Hollywood is buzzing that superstars are having their likenesses scanned so they can license their digital doppelgangers to play roles in absentia. By sitting still for a mere 17 seconds, with a cyberscanner orbiting 360 degrees, an actor's features can be translated into 3-D data. And voila! A synthespian is born.

Marlon Brando is leading the revolution. And some of Tinseltown's biggest players, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Carrey, are making the trek to Cyberware, a Monterey, California-based shop, to be scanned for specific projects.

Cyberware president David Addleman is hopeful that all stars will eventually stockpile their data, just waiting for the day when technology will resurrect them for as yet undreamed-of projects. This year, the late George Burns will star in an Oh, God! sequel, via computer graphics. Should Burns make a splash, the rush to digital doubles could be on.

The day when robots no longer do what we want them to may already be here. CNN reported that an artificial intelligent robot, created by Swiss scientists, could learn from its environment. Within a few minutes, the microprocessor-based robot can learn not to bump into a barrier. No one programs the robot's actions, and its creator isn't exactly sure how it will behave in any given situation.

Within 10 years, the scientists predict, similar but more advanced machines, equipped with artificial intelligence, will be as clever as humans. Soon after, they say, the man-made objects could become more intelligent than their creators--and capable of taking over.

Hugo de Garis, who's already created an artificially intelligent machine, said, "There will be major warfare between these two major groups, one saying building machines is the destiny of the human species, something people should do, and the other group saying it's too dangerous." De Garis speculates that the robots might soon tire of their human creators. Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics--the science of comparing biological and computerized brains--agrees that thinking robots could be dangerous.

INNSBRUCK, Austria -- Albert Einstein dismissed it as "spooky," "Star Trek" made it science fiction, but Austrian scientists say teleportation is a reality.

The dream of teleportation is to be able to travel by vanishing and reappearing instantly at a distant location, as Captain James Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise did in the U.S. television series.

The teleportation team at the Institute for Experimental Physics in the Alpine winter resort of Innsbruck is unable to "beam up" either human beings or any other living things.

But what they have succeeded in doing is transferring the properties of a photon--a single particle of light invisible to the naked eye--to another photon, instantly and without any connection or communication between the two.

"We had one photon prepared with well-defined properties. In the experiment, this photon had to disappear and another photon a meter (three feet) away turned out to be a replica of the original," said Anton Zeilinger, the professor of experimental physics who heads the six-member team.

The experiment--reported in the science magazine Nature--may one day lead to quantum super computers which could process information quicker than the speed of light.

Einstein in the 1930s dismissed this aspect of quantum mechanics as "spooky action from a distance" because it suggested something could travel faster than the speed of light--violating the laws of physics.

"What Einstein said basically is that the world cannot be that strange," Zeilinger explained. "We now know that he was wrong. We now know that the world really is that strange."

Physicist Michio Kaku predicts spectacular life-changing technological advances over the next two decades.

It is 6.30 AM on June 1, 2020. A silent image of the seashore on the bedroom wall suddenly springs to life, replaced by a warm, friendly face you have named Molly, who cheerily announces: "It's time to wake up."

As you walk into the kitchen, the appliances sense your presence. The coffeepot turns itself on. Bread is toasted to the setting you prefer. Your favorite music fills the air. The intelligent home is coming to life.

On the coffee table, Molly has printed out a personalized edition of the newspaper by scanning the Internet. As you leave the kitchen, the refrigerator scans its contents and announces: "You're out of milk; and the yogurt is sour."

Molly is an "intelligent agent," a computer program equipped with reason and common sense. She is your link to the "Magic Mirror," the worldwide electronic membrane that holds all human knowledge.

Most of your friends have bought "intelligent agent" programs without faces or personalities. Some claim they get in the way; others prefer not to speak to their appliances. But you like the convenience of voice commands.

Before you leave, you instruct the robot vacuum cleaner to get cracking. It springs to life and, sensing the wire tracks hidden beneath the carpet, begins its job.

As you drive out of the city to your office, Molly has tapped into the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite orbiting overhead. "There is a delay due to roadworks on the M4," she informs you. "Here is an alternative route." A map appears ghostlike on the windscreen. The traffic lights, sensing no other cars on this smart highway, all turn green. You whiz by the toll booths, which register your vehicle PIN number with their laser sensors and electronically charge your account.

Molly's radar quietly monitors the cars around you, particularly in your blind spot. Her computer suddenly detects danger. "Watch out. There's a car behind you." You narrowly miss a car in your blind spot. Molly may have saved your life.

At your desk at Computer Genetics, a giant firm specializing in personalized DNA sequencing, you scan some video mail. A few bills. You insert your smart wallet card into the computer in the wall. A laser beam checks the iris of your eye for identification, and the transaction is done. Then at 10 AM two staff members meet you via the wall screen.

