The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint For Ensuring Our Future - Softcover

Martin MD, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903919851 ISBN 13: 9781903919859

Publisher: Eden Project Books, 2006

Synopsis

A devastating analysis of where our world is headed, and a powerful prescription for change — from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Wired Society.

Martin identifies and explains the ten key challenges for humanity in the 21st Century:
-Heal the planet
-Eliminate war between high-tech nations
-End terrorism
-Detect and prevent the spread of infectious diseases
-End extreme poverty
-Realize the learning potential in all
-Manage computer intelligence
-Refine our use of increased leisure time
-Control the long-term impacts of all innovation
-Enhance the human body through technology

If the 20th Century was all about “progress,” the 21st Century must be about transition, about reconsidering whether all progress, at the same rate and in the same direction, isn’t in fact a charge towards our own extinction.
Informed by interviews with experts worldwide, this book is set to have as great an impact on society as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did, forty years ago.

About this title

About the Author:

James Martin studied physics at Oxford, served in the British Army and then joined IBM in Paris as a systems engineer. He lectures and writes extensively on management and technology. He is the author of the Pulitzer-nominated The Wired Society (1977), famous for the author’s remarkably accurate predictions about technology and the Internet. In Technology’s Crucible (1987), he alludes to Arab terrorists and a major attack on New York in 1998.

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: Eden Project Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1903919851
• ISBN 13: 9781903919859
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512