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Summary (Aug 26, 2003): What does the future offer for new technologies? The book, Catalog of Tomorrow, features many aspects of the search for life elsewhere, as important parts of what will both push technological innovations and what will challenge our imagination.
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Catalog of Tomorrow By Douglas Vakoch
When it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work, do you ever wish you had some help? In the future, that help might come from your shirt itself, at least if you can work up a sweat as you're getting ready to hunker down.
 | Frank Drake.
Credit: Exploratorium |
"Smart shirts" that adjust sleeve length in response to body temperature are among the hundreds of new products we might expect in the next decade or two, according to the recently published Catalog of Tomorrow. Not confined to a preview of consumer trends, the book attempts to peer into the future, with an emphasis on growth areas in science and technology.
Many of the topics covered in the catalog have a direct connection to our daily lives. How will cars be constructed for greater safety in the near future? What changes can we anticipate in exercise during the coming decade? The Catalog of Tomorrow provides answers to these and many other questions in its four major sections. Here you will find topics ranging from gene therapy to nanotech (Our Tools), digital paper to cyborgs (Our Lives), privacy to cyberterrorism (Our Society), and biodiversity to deep sea exploration (Our Planet).
Given the range of topics covered by the book, all but the most dedicated futurist will find news of many products and processes that they had not previously encountered. Specialists should not expect revelations about their own fields from perusing this book, but instead should focus their reading on less familiar topics.
For example, space sciences receive some attention in the book, with special reports on space tourism, planetary exploration, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). As with the rest of the volume, however, these reports are geared toward the general reader, not toward people who are remain updated about these topics. For the more specialized reader, of more interest than the general articles will be the "Horizons Essays," overviews contributed by leading thinkers. For example, the section of the book devoted to exploration is preceded by a Horizon Essay by Frank Drake, the astronomer who conducted the first SETI experiment.
 | In a universe brimming with stars, the search is on if life exists elsewhere
Credit:NASA/STScI/ESA |
But can a book like this succeed in predicting the future? After all, some of the greatest innovations in the past couple of decades were quite unexpected - such as the proliferation of personal computers and the rise of the Internet. And there will no doubt also be cases where our imaginations outstrip future realities. For instance, contrary to the projections of the "World of Tomorrow" Exhibit at the 1962 World Fair, commuters of 2002 do not fly "gyro-copters" to work each day.
Do such failed predictions negate the purpose of a book like this?
Not at all. "Prediction is possible only in a world in which the future is preordained and unchangeable," writes Paul Saffo, Director of the Institute for the Future, in the book's foreword. "The miserable record of would-be forecasters is welcome proof our future is anything but preordained."
Of course, it may be that the future really is largely determined, and that we're just very poor at anticipating it. For all but the most fatalistic, however, Saffo provides a reassuring reminder that by speculating about the future, we may become more aware of steps we can take to bring about at least some of our hopes. Writing about those who attempt to predict the future, Saffo suggests that "the value of their visions lies less in their ultimate accuracy, but in the options they reveal and the thoughts and actions they provoke."
By that criterion, the Catalog of Tomorrow is a success even today.
Related Web Pages SETI Institute
Long, Strange Trips
PBS: Is Science Fiction Science? Michael Crichton, David Brin, Octavia Butler
Search for Life in the Universe: Part I
A Perfect World I: Tyson
A Perfect World II: Richardson
A Perfect World III: Goldin
A Perfect World IV: Venter
A Perfect World V: Hendricks
A Perfect World VI: Fuller
Note: Computing
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