The Skeptics' Guide to the Future

4.5 stars. This book was great. If you are a fan of science and are questioning what the future might hold, you might want to pick this up.

Predictions about how future technology will develop have been around for as long as we've had a sense that such things advance and, in that sense, this is nothing new. But it has the advantage of a strong scientific base and of devoting the first part of the book to why such predictions are so often wrong. For that very reason, it has far fewer predicted dates for when things are likely to be achieved than such books often do - predicting that things will be easier than they turn out is a common error - and also includes caveats along the lines of “just because we could, doesn't mean we'll want to”.

A significant portion is also devoted to the key developing technologies of today, such as stem cells and self-driving cars, where we can reasonably confident that a demand exists and that (at some point, if not necessarily soon) there will be some major developments that will impact our way of life. After that, we're into more speculative technology that may not mature for decades or centuries, but that should be attainable in the long term.

Then there's a section on space travel, explaining why this is rather harder than most science fiction stories would imply. Finally, the writers take a look at common technology in science fiction, most of which also turns out to be a lot less plausible than we might hope. On the other hand, there are plausible future developments that SF tends to avoid using (unless it's the entire point of the story), because the social changes are too unpredictable.

In some respects, the way we envisage the future is probably not radical enough, but in others, it's likely too much. Does this book strike a perfect balance between the two? Well, probably not, because that's likely impossible and we don't know what new breakthrough might (or might not) be around the corner. But this is a useful guide to the possibilities and limitations of future change and it's written in a clear and accessible style that makes for a quick and easy read without trimming down the facts or going overboard on the fine detail.