.  His resurrection, and the promise of God’s new world that comes with it, creates a program for change and offers to empower it. Those who believe the gospel have no choice but to follow.

Why is this so, and how to we follow?

5.  How do you answer someone who says, rightly, that the world will not be completely just and right until the new creation and who deduces, wrongly, that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world (or for that matter ecological health, another topic for which there is no space here) until that time? Answer, from everything I have said so far: insist on inaugurated eschatology, on a radical transformation of the way we behave as a worldwide community, anticipating the eventual time when God will be all in all even though we all agree things won’t be complete until then. There is the challenge. The resurrection of Jesus points us to it and gives us the energy for it. Let us overcome our surprise that such a hope should be set before us and go to the task with prayer and wisdom. 

What is the connection between spiritual energy and prayer/wisdom?

6.  This will take serious imagination, imagination fueled by reflection and prayer at the foot of the cross and before the empty tomb, imagination that will discern the mysteries of God’s judgment on evil and God’s reaffirmation, through resurrection, of his beautiful creation. Art at its best draws attention not only to the way things are but also to the way things will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. That remains a surprising hope, and perhaps it will be the artists who are best at conveying both the hope and the surprise.

Give examples where this has occurred for you.

7.  But how can the church announce that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil, corruption, and death itself have been defeated, and that God’s new world has begun? Doesn’t this seem laughable? Well, it would be if it wasn’t happening. But if a church is working on the issues we’ve already looked at—if it’s actively involved in seeking justice in the world, both globally and locally, and if it’s cheerfully celebrating God’s good creation and its rescue from corruption in art and music, and if, in addition, its own internal life gives every sign that new creation is indeed happening, generating a new type of community—then suddenly the announcement makes a lot of sense.

Why?

8.  The mission of the church must therefore reflect, and be shaped by, the future hope as the New Testament presents it. I believe that if we take these three areas—justice,
beauty, and evangelism—in terms of the anticipation of God’s eventual setting to rights of the whole world, we will find that they dovetail together and in fact that they are all part of the same larger whole, which is the message of hope and new life that comes with the good news of Jesus’s resurrection. This is the foundation, I believe, for the work of hope in the day-to-day life of the church.
 This is the good news—of justice, beauty, and above all Jesus—that the church is called upon to live and to speak, to bring into reality, in each place and each generation.

What might the life of the church look like if it was shaped, in turn, by this hope-shaped mission?

Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright

Chapter Twelve

1.  Wright asks, “How does believing in the future resurrection lead to getting on with the work in the present? The point of the resurrection, as Paul has been arguing…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. God will raise it to new life. What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it. What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”

How does this crucial connection between the present and the future provide encouragement and hope for the mission of the church in the world?  How does this perspective shape the value God places in you and the value you place in yourself?

2.  “The truly exciting, surprising, and perhaps frightening thing about where we have now got to in this book is that we are now forced to rethink the very meaning of salvation
itself.”

Prior to reading this book, how did you define salvation…both on a Biblical and on a personal basis?  How do you define both levels of salvation now?

3.  “In other words—to sum up where we’ve got so far—the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us. If we can get this straight, we will rediscover the historic basis for the full-orbed mission of the church.”

Briefly review each of these three points and explore their implications for understanding our greater purpose as Christians.

4.  “This, as we have seen, is what the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit are all about. They are designed not to take us away from this earth but rather to make us agents of the transformation of this earth, anticipating the day when, as we are promised, “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” When the risen Jesus appears to his followers at the end of Matthew’s gospel, he declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. And the point of the gospels—of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together with Acts—is that this has already begun. The question of how it has begun—in what sense it is inaugurated, anticipated, or whatever—has been the stuff of debate for a long time. But part of the problem with that debate is that those taking part in it do not usually clarify the question of what precisely it is that is begun, launched, or initiated.”

As God’s “agents of the transformation of this earth,” we are not helplessly un-equipped for this kingdom work.  We have been baptized into this kingdom, nurtured in the holy meal by his body and blood, and buoyed by a grace-filled faith as we hear and receive the living Word.  How do these “Means of Grace” continue to sustain you for such transformation of life around you?

5.  Wright concludes, “Heaven’s rule, God’s rule, is thus to be put into practice in the world, resulting in salvation in both the present and the future, a salvation that is both for humans and, through saved humans, for the wider world. This is the solid basis for the mission of the church.”

Got it?  God’s rule is to be put into practice in the world, resulting in salvation across the board.  How do we comprehend this rule, equip the saints, and send the church (that’s us) for such mission?