Discovery and advances will continue to dominate the next century. Here are what some experts envision.

COMPUTERS:

"Over the next decade or so computers will become even more ubiquitous. The Dick Tracy wrist radio is not far away and eventually the science-fiction theme of computer chips and functions embedded in humans will happen, allowing human performance and or health enhancements."

- Donna Shirley, manager of NASA's Mars exploration program

COMMUNICATIONS:

"Everybody will have a cellular device of very broad bandwidth. They'll get TV, libraries, whatever you can imagine. It will be like carrying around the most powerful PC in your hand."

- Paul Grant, physicist at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif.

'CONSCIOUS' MACHINES?

"We'll start to understand what consciousness means in other animals. There will be the technology applications of building machines that have some of the features of consciousness and the biomedical applications able to influence consciousness.

- Steven Koonin, theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY:

"I think that would be very desirable, very important ... that during this coming century we will achieve a higher degree of sustainability in many different ways, not just environmental, demographic, economic, but also social and political, military, diplomatic, informational ... I mean, there's no use having sustainability in the narrow sense of preservation of ecological systems and so on if you're going to have a thermonuclear war."

- Murray Gell-Mann, 1969 Nobel prize winner for science

GENETIC RESEARCH

"It could happen in 10 to 15 years or it could be longer ... but I think it's absolutely in the near future ... that any baby born in the hospital, before it leaves the hospital the parents will have their complete genetic code."

- J. Craig Venter, head of Celera Genomics, a company that is sequencing genes in an effort to develop drugs and other medical treatments.

WHO WE ARE

"By the end of the next century I expect we will have a pretty good idea of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, and astrobiology - melding biology, paleontology, geology and astronomy - will become one of the most exciting fields."

- Douglas H. Erwin, palentologist with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History

IN SPACE

"I think that what things could look like by the end of the century is the following. On Mars itself you will have not only settlements, you will have cities. You will have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people living on Mars.... It will be a rapidly growing civilization and they will also have begun the work of transforming the planet itself."

- Robert Zubrin, president and founder of the Mars Society

ECOLOGY

"There are small signs of improvement, but for our children's future we have to make a concerted and immediate effort to ensure a sustainable environment. Every action we take ... affects our local - and global - environment."

- Diane H. Wall, president of the Ecological Society of America

WEATHER FORECASTING:

"The notion that the latest weather information and forecasts and warnings will all be available on the pager, in your car, on your PC is already happening. We can only guess how far this communication revolution will take us, but the advances in weather forecasting will be there as an important partner."

- Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction

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