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A review by wacosinker
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku
5.0
Three observations about a book I enjoyed and would recommend for a read soon, because it will be dated pretty soon. (So get it from a library, instead of buying it.)
1) I remember buying one of Stephen Wienberg's books once because the dust jacket blurb said it was a layperson's ideal guide to cutting edge cosmology. It was anything but, at least for me. Michio Kaku writes about cutting edge science as if he's speaking to you in a bar. It's conversational. Like many other reviewers I really appreciated that quality. I also found myself getting online to check out some things he references, like the Human Connectome Project.
2) The other thing I would say is that Kaku isn't an in-the-tank Pollyanna about the inevitability of a bright and shiny techno-future. That's the dominant narrative arc, but he flags the difficulties along the way, impinging climate change for one, the easy proliferation through economic democratization of technologies of mass destruction for another. This is too his credit, and in contrast to other futurists who are whistling past the graveyard in their popular writings.
3) My own musings: Kaku explains how in under two centuries human beings will be an interstellar species traveling about the entire galaxy at near light speeds or faster. Is that so? We live in an interesting age. In 2018, with climate change accelerating, the human species is accelerating the techniques necessary to become a Type I star-faring civilization while simultaneously struggling to cope with the externalized consequences of our energy superabundance. After such a splendid meal, are we going to be able to escape the establishment before the bill comes due?
1) I remember buying one of Stephen Wienberg's books once because the dust jacket blurb said it was a layperson's ideal guide to cutting edge cosmology. It was anything but, at least for me. Michio Kaku writes about cutting edge science as if he's speaking to you in a bar. It's conversational. Like many other reviewers I really appreciated that quality. I also found myself getting online to check out some things he references, like the Human Connectome Project.
2) The other thing I would say is that Kaku isn't an in-the-tank Pollyanna about the inevitability of a bright and shiny techno-future. That's the dominant narrative arc, but he flags the difficulties along the way, impinging climate change for one, the easy proliferation through economic democratization of technologies of mass destruction for another. This is too his credit, and in contrast to other futurists who are whistling past the graveyard in their popular writings.
3) My own musings: Kaku explains how in under two centuries human beings will be an interstellar species traveling about the entire galaxy at near light speeds or faster. Is that so? We live in an interesting age. In 2018, with climate change accelerating, the human species is accelerating the techniques necessary to become a Type I star-faring civilization while simultaneously struggling to cope with the externalized consequences of our energy superabundance. After such a splendid meal, are we going to be able to escape the establishment before the bill comes due?