At 4 PM, Molly informs you from the wall screen that it is time for your doctor's appointment. As she makes the connection, her image fades and your virtual doctor appears on the screen. Like Molly, he is a computer program with a human face. "We picked up trace amounts of a certain protein in your urine. There is a microscopic cancer colony growing in your colon," he says.

"Is that serious?"

"Probably not. No more than a few hundred cancer cells. We'll zap them with a few smart molecules."

"Just out of curiosity, what would have happened before protein testing and smart molecules?" you ask.

"Well, in 10 years, you would have developed a small tumor; at that point there would have been several billion cancer cells growing in your body and your chances of survival would be about 5%."

The virtual doctor frowns and adds: "We also used the new MRI machine to take a peek inside your arteries. At the present rate of plaque build-up, the computer calculates that within eight years you will have an 80% increased risk of a heart attack. I'm video-mailing a strict program of exercise, relaxation, meditation and yoga."

Oh, great. Molly will just love taking over as your personal trainer.

That evening you attend a company cocktail party. As you wander among the guests, the video camera in your glasses scans the faces in the crowd and Molly matches the faces with the computer profiles in her memory. She whispers in your ear who each person is from a special miniature transmitter in your glasses.

By the end of the party you have drunk a bit too much. Molly whispers: "If you drink any more, the breath analyzer in the dashboard won't allow you to start the car."

At midnight, after driving home safely, you decide to do some last-minute shopping. "Molly, put the virtual mall on the screens; I need to buy a new sweater."

The wall screen flashes an image of a shopping mall. You wave your hands above the coffee table, and the video image changes, as if you are walking through the mall. You pick out the sweater you want from the racks. You like the design but the size is wrong. Fortunately, Molly has your precise 3-D measurements.

"Molly, I want a red sweater, not a blue one, but without those frills. Send the order and put it on my smart card."

Late the next night you tell Molly to find out why Robin, your lover, has not called. Molly scans the Magic Mirror and reports that Robin is inaccessible. Robin is "in a meeting." At midnight? Who says so? Terry, Robin's intelligent agent, says so. Can robots lie? Only if they are trained to do so.

Fantastic? Certainly not. Many of the prototypes of the inventions and technologies contained in this scenario already exist in the laboratory and are beginning to prove their worth. As Paul Saffo, of the Institute for the Future, has said: "The future is already here. It's just distributed unevenly."

WASHINGTON  -- Superstar physicist Stephen Hawking sketched a remarkable future at the White House, saying genetic engineers would rapidly change the human race. In a lecture given a dramatic futuristic tone by the computerized voice synthesizer he must use to communicate, because of the crippling effects of Lou Gehrig's disease, Hawking said most science fiction of this century was flawed in predicting that humans themselves would remain unchanged while science reached new levels.

Hawking said genetic engineers would be the ones to hasten the pace of evolution and this change might be needed so humans could keep up with their own scientific and technological advances. "The human race … needs to increase its complexity if biological systems are to keep ahead of electronic ones," he said. Computer advances are likely to continue until the machines can match the human brain in complexity and perhaps even design new, "smarter" computers by themselves, he said.

Science has finally unlocked many of the fundamental secrets of matter, life and intelligence. Although no one has a crystal ball, scientists can now sketch with reasonable accuracy the broad outlines of the future.

One of the engines thrusting us into the future is Moore's Law, which has held for the past 50 years and states that computer power doubles roughly every 18 months.

To illustrate Moore's Law, Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future, observes that the singing greeting cards that we routinely throw away contain more computer power than all the Pentagon computers of the 1940s.

But by 2020, artificial intelligence will be cheap and ubiquitous. Your watch or jewelry, for example, may one day become an Internet node, capable of accessing the knowledge of an entire planet. Like electricity, intelligence will become invisible, yet everywhere.

Moore's Law is spilling over into biotechnology: Today, the number of genes that can be sequenced doubles every two years. Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert says that, in a few decades, any of us "will be able to pull a CD out of one's pocket and say, 'Here's a human being: Me!'" This CD will be an "owner's manual" for your body, with every single gene recorded.

All this raises a host of ethical questions. Computer experts fret about the impact of computers on the job market and the creation of "cyber-ghettos." And what happens when, according to Moore's Law, computers exceed the power of the human brain?

Bioethicist Arthur Caplan believes the current acrimonious debate on abortion will be dwarfed by the coming controversy over "designer children." What happens in a world when parents can decide on the sex and the genetic characteristics of their children, to make them taller, stronger, better-looking?

The future has indeed arrived. To put it bluntly, in the next century, we will have the power usually given to gods, the power to animate the inanimate, the power to create life itself. But if science will give us the power of a god, will we also have the wisdom of Solomon?

Unfortunately, there is no Moore's Law for wisdom.