Most of these columns follow a pattern. I try to look ahead in science, but in order to do that I first examine the past and present and see what they can teach us. Then I apply the nudge that pushes the present forward into the future.

Today I want to try something different. I want to view the present through the eyes of our grandchildren, 20 generations ahead. What ignorance of ours will make them laugh out loud? What do we do now that in 500 years will amaze, disgust, horrify, or excite the pity of our descendants?

I can't guarantee that there will be any such things, but history is on my side. In 1500 the earth was for most people the center of the universe (Copernicus published his work in 1543.) Neither the telescope (about 1609) nor the compound microscope (1590) was available for research. The function of many body organs was a mystery, and the discovery of the circulation of the blood (about 1610) had not yet been made. Chemistry would not move beyond alchemy for another two centuries. The presumed causes of disease did not include a germ theory (suggested in 1546 by Girolamo Fracastoro but ignored for another 300 years). Steam power was three centuries or more away, as were steamships, railways, automobiles, airplanes, and any other means of fast transportation. Equally distant were the medical advances of vaccination, anesthetics, strong painkillers, antiseptics, blood transfusions, and, later still, antibiotics. Widespread electric power and its million applications in electronic devices did not appear until the 20th century.

As for human circumstances and behavior, there was plenty going on in 1500 to send shivers up the 21st century spines of those of us in the developed world. There was hunger or the threat of hunger, with little guarantee even during the best of times that next year would not bring famine; public executions, including burning at the stake and hanging, drawing and quartering; the divine right of kings, which argued that pretty much anything a king chose to do was all right because it was sanctioned by God; and staggeringly high death rates for mother and infant during childbirth, and for children in their early years. If you did live to maturity, at some point in your life you would probably require a surgical operation without anesthetic. Rather than face the knife you might learn to live with bad teeth, a hernia, kidney stones or gallstones, and heart disease. And if, luckier than most, you survived into the time of "old age" - beyond 50 or 60 - all but the most fortunate would look forward to years in which they steadily lost hearing, eyesight and teeth, while at the same time becoming more arthritic and physically feeble.

Well, that ought to be enough to make us feel sorry for our ancestors. But what do we, seen through the eyes of our own distant descendants, either choose to do to ourselves, or have no choice but to endure? What basic scientific discoveries have we missed? What will make them shake their heads at our ignorance, misfortunes or stupidity?

I can answer the question of scientific discoveries easily: I have no idea. If I did, the discoveries would not be basic. We are talking here of something to change our lives profoundly, as fire, agriculture, cities, written language, the industrial revolution, and electricity have done. I regard all of these as singular points on the timeline, past which any extrapolation from the past to life in the future is impossible. Our descendants will not blame us for this, any more than we look down on our forebears who did not understand quantum theory. "For everything there is a season," and that will remain as true in the future as it was in the past.

It is easier to guess what will excite the pity of our children's children. They will grieve that we were unable to prevent or cure the "simple" ailments of asthma, allergies, depression, epilepsy, cancer, sterility, diabetes, paraplegia, blindness, deafness, stroke, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's. They will wonder how we were able to enjoy life at all, knowing that in our old age, which we would reach at the early age of 80 or 90, we were doomed to diminished faculties and physical infirmity. They will look back at our generation as we look back to the tragically truncated lives of Mozart, Abel, Keats, Schubert, Riemann, and Emily and Anne Bronte, dead every one before the 40th birthday.

As for amazement, I think that our descendants will be astonished that we, as individuals, have so little idea who we are, and how we bear children. Five centuries ago, no one on Earth had the vaguest idea of where humanity, as a species, came from. Five centuries from now, the complete genome of every person will be mapped before birth. Each of us will know, at the most fundamental level, what genetic load we carry with us through life. Genetic correction will become a simple task, but I doubt that centuries from now there will be any need for genetic correction. I don't think that mating which encourages or permits genetic defects will occur.

Does this sound like a bleak future? Does it resonate with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, with Aldous Huxley's novel, "Brave New World," with Adolf Hitler's notions of the Master Race?

I don't think so. I believe that this is a highly likely future, but the pressure to make the children "perfect" will not come from some faceless, autocratic state. It will come from the parents, just as pressure comes, in a rather different way, from us. We all want our kids to have the best possible education and the best possible medical treatment. We would like to see them healthy, smart, beautiful, athletic, happy, and filled with all the graces. Our descendants will surely want no less, and by direct control of breeding and by manipulation of genetic material they will be able to do these things and a great deal more.

And what if we, with our distaste for "genetic tampering," seem unable to understand the logic and necessity for their actions in controlling the process of human reproduction and the shape of the next generation? Then perhaps that will astonish our distant grandchildren most of all.

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