2045年的世界什么样

明天就要来临

    “预测未来并不困难，但有时候却很难把预测出来的各个点串起来，”著名遗传学家乔治•丘奇在上周末于纽约市爱丽丝杜莉厅（Alice Tully Hall）举行的全球未来2045大会（Global Futures 2045 Congress）上演讲时开场就这样说道。虽然他提醒的是观众、而不是大会的其他演讲者，但他对未来学家的这个工作总结却一语中的。受一位年轻的俄罗斯科技大亨邀请，许多颇具声望的技术专家、科学家、未来学家以及企业家参加了这场大会，而他们的终极使命是全力以赴，借助科技实现永生。会上，这些大名鼎鼎的人们描绘了一幅时而骇人，时而惊人的画面，展现了未来几十年后的世界面貌，描述了科技怎样彻底地改变经济学、生物学甚至是意识本身。

    每年一次的全球未来2045大会由“2045行动”（2045 Initiative）及其创始人德米特里•伊茨科夫组织，今年是第二届。32岁的伊茨科夫是俄罗斯科技企业家，他把庞大的财力和坚定的决心倾注于掌握、攻克21世纪一些最具挑战性和激动人心的前沿技术，其中包括人类意识、脑机接口以及生物技术一体化。伊茨科夫阿凡达项目（Avatar Project，2045行动的一部分）的终极目标是解放人类，摆脱身体的限制。第一步是要弄清怎样将大脑（以及意识自我）从人的身体中分离出来，同时使它存活于机器替身里，最后弄明白怎样把包括意识和其他一切在内的思维上传到电脑上。实现这种数字化永生的截止期限是2045年。

    如果你觉得这些听上去像白日梦，看看伊茨科夫都有哪些同僚：全球未来2045大会发言人包括丘奇（首个真正有效的基因测序技术开创者和人类基因组计划发起人）、发明家及未来学家雷•库兹韦尔【现任谷歌（Google）首席工程师】、X大奖基金会（X-PRIZE Foundation）创始人及尖端技术企业家彼得•戴尔蒙迪斯博士（目前正在推进小行星采矿项目）以及传奇的电脑技术专家詹姆斯•马丁博士【牛津大学（Oxford University）的牛津马丁学院（Oxford Martin School）就是以他的名字命名的】。虽然演讲并不意味着对阿凡达项目及其崇高目标的首肯，但这些著名发言人的集结显然给全球未来2045大会增加了些许学术份量。

    尽管2045行动的首要目标是永生，全球未来2045大会却更像是二十多位各行业领军人士济济一堂、相互对话的盛会。他们中许多人有准确预测未来的记录。换句话说，这些人成功串联起了下面这些点：我们目前在哪里，未来向何处去，以及科技会通过什么样的方式把我们带到未来。下面将介绍六大预测，描述科技以及我们所知的生活在接下来的三十年里会发生怎样彻底的改变。

Here comes tomorrow

    "It's not so hard to predict the future, but it's sometimes hard to connect the dots." In the opening of his lecture to the Global Futures 2045 Congress, famed geneticist Dr. George Church neatly summed up what being a futurist is all about, though he was reminding the audience rather than the other speakers assembled at Alice Tully Hall in New York City this past weekend. Gathered there by a young Russian tech tycoon on a mission to do nothing less than achieve immortality through technology, a who's-who of renowned technologists, scientists, futurists, and entrepreneurs painted a sometimes terrifying, sometimes electrifying picture of what the world is going to look like in the decades to come, describing how technology is going to drastically alter economies, biologies, and perhaps even consciousness itself.

    Global Futures 2045 is organized annually (this was the second) by the 2045 Initiative and its founder, Russian tech entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, who at 32 years of age has turned his vast financial resources and dogged determination toward understanding and conquering some of the 21st century's most challenging and exciting frontiers, including human consciousness, brain-machine interfaces, and the integration of biology and technology. The ultimate goal of Itskov's Avatar Project (part of the 2045 Initiative) is to free humankind from the limitations imposed on it by the body, first by figuring out how to remove the brain (and the conscious self) from the body and keep it alive in a robotic surrogate, and ultimately how to upload the mind -- consciousness and all -- to a computer. The deadline for delivering this kind of digital immortality: 2045.

    If all that sounds like a fantasy, consider Itskov's colleagues: Speakers at Global Futures 2045 included Church (who pioneered the first truly effective gene sequencing techniques and helped initiate the Human Genome Project), inventor-futurist Ray Kurzweil (now engineering chief at Google), X-PRIZE Foundation founder and far-out tech entrepreneur Dr. Peter H. Diamandis (current project: asteroid mining), and legendary computer technologist Dr. James Martin, who shares a name with the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University (and not by happenstance). And while speaking doesn't imply blanket endorsement of the Avatar Project and its lofty aims, this roll call of renowned speakers certainly lends Global Futures 2045 some intellectual heft.

    But while immortality is the overarching goal of the 2045 Initiative, the Global Futures congress is more of a conversation between two dozen or so individuals at the top of their fields, many with established track records of seeing what's coming before it gets here. In other words, these are the people who successfully connect the dots between where we are now, where we're going, and how technology is going to get us there. Below: Six prognostications on just how drastically technology -- and life as we know it -- will change in the over the next three decades.