Imagine direct communication links between the human brain and machines, or tailored materials capable of adapting by themselves to changing environmental conditions, or computer chips and environmental sensors embedded into everyday clothing, or medical technologies that eliminate currently untreatable conditions such as blindness and paralysis. Now imagine all of these developments occurring at the same time. Far-fetched?
Not So. These are actually the reasonable predictions of scientists attempting to forecast a few decades into the future based on the rapid pace of innovation.

Author Stanley Schmidt a physicist, a writer, and the editor of Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, explores these and many more amazing yet probable scenarios in this fascinating guide to the near future. He shows how past convergences have led to today’s world, then considers tomorrow’s main currents in biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology, and nanotechnology. Looking even further downstream he foresees both exciting and potentially dangerous developments:

• Longer, healthier lives
• Cheap, generally available food, energy, and technology
• Reduced pollution and environmental stress
• Economic disruption during transitional periods
• Excessive power in too few hands
• Increased vulnerability from overdependence on technology

Schmidt notes that even a routine technology such as the CAT scan is the result of three wholly separate innovations started many decades ago which recently converged: the X-ray, the computer, and advances in medicine. On a more ominous note, he also observes that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was made possible by the malicious convergence of two separate trends in modern engineering and technology: the concentration of people in high rises within cities and the success of the passenger airline industry.

The message is clear: the choices we make now will converge to create a near and distant future that will be almost unbelievably wonderful or unimaginably catastrophic, or both. This knowledgeable, fascinating glimpse into the future is a must read for everyone interested in technology, upcoming innovations in business, science fiction, and the future.

"It's far easier to describe the past than to predict the future: this principle is unwittingly demonstrated by Schmidt, a physicist and longtime science fiction editor (Analog: Science Fiction and Fact). His book is best when discussing how past technologies have come together, usually in unforeseen ways, to enable social change. Joseph-Marie Jacquard's late — 18th-century work on automatic looms controlled by punch cards, for example, can be traced forward to the development of early computers. