Smash hit

“I can think of two ways in which mortality can be tamed. One at the cellular level and the other through an integration of body with genetic, cognitive sciences, and cyber technology.

“There is no question that controlling death is the ultimate human dream, the one ‘thing that can change everything else’. I leave the deeply transforming social and ethical upheaval this would cause to another essay. Meanwhile, I take advice from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Perhaps there are things we are truly unprepared for.”

William Calvin, neuroscientist, University of Washington

Climate will change everything

“Climate will change our worldview. That each of us will die someday ranks up there with 2+2=4 as one of the great certainties of all time. But we are accustomed to think of our civilisation as perpetual, despite all of the history and prehistory that tells us that societies are fragile. The junior-sized slices of society such as the church or the corporation, also assumed to outlive the participant, provide us with everyday reminders of bankruptcy. Climate change is starting to provide daily reminders, challenging us to devise ways to build in resiliency, an ability to bounce back when hit hard.”

Michael Shermer, publisher, Skeptic magazine

Energy and economics: the road to civilisation

“The game-changing scientific idea is the combination of energy and economics — the development of renewable energy sources made cheap and available to everyone everywhere on the planet by allowing anyone to trade in these game-changing technologies with anyone else. That will change everything.”

Richard Foreman, playwright

Nothing will change everything

“The belief that there is anything that will change things, in and of itself stymies, I believe, real change. To believe that anything ‘will change things’ focuses one on the superficial surface of things, which indeed change all the time. Such changes — which have been and will continue to be — create always an orientation of consciousness that focuses always on ‘the future’.

“But I propose that the only thing that will in fact ‘change everything’ is, or would be, the refusal to think about the future. And this, of course, is almost impossible for almost all human beings to do. Therefore, nothing will change everything.”

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