The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life [Hardcover]

Peter J. Denning (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

An elite group of industry leaders from an assortment of technology-related fields gather together here to speculate about the implications of the technology for business, entertainment, science, engineering and education after 2020, when computers will be everywhere and almost completely invisible, These futurists focus on exploring how information technology will be reshaping our world. What will business and society be like when technology has completely saturated the events of everyday life? The relationship between man and machine, man and information, and information and machine is going to have radical consequences (both positive and negative) on future generations. This title consists of essays by 11 visionaries, derived from the March 2001 Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) conference. The book offers strategic direction on the future of our world saturated with computers and networks.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

How will technology shape the way humans and machines interact? Eighteen essays posit 18 different answers, some optimistic, some not so. Based on a think tank organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, the book rounds up the usual suspects, among them Rodney Brooks, Vint Cerf, Michael Dertouzos and Ray Kurzweil. Some unexpected suspects have been roped in as well, including oceanographer Marcia McNutt and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. As in any such collection, the individual essays are uneven, but this doesn't prevent the book from being great fun to dip into. Three high points are the musings of John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, Douglas Hofstadter and Alan Kay. Brown and Duguid, in a particularly well written piece, analyze Bill Joy's famous warning (put forth in the April 2000 issue of Wired) that the potential of new technologies for self-replication poses a profound challenge. Hofstadter confesses his "confusion and surprise" at hearing a Chopin-like mazurka written by a music composition system created by Dave Cope of the University of California at Santa Cruz. And in an analogy with the printing press, whose real effects weren't evident until nearly 200 years after its invention, Kay may have said it all in just the title of the collection's shortest contribution: "The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet."

Editors of Scientific American

From the Back Cover

How Tomorrow's Technologies Will Impact Your Life­­From the IT Leaders Who Are Laying the Foundations

Before you can build a future, you must first envision it. The Invisible Future is like a roundtable dialogue with 22 of today's high-tech thought leaders, examining existing and proposed technologies to discuss how they will dramatically impact life in the coming decades.

All agree on one point­­technology is facilitating a new business, social, and cultural landscape. Each discusses particular features of that landscape. For example:

• Technologist and inventor Ray Kurzweil describes nanorobots that will enter our bloodstreams to perform maintenance and repairs and directly connect to virtual reality.
• Internet father Vint Cerf presents surprising ways in which computers will replace humans to dominate service roles.
• Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter is baffled by the surprising prowess of an automated music composer.
• John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid dispute claims that our technology will get out of control and destroy the human race.
• Digital tagging will enable us to locate every possession and know its condition; nothing will be lost or stolen for long.
• "Smart" robots and sensors will infiltrate our daily lives­­and eventually our bodies.
• Machines will duplicate the musical prowess of Chopin and other great composers.

In the provocative and illuminating The Invisible Future, several of today's IT thought leaders describe a world in which technology is destined to become an even more ubiquitous component of our everyday lives. They discuss how the future might look and sound based on current technologies and innovation curves, and they help you formulate your own vision of tomorrow, as well as develop a plan for your place in that continually changing world.

Drawn from presentations given at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference Beyond Cyberspace, A Journey of Many Directions features the thoughts and findings of 27 visionary scientists, business leaders, and futurists, including:

• Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet and Cofounder, 3Com Corporation
• Ray Kurzweil, author, The Age of Spiritual Machines
• Rita Colwell, Director, National Science Foundation
• David Baltimore, Nobel Laureate and President, California Institute of Technology
• Douglas Hofstadter, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and Professor of Cognitive Science, Indiana University
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director, Hayden Planetarium
• Rodney Brooks, Director, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• Alan Kay, Vice President and Fellow, Walt Disney Engineering
• William Buxton, Chief Scientist, Alias/Wavefront
• John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist and former Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
• Michael Dertouzos, Director, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

Essential reading for executives, decision-makers, and anyone interested in the future of technology, The Invisible Future features essays that are as wide-ranging and powerful as the topics they discuss. It takes you inside the minds of today's most brilliant and original thinkers and gets you ready to understand and excel in tomorrow's world­­a world that will reserve its greatest rewards for those who have "seen" and prepared for it.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 1st edition (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071382240
• ISBN-13: 978-0071382243
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,882,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Denning was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Darien, Connecticut. He was interested in science from an early age and began building electronic circuits as a teenager. His computer built from pinball machine parts won the science fair in 1959, launching him into the new field of computing. At MIT for his doctorate in 1968, he worked on prototypes of computer utilities, precursors of today's "cloud computing". He became an educator and taught computer science at Princeton, Purdue, George Mason University, and Naval Postgraduate School. He was a pioneer in operating systems and computer networks and invented the "working set", a way of automatically managing data flows in memory that is widely used in modern operating systems from desktops to smartphones. A strong advocate of computing as a domain of science on par with the traditional physical, life, and social sciences, he has codified the Great Principles of Computing. In the 1980s, while directing a research lab at NASA Ames Research Center, he became interested in how he could teach his students and researchers to be successful innovators, broadening his attentions to the human practices of technology adoption. He has won over two dozen awards for his work in computing science and education. He is a past president of ACM, the oldest scientific society in computing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must-Read" for Futurists, November 7, 2001

By 

John Gehl (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life (Hardcover)

As co-editor of NewsScan Daily, the Internet publication focused on the social aspects of information technology, I consider "The Invisible Future" a "Must-Read" because it offers so many thought-provoking essays for people interested in computers, in the future, or the future of computers. Peter Denning has brilliantly edited the book to focus on what 's really important about computers -- both now and in the future, both as they are and as they really ought to be (and will be).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking perspectives from IT cognoscenti, March 26, 2003

By 

Anthony (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life (Hardcover)

This is a collection of eighteen essays that came out of a 2001 ACM conference. The subjects centered around the future of computers in our lives, but some discussed robotics, bioscience, astrophysics and oceanography. Several focused on ubiquity or "ambient intelligence" as one author called it. Written by some leading minds in science, information technology and others, the essays discuss future challenges and possible scenarios in their respective fields.

While a few of the papers leaned to the pretentious or the superficial in their commentary, overall I found the essays to be informative and well written. The learned cast of writers included the likes of Michael Dertouzos (Director of the MIT Computer Science Lab), Alan Kay (a founder of Xerox PARC), Bob Metcalfe (co-inventor of Ethernet, WYSIWYG interface), John Seely Brown (Chief Scientist of Xerox), Rodney Brooks (Director of the AI Lab at MIT), Vint Cerf and Ray Kurzweil,. Most papers had a good list of references for further reading.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, March 22, 2002

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life (Hardcover)

The gates to the human genome have fallen, nano-technology is redefining life itself, and Moore's law continues to work its magic. But is there a dark side to the technology juggernaut? The answer provided by the contributors to this cutting-edge tome is a definite, "maybe." If technology cannot be made more human-centric - designed to respond to human wants and needs - its promise could indeed be thwarted. We from getAbstract strongly recommend this book to anyone whose work helps to hone technology's cutting edge, and for those who just hope to stay on the safe side of the blade.