By Jamie El-Mallakh–
Michio Kaku, renowned physicist and author of several books, spoke at the University of Louisville on Feb. 22 at the Comstock Music Hall. The crowded auditorium listened closely as Kaku discussed many of the themes in his new book, “Physics of the Future.”
Kaku, during the course of his speech, spoke about many topics from his book which uses what we know about technology today to predict how humans will interact with technology in the future. Some of the themes he discussed were interactivity of technology in the world around us, elimination of aging and how advanced computation will become.
Perhaps most relevant topic that Kaku discussed was what kind of jobs would exist in the future, a discussion that catered well to the mostly college audience.
“For college grads, and this is where the shocker comes in, the middle class job that you should not go into is middlemen jobs; agents, brokers, low level accountants.”
Kaku went on to explain that middlemen jobs are most at risk because they can include doing a repetitive task or because they can be easily automated, such as purchasing items online. He also described how society as a whole is making a shift from “commodity capital to intellectual capital.”
“How will these middle men people make a living? They’re going to have to provide what robots cannot provide. That is common sense, talent, leadership, imagination, intuition,” said Kaku. “No robot is going to build a building anytime soon.”
After speaking for an hour, Kaku signed copies of his book, “Physics of the Future” to audience members. Later that night, Kaku spoke at the Kentucky Center for the Arts.
Virginia Hosono, the assistant director of the study abroad office, felt that, “Overall [Kaku’s] speech was interesting, he had some good ideas, I liked the part about education.” Hosono also saw room for improvement in Kaku’s speech as well.
“It wasn’t tailored to a university audience, I don’t want to say it was dumbed-down but it was approachable for the wide masses and it wasn’t necessarily tailored to physicists and engineering majors who were in the audience.”
Emmanuel Tarr, senior liberal studies major, said, “It was really great to see [Kaku] so enthusiastic about those different concepts. He’s one of the greater thinkers of our generation.”
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