Book Description

A fascinating look at near-future advances, inventions, products, services, and everyday conveniences that will change how we live and work. Marvin Cetron and Owen Davies explore these changes and the impact they will have on everyday life. For example, by the year 2010: -Personal computers will offer the power of today's supermachines and artificial intelligence. -A telecommunications network will supply the world with services from the contents of the Library of Congress to pornographic videos in Cantonese. -The United States-reversing a decades-old trend-will link its major cities with hig-speed railroads. -Airplanes will be capable of leaping halfway around the world in just two hours. -Consumer goods will be produced at prices so low the poor of tomorrow could live as well as the rich of today. -Scientists will have learned to purge the air of pollution, closing up the Antarctic ozone hole and ending the threat of global warming. -Heavy industries can move into space, so that Earth can recover from our past environmental follies. -Dramatic advances in gene mapping and organ transplants will extend the healthy human life span well beyond the century mark. Science and technology have dominated life in developed countries since the Industrial Revolution. In the twenty-first century, the will change it almost beyond recognition. Probable Tomorrows tells us how.