Summary |
Imagine direct communication links between the human brain and machines, or tailored materials capable of adapting by themselves to changing environmental conditions, or computer chips and environmental sensors embedded into everyday clothing, or medical technologies that eliminate currently untreatable conditions such as blindness and paralysis. Now imagine all of these developments occurring at the same time. Far-fetched?
Author Stanley Schmidt-physicist, writer, and editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact-explores these and many more amazing yet probable scenarios in this fascinating guide to the near future. He shows how past convergences have led to today’s world, then considers tomorrow’s main currents in biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology, and nanotechnology. Looking even further downstream he foresees both exciting and potentially dangerous developments:
Schmidt notes that even a routine technology such as the CAT scan is the result of three wholly separate innovations started many decades ago that recently converged: the x-ray, the computer, and advances in medicine. On a more ominous note, he also observes that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre was made possible by the malicious convergence of two separate trends in modern engineering and technology: the concentration of people in high-rises within cities and the success of the passenger airline industry.
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