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

by John Brockman

Book Overview

A brilliant ensemble of the world's most visionary scientists provides twenty-five original never-before-published essays about the advances in science and technology that we may see within our... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375713425
• ISBN13: 9780375713422
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Predictions, Past Present Future

Prophecy has been having a bad press lately. Despite the seeming millions of folks who either chat with a divinity, channel the dead, "solve" crimes, see ghosts or converse with aliens, not one predicted 911, the London bombings or the Indonesian tsunami. It's not just the fringe that strikes out. "Experts" routinely choose wrong whether in politics, sports, finance, entertainment or cultural trends. It's disillusioning, but the record of science is not much better in terms of "things to come". This is not to say that energy is not expended on that task. It is safe to say that the intervention of the computer, TV, car, discovery of DNA, cloning, medical advances, etc renders past predictions useless. That is one reason I liked this book so well. It is divided into 2 parts - the first philosophical, the second practical. The first part asks basic questions to which we still have no answer - How did life start? What is life? Do aliens exist? What is the nature of gravity and the universe? How will manipulation of genes, nanotechnology and quantum mechanics affect us? These and other questions such as morality, death, artificial intelligence and life extension are also discussed in a series of brilliant essays by a wide range of (for want of a better word) "experts". The last half of the book looks at the practical side - education, politics, entertainment, happiness, love, medicine. the biggest change that a book written fifty years ago and this book is the emphasis upon biology - the manipulation of our bodies, our genes, the emerging synthesis of humans and machine. Perhaps one of the most startling essays was THE MERGER OF FLESH AND MACHINES by Rodney Brooks who heads the MIT artificial intelligence library. It has migrated from machine to flesh over the last few years and this is the way of the future. So what will it be like in 50 years? Most everyone agrees that we will live longer and be healthier, that computers will become smaller, faster and smarter, that we will find the cure to many diseases and that things will change even faster. If any one trend dominates, it is the increasing importance of biology for a host of social concerns - designer babies, specialized children, disease-resistant beings, mental and physical augmentation...the choices are almost endless. A few of the writers caution against taking any prediction too seriously since scientists have always overstated their case. From Drake (who said he would receive an alien message before the 21st century) to the doomsayers who promised we'd all die of famine by 1980 to those who declared a cheapt renewable energy source was here. A great summer read for the beach.

Captivating

Twenty-five scientists expound on what the world will be like in 2050. The quality in my opinion is a little spotty and too many of them preface their story with a disclaimer about the fallacy of making predictions - but well over half of them are absolutely invigorating. Each new chapter is like taste-testing a new flavor of ice cream blindfolded. They all tend to focus on big developments in their own field, as they should. My favorite approach for this assignment was by Judith Rich Harris who gave a lecture in 2050 at the age of 125. She first thanked previous scientists for the contributions they had made to human longevity. Overall, this is a superb read. Lee Smolin - We will have a more detailed history of the universe which will constrain current theories about INFLATION...we may or may not have observed dark matter and dark energy. String Theory (its only mention in this book) will be ruled in or out by observations within a few years. Ian Stewart - The concept of "proof" in mathematics will come under scrutiny and will survive. The use of computers in mathematical proofs will be ingrained. We will have a rigorous mathematical theory of emergent phenomenon and the high level dynamics of complex relationships. Martin Rees - We will know how life began on earth. Allison Gopnik - The emergence of the disciplines of philosophy of science, AI, statistics and developmental psychology will lead to a full-fledged theory of how we learn. Paul Bloom - The fact that evolutionary considerations exist as a source of evidence in the study of psychology will no longer be questioned. Geoffrey Miller - The charge that evolutionary psychology is a set of "just-so stories" will vanish, as we see the genetic footprints of evolution all over our brains. Milahy Csikszentmihalyi - We will have the ability to control the genetic make-up of the human species. Robert Sapolsky - Our traditional sources of solace will progressively atrophy...we will become sadder. Steven Strogatz - Our brains are hardwired by evolution to visualize only three dimensions. We will be rescued from the demon of dimensionality by computers. We may end up as bystanders, unable to follow along with the machines we've built, flabbergasted by their startling conclusions. Richard Dawkins - A patient will purchase the read-out of his entire genome for $160 (today's money). The doctor will hand out a prescription suited precisely to his/her genome. Detectives finding a blood-stain may be able to issue a computer image of the suspect's face. The "Lucy Genome Project" will create Lucy (Jurassic Park style). The existence of a living, breathing Lucy in our midst will change forever our complacent human-centered view of morals and politics. Paul Davies - We will go to Mars. John Holland - We will still know surprisingly little about the relationship between consciousness and neural activity. We will wear a wrist-watch sized multi-function device which assists us with

Thinking about the next fifty years

John Brockman has brought together a group of thinkers to create an online think tank called the EDGE. In an attempt to overcome the great divide between literary intellectuals and scientists that C.P. Snow defined as the "Two Cultures", Brockman created the EDGE to be "The Third Culture".The Next Fifty Years, is a collection of essays from some of the thinkers from the EDGE. They explore the next fifty years on different topics ranging from Csikszentmihalyi's engineered IQ and Dawkin's thoughts on the genome to colonization on Mars and the importance of Mathematics in the year 2050.The essays were stimulating and I found this book to be well worth the effort to read. Any book that triggers new thoughts and ideas is one that I will treasure. As many of the scientists point out, trying to predict the future is a futile endeavor, but for me it gives a great insight into the present to see what these minds are pondering today. The ideas that might shape the next fifty years, might not turn out to be accurate, but the ideas and research that are happening today will effect us one way or another in the next 10 years. As humans we over estimate what can be achieved in year, but under estimate what can be achieved in a decade, and in general completely miss the mark when trying to estimate anything that exceeds those time lines. But I think Brockman chose fifty years, to give the thinkers some creative freedom.If you are interested in science, and you are interested in what some of our best brains are mulling over at present, then you will enjoy this diverse collection of essays on the future.

