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I don’t know how many of you were able to listening in on the webcast reported in my previous blog article. In any case, I did for the first 90 minutes. And here is a summary of my impression of what went on:

1.       Professor Perry summarized the engineering challenges for the 21^st century emphasizing the needs of the human race rather than try to forecast what might be. He first highlighted “ENERGY SUFFICIENCY” singling out solar energy and fusion. He said the latter will be demonstrated by 2016, and first practical installation by 2026. I was a bit surprised by these assertions. Another challenge has to do with SECURITY – the prevention and detection of nuclear weapon proliferation. A third is DNA engineering and medicine personalized according to your DNA code to improve HEALTH care.

2.       Healy on the panel talked about the endless possibilities of S&T (echo of the famous Vanneuver Bush 1949 article on "Science - the Endless Frontier") and the need for communicating these to the public. Seiger echoed the difficulty of popularizing science in this age of competing attention from everything. (my own note: 科普 is so important and difficult which is the reason for existence of 科学网 and why I encourage every scientist to participate).  Kurzweil pointed out that information technology (e.g., the Internet) makes technical improvement exponentially growing. As a futurist he predicted that solar energy . currently doubling every two years will be able to replace all our energy need in two generations (I think he is too optimistic). Friedman laments that the current US government has been exporting fear rather than hope since 9/11/2001 and has failed in her duty as enabler of innovation.

3.       Seiger also pointed out a small but significant anti-science movement which is an off-shoot of the GREEN movement.