Sunday, December 21, 2014

John Brockman - The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I’ve always held that if predicting the future was an easy thing to do, all psychics would be millionaires.  I’m reminded of a commercial for IBM with Avery Brooks.  He started the commercial by asking where his flying cars were.  The science fiction of decades past showed everyone going around in their flying cars.  Unfortunately, predictions are vague at best, predicting a trend here or a general direction there.  (This is why I tend not to believe the 2012 doomsday ‘prophecies’.)  Even with vague predictions, we do occasionally get our flying cars.  Not always, though.

Someone had the idea to get together 25 scientists to predict what the future will hold for their respective fields.  Each person wrote an essay about what major advancements they foresaw or what might be necessary for the field to advance.  Since there are 25 different essays, I’m not going to go into detail about each for two reasons.  One, some of the essays tend to be technical or beyond the interest of the average person.  Two, each essay is so short that any detailed analysis would pretty much require me to give away the bulk of it.

The book is divided into two sections.  The first part has to do with theoretical stuff.  For instance, there’s an essay by Martin Rees where he deals with the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.   There may be a high degree of probability of life existing, but what can we expect in terms of receiving proof?  The second half is more practical.  Paul Davies has an essay about life on Mars.  If there is to be colonization of other planets, Mars is a good candidate.  If there was life on other planets in our solar system, Mars is also a good candidate.

As I said, each essay is rather short.  The book is 300 pages total, meaning that each essay is about 12 pages.  I was able to read one or two essays in a sitting, which is about average for me.  This doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an easy read.   It’s not so much that their technical as it probably won’t be of any interest to someone not in the  field.  Most of them don’t get all that technical.   Some of the essays, like those on psychology, are relatively easy to understand if you can get past a few technical names.  It’s just that you may not want to read 300 pages of scientific predictions if you’re not into science.

My sense was that the book was meant for the general reader.  The essays don’t go into a lot of detail on their subject.  Since many of the scientists have overlapping fields, there will be some overlap in the essays.  (The Human Genome Project is mentioned in several, mostly in those dealing with disease and psychology.)  If there are a few topics that you’re interested in, like math or computers, you could easily get the book from the library and read just the essays that you want to.

All of the authors did a pretty good job of writing.  There weren’t a lot of technical terms, but it didn’t insult the reader’s intelligence, either.  I think the assumption may be that putting science in the title will scare off a few people.  Because the book deals with science, there does have to be a certain assumption of prior knowledge.  Quantum computing will require a certain understanding of science.

It would be interesting to come back in the year 2050 and see how many of the essays have come true.  Yes, some do speak in vague terms, but a few do have specific predictions.  Richard Dawkins predicts that everyone will have their DNA sequenced, as the technology to do so will become cheaper.  It won’t be uncommon to give your doctor access to this information to see how best to treat you.

You could probably get a book out of each essay.  If I had been asked to do this project, I probably would have done it as a series of books, or at least several volumes.  There could have been one on psychology and medicine while another handled math or quantum physics.

All things considered, I’d recommend checking the book out of the library.  I don’t know that you’ll be able to follow enough of it that it would justify the purchase price, but it’s definitely worth a look. 

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