Skip to main content

On the Future - Martin Rees ***

When I was at school we had a great young history teacher who got everyone in the class to go out and buy a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. Some parents were decidedly unhappy, but it was a fascinating exercise, and though I found most of the contents impenetrable drivel, it was something I was really glad he did.  The Little Red Book was more formally The Thoughts of Chairman Mao and this little black book is not Martin Rees's social contacts list, but rather The Thoughts of Astronomer Royal Rees. 

 What we get is a fairly loose collection of Rees's thoughts on life, the universe and everything, from climate change to religion - though (not surprisingly) it concentrates on scientific matters more than anything else. As the subtitle Prospects for Humanity indicates, Rees indulges a little in that most speculative of ventures, futurology, but not to an extent that the book becomes one of those interminable collections of thoughts that are either bright and bushy-tailed 'The future will be wonderful!' or dark and dismal 'The future is dystopian, haven't you seen Blade Runner?' 

 There's nothing particularly new here, but it is interesting to see what one of the grand old persons of British science (and, by all accounts, a jolly nice chap), Rees has to say on the matter. Oddly, the parts I found more interesting were those more removed from his fields of expertise. So, I felt quite engaged with the lengthy section on climate change and where Rees discusses his view on religion. This is very refreshing when compared with the that of the fundamentalist atheists. Rees tells us that he does not believe in God but does sometimes go to church, as he likes being involved in the ritual of his cultural heritage. This seems to me a far better attitude than berating anyone with religious beliefs or practices for their stupidity.

 The part I thought least effective was where Rees dived into cyber futurology. While it was good to see that he was sensibly sceptical of the widespread acceptance of self-driving cars and the idea that everyone will abandon car ownership, his consideration of AI and machine learning seemed overly optimistic, compared with the more realistic approach, say, in Gary Smith's The AI Delusion.

 There was also a useful analysis of the nature of science, on the whole de-stressing the 'scientific method' and emphasising the more ad-hoc approach that really happens. Rees also makes it clear how important it is for the general public to be more aware of science, as decisions about the future direction of science and technology influence us all and should be made by us all, not just as scientific technarchy.

 All in all, On the Future proved genuinely interesting. I can't give it more than three stars as it feels rather bitty and is perhaps too personal if you don't happen to be interested in Martin Rees - but I am interested and am really glad I read it.

Hardback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...
Post a Comment
Read more