Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun survey - and some eye-openers too, December 15, 2009
This review is from: Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
This breezy survey of over-enthusiastic predictions utilizes a certain number of cheap shots - the hyperbole of ad copy and the fanciful speculation every age indulges in - but many other ideas were seriously imagined at the time, even researched.
Some - like the electric car a century ago - were within reach until derailed by market forces or public inertia. An automated highway system was actually set up in 1997 as a demonstration project and proved it could handle twice as much traffic as the normal chaos. Safer too. Funding was cancelled, however. Too expensive.
Some predictions - the much-vaunted fleet of dirigibles - were vanquished by history or politics. After the fiery crash of the Hindenburg dirigible construction everywhere was abandoned - despite the fact that volatile hydrogen was only used in the Hindenburg because the US banned the sale of much-safer helium to Nazi Germany.
Other pipe dreams we simply haven't been able to achieve - the miracle of cold fusion, for one, a cure for the common cold. The paperless office and the five-day weekend.
Milo touches on dreams like the automated home, the underwater home, the global language, the personal helicopter, synthetic food and much, much more. Those of a certain age will remember and smile at many of these pipedreams - in some cases amazed at how close we've come. Younger readers will be amused at our delusions as they continue to assume technology can cure just about anything, given a little more time.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What happened to that "other" 21st Century?, January 5, 2010
This review is from: Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
I've lived long enough to remember reading and hearing about the kinds of futurology Milo discusses in his book. I've also wondered why the U.S., at least, has strayed so far from these visions of a radically different and arguably better society.
Apparently, according to Milo, a lot of those ideas would either not work in practice, like using nuclear explosives for mining and civil engineering; or they face harder challenges than we first thought, like a cure for aging; or else they run up against the fact that societies have homeostatic mechanisms which tend to suppress extremes from long term norms, like a lot of the lifestyle experimentation propagandized in the 1960's. Biological human nature plays a role in this conservatism as well. For example, I came of age in the allegedly swinging 1970's, yet I've never met anyone who acknowledged to me that he or she lived in a polyamorous household like the ones Robert Rimmer, Robert Heinlein and F.M. Esfandiary promoted in the 1960's and 1970's, though some of them engage in other kinds of sexual bohemianism.
Milo could have written a better book if he had looked to other countries for glimpses of what some now call the paleo-future. The French live in a version of it, with their pervasive use of nuclear power, bullet trains, universal health coverage and lengthy mandated vacations. And China shows signs of becoming another paleo-future country with its massive new infrastructure, a manned space program (while the U.S. cancels the Space Shuttle with no successor technology to put people in orbit) and efforts to solve problems in artificial intelligence and radical life extension which Western scientists have given up on or object to morally.
Perhaps the American people have stopped believing in "the future" as a symbol of progress. Our tendency towards short-range thinking -- a high time preference for consumption, no backup planning for emergencies, no personal savings, etc. -- certainly does point in that direction. We shouldn't despise a society which does well enough, but we should also consider the costs of living below our potential as envisioned by 20th Century "futurists."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating book, December 22, 2010
This review is from: Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
Paul Milo's "Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century," published in 2009, bears a good deal of thematic resemblance to a book that came out in 2007: "Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived" by Daniel H. Wilson. But the newer book is the superior one. While Wilson focuses solely on over-optimistic technological prognostications, Milo tackles much broader themes and explores them in far greater depth. The former aims primarily for the funny bone, usually referring to popular movies and TV series, but the latter seriously considers the many reasons that experts anticipated such rapid changes, both positive and negative, and the reasons these expectations were so hard to fulfill. He quotes scientists, historians, politicians, business leaders, and other people whose opinions were once so respected. In addition to technology, he addresses medical, ecological, social, political, domestic, and international predictions, and concludes with a chapter on those that actually came true. Finally, "Flying Car" is a much more substantial book at over 300 unillustrated pages, whereas "Jetpack" has less than 200 pages, only 125 of which have any print on them, the rest being filled with cheesy cartoon clip-art. (It is amusing, though.) Here are only some of the many topics that "Your Flying Car Awaits" takes on: childbirth, cloning, diseases, transplants, life span, ESP, drugs, genetic engineering, cars that drive themselves, flying cars (as advertised), hypersonic planes, overpopulation, water supplies, climate, lunar colonies, space tourism, war in space, nuclear power, weather control, nuclear fusion, animal communication, cities, household appliances, communications, labor, leisure, education, the family unit, fashion, mind control, eugenics, war, world government, political parties, and the end of the world. It's unfortunate that several Amazon reviewers have given low ratings to this fine book as a result of their own political biases or because they evidently did not bother to read it. It does lack an index, which would have been useful, but is so full of interesting ideas that I can't bear to downgrade it just for that. If you enjoy a wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion of the past and want to appreciate the difficulties inherent in speculating about the future, this makes an excellent read. It will help to engender a healthy skepticism for the perennially overblown announcements from corporations, academics, and governments about developments coming "right around the corner." The next time you hear such shiny promises, you'll be less likely to salivate with anticipation or rush out to invest in the latest technology, and you'll be more likely to say, with a shrug, "I'm not holding my breath!"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
