Customer Reviews

The Next 500 Years : Life in the Coming Millennium

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In short, this book is freshly optimistic but (in my opinion) misguides it's audience about the crucial global issues in our time. Check out Michio Kaku's works - they're more detailed and much more fascinating looks at future technologies.

This book is highly optimistic, over simplified, and contains many logical errors. Although it is not detailed from a scientific point of view and is very conservative from a political point of view, it does provide a great deal of breadth. I must point out that his presumptions regarding the ozone layer, the greanhouse effect, population control and the social effect of high power computing and space travel seem either outdated and very superficial, to the point of being uninformed. For example, he states that the greenhouse effect is not truly a pressing global problem, yet he predicts that the terraforming of Mars within a century using the greanhouse effect: This should bring up the temperature of the red planet by 50 deg Centigrade. One can only wonder if he feels a raising of the temperature on Earth by a portion of that amount would be 'acceptable'. I find this type of uninformed, conservative, let's-just-keep-doing-it-until-it's-a-real-problem mentality unforgivable considering that our planet's future is at stake. That said, some of the chapters are very interesting, and it is fresh to read optimistically of the future. His chapter on the impending ice age and the potential calamity of an asteroid collision is fresh and rare look at some of the distant challenges our species may face. And his perspective of capitalism likely being the driving force behind the maturing of many future industries I believe to be a more likely future that not.

Some material that's more in depth on a more local future can be found in Michio Kaku's "Visions" - it is much more fascinating, informed and a much more focused work. If the future of computing is your thing, check out the compilation work - "Beyond Calculation : The Next Fifty Years of Computing" by Metcalfe - this is technical, but really pounds out the emerging directions of computation. Sagan does fantastic work on future space exploration, and the social implications of science.

In one sense it is impossible to take seriously a book which tells us what the future five - hundred years from now is going to look like. The author Adrian Berry claims the more distant the future the more likely the predictions about it will be true. But I somehow relying on perhaps a more primitive sense, and a knowledge of the unpredictability of human history , tend to think otherwise.
So I regard this work as a work of speculation- and I read it for interesting ideas of which there are many.
Berry predicts that the future will among other things contain the following: " The ever -increasing growth of wealth, the storage of human personalities on computer disks for retrieval after death, that we may be succeeded by intelligent robots; the farming of the sea, the coming of another Ice Age, the colonization of the Moon, of Mars and of the asteroids; and ultimately the building of starships"
Notice that Berry sneaks in here one most important prediction as if it were just another item on the list i.e. the prediction about personalities being stored on computer- disks. This is a prediction, I personally think is nonsense as I believe that the idea of a 'personality' without a body is an absurdity.
Berry considers the five hundred years in two parts- one as to what will happen on earth, and the second as to what will happen extraterrestially. Berry makes the prediction that there will be colonies on Mars, on the Moon, on asteroids. He believes it will give Mankind ( or its successor robotic - intelligence) a security we do not have today i.e. if one point is wiped out there will be no problems with the others in the distance going on. He believes by the way that these space- colonization efforts will be done privately, and that in the distant future there will be no government and politicians. This prospect is apparently an important element in his optimism about the human future. But it too seems to me more wishful thinking than anything else. For my sense is that any organization and use of resources will require policy, collective decision, some form of goverment and leadership.
One interesting chapter , the second from the end, is on the question of whether we are alone in the universe or not. The "Where are they?" question of Fermi. He provides Sagan's arguments as to why there are most likely billions of intelligent creatures. But also provides information and argument of the critics who say that we have absolutely no sign that there is anyone intelligent out there.
Berry also seems to feel that once we are all scientifically enlightened there will be no 'religion' as we know it today.
As with so many of these speculations there is a certain 'thinness' in the whole picture of human life presented. The actual texture and feel of human life with all its passions and pains , is not in this kind of literature. For that we need to read books about the past, the truly great books of mankind- and not the lesser ones about the future.

I was enjoying this book from the first chapter, where the author totally destroys the "greenhouse" effect from a purely scientific point of view. I was saying to myslef, 'hey, this guy is ok...'

Then, in chapter 2, he goes on to theorize that Jesus was not resurrected from the tomb, but was instead eaten by hungry dogs who were used to foraging for food among the recently departed. Oh boy. Did I finish the book, yes, and I read it with a bit more critical eye. In fact, I went back and re-read the first chapter. So, what does this past have to do with his observations of the next 500 years?

You'll have to read the book.

But, let me say that it was an enjoyable read, and I found his frequent validation of sci-fi writers ideas and theories, mixed in with pure sciece to be a fun way to have written the book.

I first read this book about 12 years ago and would rate it as one of the best reads of my life. Sure there sre elements of pure speculation that seem to be just science fiction, but then again how much of science fiction of just 20 years ago is now very much a normal part of our lives.
It is his use of the patterns though that is the most powerfully compelling aspect of the book - whether the patterns of poverty over the ages, or of financial dealings or of population movements or of agriculture or of warfare or of ....... It made me wake up and realise that the whole history of social planet Earth for the last 500 years is the diorama of the individual countries on Earth right now - the richest countries now were pretty unpleasant places back then, and that given the right conditions all countries now will follow a similar pattern.
I often refer to this book as "My Bible"

The future is demonstrated through pure scientific evidence. A must for those who wonder what the coming millenium holds for the human race. I only wish I could invest in it.

I suppose it's only fair to mention that really, this book is kind of cool in its predictions, in its splendidly comprehensive bibliography, and even in a certain Britishness of style. I don't mind it; Robert Heinlein would have loved it. And therein lies the reason why I only gave it two stars.
Adrian Berry does not understand a d--n thing about ecology, or about its value to the future. As far as I can tell, he's not particularly religious, but he might as well be in his attitude toward the Earth--you know, "be fruitful and multiply, and all living things were given unto you for your dominion", or whatever. He does not get it.
This is why I cannot really recommend it unless you are prchasing it very cheaply indeed. For a more ecologically aware view, Marshall Savage's The Millennial Project is certainly worthwhile.