The Future Is Faster Than You Think, is a blueprint for how our world will …
The future is more optimistic than you think. Allegedly.
4 stars
[My review of the 12min summary]
This is yet another book purporting to tell us what amazing things we'll see in the future. I'm leery of these. They're usually written by self-proclaimed "futurists" who ultimately get many things wrong. What they get right is usually obvious or, worse yet, has ramifications far different than what they predicted.
Case in point: As far back as the 1960s, futurists told us of the wonders of the information age ahead. All of the world's knowledge would be accessible from home! None predicted that the internet would bring us Twitter, Facebook, the rise of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and the undermining of democracy.
These authors fall into this camp of "the future is going to be amazing!" I'm giving it four stars, because they seem to have a good understanding of the current state of technology. Most of what they propose is a realistic …
[My review of the 12min summary]
This is yet another book purporting to tell us what amazing things we'll see in the future. I'm leery of these. They're usually written by self-proclaimed "futurists" who ultimately get many things wrong. What they get right is usually obvious or, worse yet, has ramifications far different than what they predicted.
Case in point: As far back as the 1960s, futurists told us of the wonders of the information age ahead. All of the world's knowledge would be accessible from home! None predicted that the internet would bring us Twitter, Facebook, the rise of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and the undermining of democracy.
These authors fall into this camp of "the future is going to be amazing!" I'm giving it four stars, because they seem to have a good understanding of the current state of technology. Most of what they propose is a realistic and plausible extension of that. I disagree with their optimistic timelines for some of this stuff. Laboratory-grown meat, for example, already exists, but it's nothing like its real counterpart. They think it will be perfected by 2030. I think it will take longer.
They make no in-depth predictions about the social, economic, or political ramifications of all of these changes. That's the real job of a "futurist". I've yet to see any of them step up to that challenge.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that all inventions will be misused and the future will be a dystopia. We're a lot better off now in many ways than we were in the past. I'm just saying that the real value that a futurist could bring to the table is to give us a plausible prediction of how these future wonders will change society overall.
FINAL NOTES (quoted from 12min) "Many inventions we believed to be science fiction are already here; artificial intelligence that looks, talks, and thinks like a human, flying cars, telepathy, and virtual realities. Through convergence, these innovations are only set to accelerate in the coming years. Luckily, they can also help solve humanity’s greatest problems, such as climate change, food waste, and other environmental challenges."