![]() ![]() As a child in the late 1960s, I learned that within a couple of decades we’d all be getting around by jetpack, and I still don’t have mine. ![]() I have to start with a confession: I want a jetpack. Oh, I almost forgot the biggest howler: "The Soviet Union will still be around in 100 years and surpassed the West economically"(Herman Kahn, Ferdinand Lumberg, William McNeill and a cast of thousands). (Curiously, back in the 1960s and 1970s most scientists worried about global cooling, not global warming.) This book is not only great fun to read but a cautionary tale on why not to trust experts. Clarke) ESP proven and usable (Arthur Koestler) humans living past age 120 and perhaps forever (Robert Ettinger, and today Ray Kurzwell) global famines "of Biblical proportions that will kill over 100 million human beings" (Paul Ehrlich). If someone else tells you something can't be done because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, believe him." Paul Milo has scoured the predictions made by some of the greatest minds of the second half of the twentieth century on what life would be like at the start of the twenty-first and found all turned out wacky: Lunar cities and mining camps (Arthur C. ![]() ![]() A wise man once said to me, "If someone tells you that something won't be accomplished in the future because it costs too much don't believe him. O, future! You promised me flying cars and permanent manned bases on Mars and all I got was Facebook. ![]()
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