An exciting glimpse into the future

As Yogi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." However, if anyone can make meaningful predictions, it's the twenty-five leading scientists and authors whose essays grace The Next Fifty Years.It's an exciting book. Almost every piece is enlightening, stimulating, and remarkably well written. I read a lot of books and articles about science, but still came across dozens of new ideas, convincing arguments and sparkling insights. Here are a few items that got me thinking:Physicist Lee Smolin points out that subtle changes in light waves as they cross space may provide the first test of quantum theories of gravity--we won't need to build accelerators the size of the solar system to gain this information.Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller speculates that gene activation chips will soon allow researchers to map the changes in our brains caused by "every state of mind lasting more than a few hours." The result will be a far richer understanding of human consciousness.Mathematician Steven Strogatz expects that new methods for creating complex, evolving systems on computers will mean that we humans will "end up as bystanders, unable to follow along with the machines we've built, flabbergasted by their startling conclusions."Richard Dawkins predicts that by 2050 it will cost just a few hundred dollars to sequence one's own personal genome, computers will be able to simulate an organism's entire development from its genetic code, and scientists may even be able to reconstruct extinct animals a la Jurassic Park.Computer scientist Rodney Brooks thinks wars may be fought over genetic engineering and artificial enhancements that have the potential to turn humans into "manipulable artifacts."AI researcher Roger Schank foresees the end of schools, classrooms and teachers, to be replaced by an endless supply of virtual experiences and interactions.In many cases, the bold ideas of one writer are challenged or balanced by another, making the book a kind of high-level dialogue. Cosmologist Martin Rees, for example, takes on Smolin's idea of evolving universes, and neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky is much less optimistic about our ability to conquer depression than is psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.It's not all perfection, however. A few of the essays seemed relatively uninspired. These included psychologist Paul Bloom's pessimistic view of our ability ever to understand consciousness or the nature of thought--"We might be like dogs trying to understand calculus." And I found computer scientist David Gelernter's essay on the grand "information beam" that will transform everyone's lives an unconvincing one-note techno-fix. Also the book really needs an index--that simple addition would have made it much more useful.However, it's a book that tackles big questions about our future in as thoughtful, insightful and well informed a manner as I've ever encountered. It's worth reading and re-reading.Robert Adler, author of Scienc

Splendid collection of informed speculation

Perhaps we can get a general picture of what science will be like in the next fifty years by noting that of the 25 scientists that John Brockman has cleverly assembled here (and even more cleverly induced to write speculatively about the future), five are biologists, eight are psychologists, three are neuroscientists, but only one is an astronomer/cosmologist (Martin Rees) and only two are physicists. Clearly the emphasis is on biology and the brain. No doubt something will happen in the next fifty years that will make Brockman's eminently reasonable choice of scientists seem improperly skewed; yet it is just this baseline of expectation that will allow us to compare. (By "us" I mean those, not myself, who will be alive fifty years from now!)The truth is, something always happens that surprises us. To extrapolate from present trends to future actualities is to be assured that we will miss something. That "something" is by its very nature unpredictable. Nuclear energy is an example. No nineteenth century physicist could have predicted the atomic bomb. Go back further in time and no one could have predicted electrical appliances or the telephone. Before photography and electricity, the idea of television was next to impossible.On the other hand some developments are not only predictable but have been foreseen. These include airplanes and rockets to the moon, submarines and motor cars. These are examples of new technology being predicted from existing technology. Some of what is written about in these 25 essays by imminent scientists is of this order: an extrapolation of current trends and technology to a time fifty years in the future. What will we know and what will we have developed by then? is the question being addressed in this fascinating collection.In a sense what these essays do is the near equivalent of what science fiction has done for us in the past. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller puts this idea in a slightly different way with this observation: "A century ago, we had to rely on the novels of Henry James to portray human consciousness in high-resolution detail and rich-spectrum color. In the future, we won't be able to rely on mass culture to do that--Viacom and Disney don't see the profit in it. But we may be able to turn to science to fill the void." (p. 87) What makes this collection so effective and such an informed pleasure to read is the discipline specificity made possible because the ideas are coming from 25 individual directions. Developmental psychologist Paul Bloom, for example, sees the need for "a theory of moral development...informed by work across disciplines, including cognitive psychology and evolutionary theory." (p. 81) But he isn't optimistic. "It may be that the nature of moral thought or consciousness is simply beyond our understanding...We might be like dogs trying to understand calculus." (p. 82)Dissimilarly John H. Holland believes that "The number one priority on a fifty-year scale is bringing Earth'