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At the dawn of the 20th century, who could have foreseen the space shuttle, the atom bomb, the Internet or the European Union? Who could have guessed that the United States would become the world"s sole military superpower, that most American women would work outside the home, or that doctors would be able to give their patients new hips or even hearts? Few if any of the most important changes that have taken place over the past 100 years could have been predicted in 1900.

Roy Torbert, physicist and dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, speculates about a range of possible changes, from accessing the Web by direct neural connection to the colonization of space. "Assuming the human race is still here in the next couple hundred years, I think we might see something as radical as microchips surgically implanted in the brain to provide a far more sophisticated way of connecting to the Web—through electronic connection to the nerves," he says. This technology would enable people to instantly access and sort through most of the information that exists on any subject.

Human beings seem to be genetically programmed to desire growth and expansion, Torbert maintains, and this will likely lead to a crisis in overpopulation. "The Earth is almost at the limits of the population it can sustain; already the impacts are seen in the degradation of the fisheries, the amount of energy consumption and the output of pollution. We will not be able to survive a doubling of the population without great catastrophes such as widespread disease and starvation that will, in effect, bring the numbers under control," he says. "Or we'll create colonies in space to relieve the pressure of population growth."

Rather than colonizing planets or moons, Torbert thinks self-sufficient communities will inhabit floating space laboratories that orbit the Earth, sun or other planets. Space travel between these colonies will be commonplace, as expensive trips to and back from the Earth become less necessary. He also expects that if extraterrestrial life exists, human beings will begin to make contact with it before the end of the century.

In the nearer future, Torbert believes we'll utilize the oceans much more extensively for food production, the raising of fish and plants. "Such a huge fraction of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, and the unregulated use of it, as we're doing, is leading to disaster. I think we'll come to depend much more on aquaculture as the land available for food production begins to disappear." Scientists will come up with more efficient, renewable energy sources and solve the fusion energy problem. "We'll have a lot more access to energy, but we'll find that the planet won't be able to take it," he warns. Yet transportation will become cleaner, faster and safer, Torbert believes, perhaps through the use of elevated tube trains that propel vehicles through electromagnetic induction, a technology already in development for superconducting trains.

Startling advances in the young field of genetic engineering could change the nature of how we diagnose and treat diseases, according to Subhash Minocha, professor of plant biology and genetics. "There are DNA-based technologies in the pipeline that may allow us to replace the defective gene in a fetus suffering from a disease such as cystic fibrosis," Minocha says. "As we sequence the whole human DNA, the genome analysis will tell us about how we evolved and how different we are from our ancestors.

"As neuroscience crosses psychiatry, we're more able to interpret the brain's functions and see what's happening in the brains of the depressed or the happy," he continues. "But questions will arise as to how far we should go in modifying human behavior." He also suspects we'll gain a better understanding of why humans age, although we'll struggle with whether we should tinker with the process.

Products such as natural lactose-free milk will emerge through genetic engineering, as well as foods with properties that ward off a variety of metabolic diseases, Minocha believes. And he foresees that plant-based products such as methanol, ethanol and biodegradable plastics will become common substitutes for petroleum-based products.

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