The Meaning of the 21st Century - Hardcover

Martin, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573223239 ISBN 13: 9781573223232

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover, 2006

Synopsis

A renowned expert on the social and economic impact of technology and author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Wireless Society explains how fast-developing technologies, broadening gaps between economic classes, and global extremism are posing difficult challenges in today's world, recommending greater environmental responsibility and possible scientific solutions. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

James Martin is a world-renowned expert on the social and economic impact of computers and technology. Author of more than one hundred books, including the Pulitzer Prizenominee The Wired Society, he is the founder of the James Martin 21st Century School and the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, both at Oxford University.

From Publishers Weekly:

A freewheeling, sometimes scatterbrained romp through the technological challenges, dangers and opportunities facing the human race in the new century, the newest book by information age guru Martin is in equal measures exhilarating, thought provoking and just plain crazy in its zeal for emerging technologies. Martin, known for his influential The Wired Society (1978), believes that nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and other advances could not only moderate but eventually reverse the effects of global warming while giving us superhuman strength, superior intelligence and the possibility of living to 1,000 or beyond. On the potentials of supercomputing, Martin writes, "Human intelligence is very broad but relatively shallow, while machine intelligence is very narrow but can be miles deep." The first half of this assertion is well borne out by his book, which skips lightly from sobering discussions of cataclysmic climate change, massive natural disasters and terrorism to breathless riffs on hydroponics, pebble-bed nuclear reactors and "transhumanism." Often reading like a course catalogue for Oxford University's new James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, the book should arguably have been split into two or three installments, but tech enthusiasts will find much to spur debate. (Aug.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1573223239
• ISBN 13: 9781573223232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448