The Skeptics' Guide to the Future
What Yesterday's Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow
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4.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling authors and hosts of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe," a high-tech roadmap of the future in their beloved voice, cracking open the follies of futurists past and how technology will profoundly change our world, redefining what it means to be human.
Our predictions of the future are a wild fantasy, inextricably linked to our present hopes and fears, biases and ignorance. Whether they be the outlandish leaps predicted in the 1920s, like multi-purpose utility belts with climate control capabilities and planes the size of luxury cruise ships, or the forecasts of the ‘60s, which didn’t anticipate the sexual revolution or women’s liberation, the path to the present is littered with failed predictions and incorrect estimations. The best we can do is try to absorb the lessons from futurism's checkered past, perhaps learning to do a little better.
In THE SKEPTICS' GUIDE TO THE FUTURE, Steven Novella and his co-authors build upon the work of futurists of the past by examining what they got right, what they got wrong, and how they came to those conclusions. By exploring the pitfalls of each era, they give their own speculations about the distant future, transformed by unbelievable technology ranging from genetic manipulation to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Applying their trademark skepticism, they carefully extrapolate upon each scientific development, leaving no stone unturned as they lay out a vision for the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Neurologist Novella (The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe) and his siblings, cohosts of the podcast The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, deliver an entertaining evaluation of futurism and an account of why the majority of predictions miss the mark. As they note, "predictions of the future are really just reflections of the present. And that means we're really bad at predicting what the future will bring," thanks largely to cognitive biases. The authors cite scientist and sci-fi author Isaac Asimov as a prime example: in the 1950s, his fiction imagined that in thousands of years, the future would be analog and consist of "hat-wearing, cigar-smoking, male domination." As for what might actually come to be, the authors cover synthetic life ("still likely a few decades off"), artificial intelligence (there "does not appear to be any reason" human-level AI is impossible to achieve), and wearable tech (the "loader exosuit" in Aliens isn't too far off). It's a cogent look at what is and isn't plausible, infused with plenty of sci-fi references, from Wall-E to The Matrix. The result is pop science done right.
