Visions of the Future

BBC 4 is launching string theorist Dr. Michio Kaku's "Visions of the Future" this week in which he explores the possibilites that technology presents for humankind in the not so distant future.

Already technology has been altering our culture and behaviour, particularly through the mobile phone and internet, so just what impact will the technology of the future have on the way we live and interact with each other? This quote from Prof Rodney Brooks of Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the scariest in that the line between human and machine may become so blurred, who can tell whether the machine is more human than the person? Was that being born human or machine? Will we care?

"As a species, we are starting to put our information-processing technology inside our bodies – we're becoming a little more robotic. At the same time, our technologies are becoming more biological. Over the next 50 years, we'll see robots with more biological components and people with more electronic components"