2025 : Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology [Hardcover]

Jospeh F Coates (Author), John B Mahaffie (Author), Andy Hines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

Written in the form of a history book, 2025 is an engaging retropective of the years 1990-2025. Examining trends in medicine, housing, food service, economics, entertainment, industry, education, and other key aspects of society, this book paints a fascinating picture of the future. Thorough, upbeat, and very readable, 2025 is the remarkable result of five years compiling and evaluating global and regional forecasts in many different disciplines. The authors offer a well-balanced, integrated forecast of how science and technology will affect the United States and the rest of the world over the next three decades.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 508 pages
• Publisher: Oakhill Press (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886939098
• ISBN-13: 978-1886939097
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,631,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 2025--a masterful scenario, June 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: 2025 : Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology (Hardcover)

"The future is now present," claims Bill Clinton. We need to "honor the past" and "imagine the future." Here is a book that helps millennial planners do the later part well.

Coates is a regular feature at World Future Society conferences. Last year I heard him give an 8-part lecture series last year on scenarios of life and business in 2025, and later bought the cassette series.

Now he and his colleagues have brought out the book on the subject. It taps the worlds of science, technology, and engineering to look at the thirty year period of 1995 to 2025. Written in the form of a history book in 2025, Coates gives fifteen scenarios which reflect what life will be like in the United States as well as other societies (both affluent and less prosperous).

* Smart Living / house and home of the future * Information: The Global Commodity / integration of telecommunications * Harvesting the Fruit of Genetics / biotechnology * Powering Three Worlds /energy technology and efficiency * The World of Things/ materials technology * Working Toward a Sustainable World /environmental strategies and tools * Managing the Planet/ macroengineering the environment * Putting Space to Work /cooperation and commercialization of space * Our Built World/ infrastructure and construction * People and Things on the Move / transportation * The World of Production / custom manufacturing * A Quest for Variety and Sufficiency / food and agriculture * Striving for Good Health / disease prevention and life enhancement * Our Days and Our Lives / quality of life movement * Balancing Work and Leisure / lifestyle and entertainment

One added feature to *2025* is that at the end of each chapter, Coates lists the "Critical Developments, 1990-2025," plus the "Unrealized Hopes and Fears" of each field he covers.

*2025* is the best information rich and researched mid-range scenario for the future I have read. It also is enjoyable reading. I have sharing bits and pieces with my son ! and daughter who will be 41 and 39 in the year 2025. They get a kick out of hearing about computer "knowbots," toys made with "smart materials," or machine "language coaches." But *2025* is far deeper than just a preview of future gadgets.

This book could be a veritable field guide to your next 30 years, especially if you are in business, an entrepreneur, a person responsible for planning, or engaged in scientific and technical issues.

I am using it right now as a help in writing radio commercials which illustrate futures thinking for upcoming millennial celebrations.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Conservative predictions for an un-conservative century, November 24, 2005

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 2025 : Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology (Hardcover)

The prediction of future events or trends has always been of interest, not only from a popular point of view but also from a business/financial one. If one can obtain a fairly clear assessment or forecast of future developments, one can leverage against or for those developments. The authors of this book want to give the reader an overview of what the world will be like in the year 2025, which is now only two decades away. Two decades may seem like a somewhat short period of time, if judged purely by the ticking of clocks or wristwatches. If however one views it from the standpoint of the ticks of the clock of the dynamical system of scientific and technological change, it is a very long period of time. If one views the last century in blocks of twenty years, one will find that an incredible amount of scientific and technological has occurred between one block and the next. Even more importantly, many of these developments were unanticipated, in spite of concentrated efforts to predict them.

This is not to say that efforts to predict or at least understand future developments are unimportant or misguided. The anticipation, if not prediction, of future developments is important in that what is predicted can actually have an affect on a what actually happens in the time frame at issue. Indeed, the branch of learning theory called `anticipatory systems' is concerned with the extent to which the results of modeling or predictions can influence the time evolution of a particular system. The results in this theory have had only limited influence on forecasting in the popular or semi-popular literature, as this book is clearly an example of. The predictions or forecasts in this book however may motivate some to actually bring them about, or even to attempt to correct the course of events if certain predictions do not reach fruition. This is particularly true, and of major importance to financial institutions. It is of less importance to scientific researchers, who are quite myopic or even completely disinterested in future developments. Sitting in between these two extremes is the curious person or the polymath, who both enjoy speculating on the future.
Making an objective assessment of the content of this book will entail that the reader have a strong background in many different fields, even though the authors have attempted to make the book accessible to a general audience. One could perhaps read the book passively, i.e. without really attempting to assess whether the predictions are plausible or violate established scientific principles, but this would probably result in extreme boredom on the part of the reader. The authors point to developments in information, materials, and energy technology, and in genetic engineering, all of these fields quite extensive in themselves. In addition to these developments, the authors believe that environmentalism will stimulate some of the developments in these fields.

Given the current political configuration of the world, one would expect that future changes will affect each country differently, and in some cases the affects will be extremely traumatic. The authors realize this, and have dissected the world of 2025 into three population groups. One of these, called `World 1', includes the affluent nations of Europe, the United States (the authors assume, interestingly, that the nations of World 1 will actually be named as such in 2025). Another, called `World 2', contains the majority of the world's population; while `World 3' is made up of regions or nations that are very destitute. The needs of each of these `worlds' will influence those of another, and this feedback will drive even more change. This (global) viewpoint is actually quite refreshing, and has proven to be an accurate one given the trends in globalization that have taken place since this book was published (1997).

As the authors explain, the book had its origins in research in a private think tank that specialized in the study of the future. Such a specialized function in a private firm entails that it provide more scientific approaches than what might appear in a popular book on futurism. The authors therefore use more exacting language, such as distinguishing between a `forecast', which does not allude to a particular time or place in the future, and a `prediction', which makes a quantitative statement about a future outcome. And conforming to an essentially reductionist approach, they construct fifteen `scenarios' for 2025 that are based on 107 assumptions that they made about the future. These assumptions are encapsulated into `high-probability' statements, but they also give a list of developments that they consider will have a "somewhat lower probability" of coming to fruition in 2025. They do not however calculate these probabilities explicitly, and so it is really a subjective assessment of the likelihood that they will occur. Some of them seem very plausible (again a subjective assessment), and others seem extremely unlikely.

Of all the technologies discussed throughout this book, nanotechnology is given sparse treatment. This is surprising if judged by the current hype concerning nanotechnology, and the irrational fears that many have expressed in its contemplation. The authors believe that self-assembling nanomachines will exist in 2025, but their abilities will be too slow to be practical in commercial manufacturing. They refer to nanotechnology as an "unfulfilled promise" in 2025.

And what of artificial intelligence, another of the current technologies where predictions have been extremely optimistic? The authors predict the use of "knowbots" for news filtering, the routine use of machines to do medical diagnostics, triage systems for health-care institutions, and totally automated factories. But here the authors are overly pessimistic in their predictions, for these technologies exist now, twenty years ahead of where they thought they would be.

Genetic engineering has also proved to be advancing at a rate much more than the authors had anticipated. Transgenic plants and animals, genetically engineered viruses, and the widespread cultivation of genetically modified crops are a reality at the present time.

12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars One of the most disappointing books I have ever read., October 2, 1998

By 

G. DeRome "minister-of-truth" (Greendale, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 2025 : Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology (Hardcover)

This book looked very promising; the format and premise of a history book written from the year 2025. Unfortunately, the book is so superficial in its treatment of the subjects that I found myself falling asleep whenever I attempted to read it. The book reads like a collection of facts or sidebars; there are no stories, fiction or non, to pull you through the chapters. Read Probable Tomorrows instead.