$0 eBook:The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do [2014 edition]

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grababargain on 05/05/2014 - 08:07 amazon.com (485 clicks)
Last edited 05/05/2014 - 20:10

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By Daniel Berleant, 394 pages, published Feb 1, 2014, save $9.95.

Amazon's Book Description:

2014 edition - peer reviewed - promotional price

Do you wonder about the future… what things will be like some day, how long it might take, and what we can do about it?

Substantive yet imaginative, readable, occasionally humorous, and science oriented, this book proposes possible future scenarios spanning from the current century to nearly eternity. Most chapters offer a concluding section with recommendations and often, agree or disagree, the author's occasionally inimitable opinions. Some of the recommended actions can be done by individuals, others by nations or other groups, and still others by the entire world. Over 300 references.

Discover "What it Means That an Hour’s Work Yields a Week’s Food" (chapter 1). Foresee the "Teeming Cities of Mars" (chap. 21). Learn why it’s "Keyboards Yesterday, Mind Reading Tomorrow" (chap. 3). Have you ever wondered — "Will Artificial Intelligence Threaten Civilization?" (See chap. 12.) Find out what happens "When Genomes Get Cheap" (chap. 6). Prepare for an "Asteroid Apocalypse" (chap. 25). Explore why you would benefit from "Wiki-Wiki-Wikipedia" (chap. 4). How we will "Live Anywhere, Work Anywhere Else" (chap. 2). Realize how the future "Tastes Like the Singularity" (chap. 15). Get smarter with "Smart Pills’n Such" (chap. 5). Experience a "Soylent Spring" (chap. 9). Understand nukes better by "Deconstructing Nonproliferation" (chap. 13). Get ready for a "Space Empire" (chap. 14). What is "Sic Transit Humanitas: The Transcent of Man" (chap. 26)? There’s global warming, and there’s "Warm, Poison Planet" (chap. 17). But let’s not forget about "Big Ice" (chap. 22). Things may really grow on trees with "New Plant Paradigms" (chap. 24). We all have "Questions" (chap. 31). And much more!

This book is aimed at the reader who is interested in the future, and intrigued by science and technology.

AU link: http://www.amazon.com.au/Human-Race-Future-Could-Happen-eboo…

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  simulacrum on 05/05/2014 - 09:17

  +1

  Sounds like another example of a sci-fi reading engineering type making wild predictions of the future by extrapolating from cherry-picked observations of the present, with no allowance for cognitive bias.. a Kurzweil wannabe (as if Kurzweil wasn't bad enough).

  … But you can't get a price thats more of a bargain than free!

  • 

    muncan on 05/05/2014 - 10:05

    +2

    Here's my prediction of the future… Apple releases a larger iPhone 6, everyone reports Apple no longer innovating; praising Android, Apple sells more units than ever, my comment gets negged.

  • 

    Gnostikos on 05/05/2014 - 18:59

    a Kurzweil wannabe (as if Kurzweil wasn't bad enough).

    What makes you think Kurzweil is that far off? His predictions to me are not in the realm of fantasy at all, especially regarding nanobiotechnology and BioAPI.

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      simulacrum on 06/05/2014 - 11:37

      +1

      A number of his predictions from the 90s (particularly those pertaining to future achievements outside his field) have already failed to occur. The few that have been clearly stated and turned out to be accurate weren't terribly profound, others he defends through loopholes which almost make the original prediction unfalsifiable.

      Additionally where his thoughts touch on fields outside his expertise his views are often a bit simplistic. Run his theory of mind past a neurologist, or a philosopoher, and they will both find them laughably simplistic. Run ideas on evolution by a evolutionary biologist, and he'll tell you his understanding of biology is non-existant. Get an economist to read his predictions from 1998 (height of one of the most obvious bubbles of recent memory) about what we'll have in 2009 (continuous economic boom, US company with market cap of 1 trillion, and they'll tell you he fell for the same unjustified exuberance that captivaated the uneducated punter at the time.

      He's an interesting author, but he is a little overenthusiastic with his predictions, wanders way to far outside his field of expertise, and lacks scientific discipline.. parts of his theses are so bereft of data that they border on the religious.

