The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolution (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities) [Paperback]

Freeman J. Dyson (Author)

Book Description

Series: New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities | Publication Date: October 19, 2000

In this visionary look into the future, Freeman Dyson argues that technological changes fundamentally alter our ethical and social arrangements and that three rapidly advancing new technologies--solar energy, genetic engineering, and world-wide communication--together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world's wealth.
Dyson begins by rejecting the idea that scientific revolutions are primarily concept driven. He shows rather that new tools are more often the sparks that ignite scientific discovery. Such tool-driven revolutions have profound social consequences--the invention of the telescope turning the Medieval world view upside down, the widespread use of household appliances in the 1950s replacing servants, to cite just two examples. In looking ahead, Dyson suggests that solar energy, genetics, and the Internet will have similarly transformative effects, with the potential to produce a more just and equitable society. Solar power could bring electricity to even the poorest, most remote areas of third world nations, allowing everyone access to the vast stores of information on the Internet and effectively ending the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Similarly, breakthroughs in genetics may well enable us to give our children healthier lives and grow more efficient crops, thus restoring the economic and human vitality of village cultures devalued and dislocated by the global market.
Written with passionate conviction about the ethical uses of science, The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet is both a brilliant reinterpretation of the scientific process and a challenge to use new technologies to close, rather than widen, the gap between rich and poor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One fashionable school of thought holds that scientific revolutions are spurred primarily by shifts in the basic concepts that science understands the world with, and that those shifts are largely the outcome of struggles in the social and political realms. Freeman Dyson, however, is having none of it. For him, scientific breakthroughs owe just as much to the introduction of new technologies--the telescope in early modern Europe, for instance; the computer more recently. He's not the first to make that argument, but his lifetime of accomplishments as an eminent theoretical physicist puts some heft behind his claims.

Dyson likewise argues that new technologies can have as much of an effect on the social and political realms as new ideologies do. In particular, he cites three burgeoning technologies--solar energy, genetic engineering, and the Internet--for their potential to affect a more equitable worldwide distribution of wealth and power in the coming century. His visions of the future meander a bit, and they include such seemingly outlandish possibilities as forests of genetically enhanced trees oozing high-octane fuel from their roots and laser-launched earthlings colonizing the comets of the Kuiper Belt. But it's the business of visionaries to be outlandish, after all, and you have to admit: this one does have better credentials than most. --Julian Dibbell --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Although the title implies discrete concepts, this book from the professor emeritus of physics at Princeton finds a common thread among themAthat developments in our use of each of these elements can be employed, separately and together, to create a more just society. Dyson, who bases this slim volume on a series of lectures he gave at the New York Public Library in 1997, argues that, if properly deployed, solar power can introduce cheap electricity to poor villages, the genome can be used to synthesize life-sustaining plants and the Net can provide jobs to people with no access to cities. After laying out these somewhat conventional arguments, Dyson takes an unusual turn by asserting how genetic engineering in plants and non-chemical-based rocket technology can enhance the space program, which he feels suffers as a result of political considerations. For our long-term benefit, he says, the U.S. government should be plotting voyages of great distance to pave the way for human life in space, instead of launching short-term manned missions that often ignore the prospects of space colonization. In attempting to write both a broad work of futurism and a deep social critique, Dyson offers an appetizing perspective, but many readers will find themselves eager for more than is given in this all too brief, albeit tantalizing, book.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195139224
• ISBN-13: 978-0195139228
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #651,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Low-key, mostly closer-to-home essays, June 16, 1999

By 

Stefan Jones (Suburbs of Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions (Nypl/Oup Lectures) (Hardcover)

Adapted from a lecture series hosted by the New York Public Library, the essays in this slender volume cover traditional Dyson subjects (ethics and technology, the politics and "sociology" of scientific research, the settlement of the solar system) plus something new; speculation on how the three titular entities might be used to bring prosperity and dynamism back to village life in the Third World.

In addition to being an awfully short book, with great wide margins, there's disappointingly little meat on these bones. The chapters in past collections, like the incomparable _Disturbing the Universe_, started out as essays and articles; these transcribed lectures don't quite compare.

If you haven't read anything by Dyson, you might want to start here. Otherwise, my recommendation is to buy it, and loan it to people who need beach reading or an airline book.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reaching the web from the Congo! Prebuilt homes on Mars!, May 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions (Nypl/Oup Lectures) (Hardcover)

Dyson focuses on how scientific revolutions are made and suggests the best strategies, considering cost and politics, of making important progress. He spells out ways that technologies can improve our quality of life and, not incidentally, reduce the gap between rich and poor.

Looking ahead to the next 100 years he gives us a feel for the kind of thing humankind might expect when we begin to apply new technologies to the poor, underpopulated parts of the world and we begin to populate the other bodies in the universe. He sees the power of the sun directly harnessed to providing access to the internet for everyone in the world through revolutions in the understanding of genes.

Dyson, emeritus professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, is a legendary figure in the sciences. He writes with passionate conviction, style and a profound knowledge of the people and the work, and a deep understanding of how scientific things get done.

Even though I'm not specially interested in the sun or the genome, I found this book riveting. It will appeal to any curious person. There is no science prerequisite beyond knowing the difference between a telescope and a gene.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical Vision, Actionable Predictions, May 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions (Nypl/Oup Lectures) (Hardcover)

The books shelves are full of millenium views and prognostications. But none with the scientific support and historical perspective of this book. Surprisingly easy to read, Dyson puts these three socio-techno forces in an order that is not only logical, but also quite inspiring. (Wait until you read that we only need two inventions to break the next big DNA code. . .and what they are!) The downside of the book is the intermittant rambling antecdotes of personal stories. They simply don't seem to connect either to each other or to the point. Fortunately, you can skim over these and not lose much. This book is quite digestable -- I'll be quoting it tomorrow and using it in my "future world" presentations.