Bruce Sterling’s “Tomorrow Now” gives a glance into what the future holds. He analyzes and critiques the state of the modern world in order to predict how technology is going shape the future. Even though the book says it’s only going to discuss the next fifty years, it actually goes much further. Sterling runs through various areas of technology while providing reasons for positive and negative effects that could reasonably occur.
Sterling himself has been writing science fiction since the 1970’s. He was one of the founder of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. “Tomorrow Now” was written in 2003 giving sterling 30 plus years of experience in the subject. The difference with this book compared to his others is that he usually writes fiction. His fiction background definitely shows through with provocative and controversial future predictions, but everything he says is backed up with valid evidence and little bias. Sterling’s worldview is very apparent in this book. It’s obvious he believes in the same transhumanist future as people like Ray Kurzweil. The difference is that he gives both good and bad scenarios.
Since the book is now 13 years old, the “current” parts of the book are a little out of date. This also means that some of the near future ideas he discusses actually come true and are now the current state of technology. The fact that some of it is out of date actually makes the book more interesting. As you read it you can see how precise Sterling was with his predictions. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that he is very accurate. Since “Tomorrow Now” discusses the current state of technology and society along with where its headed in the future, the material is both current and futuristic.
This book is definitely controversial. Sterling breaks the book into seven parts which he refers to as stages. Each stage discusses a specific idea that he discusses. Within each stage Sterling’s gives various conclusions and examples of scenarios that could happen due to the current (2003) state of our society. Even though his goal was to provide two sides, it’s the negative sides that stick out while reading. I believe this is because of Sterling’s background in fiction writing. He wanted to be as realistic as he could and the possible bad outcomes of technological advancements are not only more numerous, but wilder. This allowed for Sterling to stretch his imagination a little bit more which inevitably led to more memorable ideas.
The amazing expectations for our future that Sterling portrays are simply not as fascinating and thought-provoking as the atrocities that may one day be our reality. This may differ depending on the reader, but at least for me, the crazy, horrible situations we are unknowingly creating are what I took way from the book. As someone who is constantly surprised an in awe of new technology, the predictions Sterling makes seem to get more and more unrealistic as he travels further and further into the future. On the other hand, his descriptions of where we would be today are very close to reality which was fascinating to see. This leads me to believe some of the more outrageous claims he makes much more than if I heard the claim by itself. For this reason, I actually believe reading this book now, thirteen years after it came out, is actually better than reading it in 2003. I truly think that the response to this book will be different for every person.
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Iker Olabarria OzaetaReviewed in Spain on June 25, 2015
...Mi opinión es pésima. Ni siquiera me ha llegado el artículo....Mi opinión es pésima. Ni siquiera me ha llegado el artículo.