      • 

        Gnostikos on 06/05/2014 - 19:51

        I'm not saying I agree with Kurzweil's world view or wish it to come to fruition, as he strikes me as a highly unethical and immoral type, but prophecies like this are basically already here:

        "The three, great overlapping revolutions sometimes goes by the letters 'GNR'. The 'G' stands for Genetics. Really another word for it is biotechnology. It is mastering the information processes of our biology. We ultimately will be able to reprogram biology, away from disease and from aging. 'N' stands for nanotechnology. In the next-twenty five years, we will have blood cell-sized devices that go inside your body, keeping you healthy from inside, go in your brain, and interact with your biological neurons, and allow us to merge with non-biological intelligence. The third one which goes by the letter 'R', which stands for robotics, really though refers to Artificial Intelligence, and that's the most significant revolution of all. In about twenty years, I've set the date 2029, a machine, an "A.I", will be able to match human intelligence, and go beyond it. Artificial intelligence which will gives us not just more human intellgience, but super-human intelligence, will enable us to solve problems that we're not able to solve today. Biology is very impressive, intricate, clever but also very sub-optimal, compared to what ultimately we will be able to to engineer with Nanotechnology. We are building devices now that are at the nano-scale. This is a design for a robotic red blood cell. Conservative analysis shows that we would replace a portion of your red blood cells with the robotic version, and you could do an Olympic sprint for fifteen minutes without taking a breath, or sit at the bottom of your pool for four hours. We will able to download software against specific pathogens, including ones that have never been seen before, not be subject to Auto-Immune disorders, and if you look at what in principle would be feasible with nanotechnology, we could go far beyond the limitations of our version one bodies."
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rQ_OMYK5Go

        The reason why predictions like this would be dismissed by the general populace as fantastical is because they lack the necessary context to understand how much technology and scientific discovery is not meant for their consumption. There's a saying that for every year consumer technology advances, military technology advances by 46, and that's very pertinent in this case because much of this technology has applications are so unbelievably attractive and beneficial for military use, that they inevitably are swept under the rug of classification and non-disclosure, early in their development, well before any proofs of concepts are ever made public.

        Or conversely because such technology presents extraordinarily monumental ethical and moral dilemmas (cloning for one) that the benefactors behind them know for a fact would fail the test of public scrutiny were they ever transparently disclosed to the public, they are either masqueraded as something more benign (it's not cloning, it's stem-cell research) or covered up entirely.

        Kurzweil graduated from MIT and has been prolific inventor in pioneering fields like digital processing and recognition of voice and fonts, CDD scanners and he's received the National Medal of Technology & Innovation, is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame at the US Patents Office, has recieved honors from 3 Presidents and has been hired as a consultant for a number of multi-million dollar multi-national corporations.

        Sufficed to say a guy like Kurzweil is basing a lot of his writings and musings on information that is probably not privy to the general public's eyes.

        The problem I have with his magnum opus that is "The Singularity", is that what he describes is a veritable pandora's box of dystopian nightmares and draconian wet-dreams, so monstrous and pervasive that it behooves humanity to never attempt to even come close to achieving such a revolution, as that kind of power throughout our history has inevitably been abused to the detriment of humanity, by a select few autocrats and oligarchs.

        The tranhumanism outlook he endorses is something that he sugar-coats and markets as beneficial to humanity with headline-grabbing "benefits" like curing all disease, enabling longer lifespans, improving intelligence and in general surpassing biological limitations; but all of that strikes me as the "sales pitch" for an end result that is going to be anything but beneficial to people when our blood is swarming with remotely-controllable, programmed and patented nanotechnology that would have quite literally the power of life and death over every human being on the planet. The quality control and reliability issues for something like thatalone should be enough to discourage people to never attempt it. Imagine people dropping dead because their nanobot AI "glitched" and shut off their white blood cell production overnight.

        If you have never heard of BioAPI, I strongly suggest you read about it. A lot of what Kurzweil describes is already possible.

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  sandsay on 05/05/2014 - 12:08

  Many things can happen but we will be extinct and that's a good thing. Hopefully we have first contact with any intelligent ET before that happens.

  • 

    Gnostikos on 05/05/2014 - 19:01

    -1

    but we will be extinct and that's a good thing

    I don't know about you, but I kind of like being alive and not incinerating in a nuclear inferno.

    • 

      sandsay on 08/05/2014 - 20:24

      -1

      You are not immortal.

      • 

        Gnostikos on 08/05/2014 - 21:09

        And you're not God nor do you know what's best for humanity's interests. Your sweeping statement proves nothing other than your misanthropy.

        Here's a quote you ought to read:
        "Almost all people of all eras are hypnotics. Their beliefs are induced beliefs. The proper authorities saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and people believed properly."—Charles Fort

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  Rogerwilco on 05/05/2014 - 12:43

  Thanks OP, I'll give it a go.

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  smurfinaus on 05/05/2014 - 17:58

  Im all for something which is an actual proper book as opposed to bulk of the free books which seem to be like brochures…..or blogs…