Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Humorous Nonfiction/Science
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the earliest days of civilization (and likely earlier than that), people have speculated what the future would bring, what marvels and dangers awaited just beyond tomorrow: would we be zipping around a utopia in flying cars, or toiling in Martian mines under the whips of robotic overlords? Most predictions have turned out to be dead wrong (for better or worse), and yet time and again our world has been transformed, and will continue to be transformed, by new ideas and discoveries. The authors examine ten bleeding-edge fields, some of which are already making waves and others which may be destined for the dust-heap of predictions with those flying cars.
REVIEW: Zach Weinersmith is the creator of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, one of my personal favorite online comics (if one that admittedly is aimed at a higher academic and intellectual level than my paltry high school diploma qualifies me to appreciate), which frequently tackles the occasional absurdities and potential pitfalls of scientific breakthroughs. This book explores several real-world technologies that may not be quite ready for proverbial prime time, but which have the potential to remake society... sometimes in ways we may not like (or simply not be ready to handle, though that could be said of most any seismic technological shift.) The Weinersmiths spell out what the technology is, where it currently stands, what it could do for us (or to us), and the problems holding it back at the moment, from practical and economic issues to ethical concerns. From the problems with offworld expansion to the possibilities of neurological upgrades, from custom-grown organs to augmented reality, they present a fascinating array of technologies in an intelligent, accessible, and often humorous fashion. A closing chapter sums up some technologies that didn't make the final cut, while an extensive list of acknowledgements and citations point the way to further reading on every subject covered. The potential futures that could be opened by any of these technologies becoming mainstream are dazzling, dizzying, and occasionally disturbing, yet the idea that few might ever come to pass in my lifetime - especially with a seemingly-increasing societal momentum away from science as a goal or even a concept - is also vaguely depressing. It's a very enjoyable book even for undereducated readers like myself who are curious about such things.
As a minor nitpick, though, the ebook has a few formatting issues with text occasionally running over illustrations (not the first title I've read on Overdrive to have this problem, unfortunately.) This is not new technology; is it that hard to get them to display properly?
You Might Also Enjoy:
Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Us to the Brink (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
Thing Explainer (Randall Munroe) - My Review
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Webcomic by Zach Weinersmith (some NSFW humor)
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