How Science and Technology Will Revolutionize the 21st Century

Abstract

It was 20^th Century that split the atom, probe the psyche, spliced the genes and cloned a sheep. It invented plastics, radar and the silicon chip. It built aeroplanes, rockets, satellites, televisions, computers and atom bombs. We all heard about Wright brothers' aeroplanes, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity & $E=mc^2$, Edwin Hubble's telescope, Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Marie Curie's Radioactivity, J. L. Baird's television, Alan Turing's ‘electronic brains', Stephen Hawkins's black body, James Watson and Francis Crick's double helical structure of DNA, Bill Gates Software Computer, Steve Job's Apple Computer, Raymond Tomlinson's e-mail, Chrystiann Barnard's human heart transplant, Ian Wilmot's Dolly & many more. By the end of the twentieth century science has reached the end of an era, unlocking the secretes of the atom, unravelling the molecules of life, and creating the electronic computer. With the three fundamental discoveries triggered by the quantum revolution, the DNA revolution and the computer revolution, the basic laws of matter, life and computer were, in the main, finally solved. Lesser G. Thurow, former dean of MIT's Sloan School of Management, has stressed, in this 21^st Century, there will be a historic movement in wealth away from nations with natural resources and capital. He writes: "In the twenty-first century, brainpower and imagination, invention and the organization of new technologies are the key strategic ingredients."