An Optimist's Tour of the Future

Description

Mark Stevenson has been to the future a few years ahead of the rest of us - and reckons it has a lot going for it. His voyage of discovery takes him to Oxford to meet Transhumanists (they intend to live forever), to Boston where he confronts a robot with mood swings, to an underwater cabinet meeting in the Indian Ocean, and Australia to question the Outback's smartest farmer. He clambers around space planes in the Mojave desert, gets to grips with the potential of nanotechnology, delves deep into the possibilities of biotech, sees an energy renaissance on a printer, a revolution in communications, has his genome profiled, and glimpses the next stage of human evolution . and tries to make sense of what's in store. Insightful and often very funny, An Optimist's Tour of the Future is a book that tracks one curious man's journey to find out what's in store.

Mark Stevenson divides his time between running agencies for science communications and cultural learning and performing and writing comedy. He lives in Telegraph Hill, south London.

Certainly one of the most interesting science books I've read for a long time. * New Statesman * A rollicking roller-coaster ride around the cutting edge of science with dozens of laugh-out-loud moments * Scotsman * [A] grand tour of charismatic technologies and their prophets ... Stevenson bags an impressive list of interviewees * Financial Times * Infectiously enthusiastic * Sunday Times * His tools are curiosity, open-mindedness, clarity and reason. That makes his journey intriguing ... and ultimately exhilarating. -- Chris Anderson, Curator TED.com