CHANGE! 71 Glimpses of the Future [Hardcover]

Isaac Asimov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1981

Glimpses into the future.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 201 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co.; 1st edition (September 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039531545X
• ISBN-13: 978-0395315453
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,629,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Asimov predicts some of the things we have today, June 21, 2011

By 

K.C. version 3.6 (Hawaii, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CHANGE! 71 Glimpses of the Future (Hardcover)

I bought this at a library book sale, what appealed to me was the fact that Asimov wrote these "seventy-one short and highly readable essays" for American Way the American Airlines inflight magazine. No characters or long plots to follow, just brief essays from a futurist and sci-fi great on what life might be like in the future... considering he wrote them starting in the mid-1970s.

And he mostly gets it right. The only minor issue I have is that in certain concepts he didn't seem to be able to tie all of them together under the abilities of computers. For instance, in The Fine Print he talks about a "personal wavelength" and "dial a newspaper" and "information, entertainment, instructions by lightwave." In The Push-button Library he talks about "computer outlets in special retail establishments" where they can be rented for use. In The New Teachers he talks about "personal teaching machines" connected to a "planetary library." In retrospect we can now recognize these as email addresses, websites, online guides, public internet access terminals, personal computers and the internet or world wide web and wikis.

Anyway, the book consists of 71 essays which are about 4 pages or less each, a dozen paragraphs or so. Essays 1 through 9 covers ecology, the planet, and flora and fauna. Essays 10 through 20 covers the human body including telepathy and using amino acids for pain management. 21 through 28 covers technology including those smart televisions I mentioned above. 29 through 48 covers mostly resources from our planet such as alternative fuels, but also goes into earthquakes and mass extinction events. Essays 49 through 71 moves out to outer space and exogeology; essay 50 talks about a "Large Space Telescope" (now we know it as Hubble Space Telescope), but in essay 71 I think Asimov has confused black holes with wormholes.