Visions; How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century

Kaku, Michio

ISBN 10: 0385484984 / ISBN 13: 9780385484985

Published by Doubleday, New York, 1997

About this Item

xii, 403, [1] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Recommended Reading. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling, with sticker residue on back. Michio Kaku (born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science (science communicator). He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku is the author of several books about physics and related topics and has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film. He is also a regular contributor to his own blog, as well as other popular media outlets. For his efforts to bridge science and science fiction, he is a 2021 Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Awardee. His books Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), The Future of the Mind (2014), and The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything (2021) became New York Times best sellers. Kaku has hosted several television specials for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Science Channel. Kaku is most widely known as a popularizer of science[17] and physics outreach specialist. He has written books and appeared on many television programs as well as film. He also hosts a weekly radio program. This is a book about the limitless future of science and technology, focussing on the next 100 years and beyond. Kaku examines how quantum mechanics, bio-genetics, and artificial intelligence will dramatically alter science and the way we will live in the 21st century. Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century is a popular science book by Michio Kaku first published in 1997. In Visions, Kaku examines the great scientific revolutions that have dramatically reshaped the twentieth century, namely quantum mechanics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence and shows how they will change and alter science and the way we live. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Exhibiting a rare clarity of scientific thought and exposition, this brilliant futurist catalogue from the renowned physicist and author of the much-praised Hyperspace convincingly predicts where the next hundred years of technological advancement will take us. Science, for Kaku, is on the verge of a new age in which the once separate "Three Pillars of Modern Science"--quantum physics, computer science and biotechnology--will converge, creating a startling synergy. The outcome will affect us right down to our DNA. We will make a technological and conceptual transition "from being observers of the dance of nature to becoming active choreographers" in a world of seamless human-computer interactions, where damaged, cancer-causing genes are repaired by molecular machines and where cyborgs will grow their own chips. But Kaku moves far beyond the usual futuristic fare of gadgets and gizmos, offering up the hard science principles and soft science social impact of the advances he describes. A careful reader will discern moral questions and responsibilities that Kaku fails to address adequately. Based in part on interviews with more than 150 scientists, many of them Nobel laureates, the book nevertheless offers a coherent and fully realized picture of our increasingly mediated future lives. It succeeds in drawing a time line for the appearance of everything from "wearable" computers to the tenth dimension, and it does so with clear-sighted analysis and a contagious sense of wonder. First Anchor Books Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Seller Inventory # 60669

Bibliographic Details

Title: Visions; How Science Will Revolutionize the ...

Publisher: Doubleday, New York

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very good

Dust Jacket Condition: Very good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

The author of Hyperspace shows how three scientific revolutions of the twentieth century--quantum mechanics, biogenetics, and artificial intelligence--will allow scientists to reshape human genetics and harness the universe's energy. 75,000 first printing. Tour.

Review:

Take it easy: that's Michio Kaku's motto. Given the extraordinary advances science has thrown up in time for the millennium, the only way you could possibly fit them into a single volume is by a correspondingly massive simplification.

Subtitled "How science will revolutionise the 21st century and beyond" Visionsassumes that by and large scientists get to do whatever they like, that all technologies are consumer technologies and that consumers welcome anything and everything science throws at them. Kaku gets away with this frankly dodgy strategy by dint of sheer hard work. He has based his predictions on interviews with more than 150 renowned working scientists, he integrates these interviews with a huge body of original journalistic material and above all he roots that mass of information on an entirely reasonable model of what the purpose of science will be in the third millennium. Up until now, science has expended its efforts on decoding most of the fundamental natural processes--"the dance," as Kaku puts it, of elementary particles deep inside stars and the rhythms of DNA molecules coiling and uncoiling within our bodies". Science's task now, Kaku believes, is to cross- pollinate advances thrown up by the study of matter, biology and mind--modern science's three main theatres of endeavour. "We are now making the transition from amateur chess players to grand masters," he writes, "from observers to choreographers of nature." Then again, he also believes that "the Internet...will eventually become a "Magic Mirror" that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race." Kaku, in short, deserves a good slapping--but he also deserves to be read. --Simon Ings