In his weblog today, Peter Woit quotes "a remarkable article
entitled Contemplating the End of Physics posted today at
Quanta magazine [by] Robbert Dijkgraaf (the director of the IAS)"
An excerpt from the quoted remarks by the Institute for
Advanced Study director —
"All of this is part of a much larger shift in
the very scope of science, from studying what is
to what could be. In the 20th century, scientists
sought out the building blocks of reality:
the molecules, atoms and elementary particles
out of which all matter is made;
the cells, proteins and genes
that make life possible;
the bits, algorithms and networks
that form the foundation of information and intelligence,
both human and artificial. This century, instead,
we will begin to explore all there is to be made with
these building blocks."
Then there are, of course, the building blocks of mathematical reality:
unit cubes. See building-block.space.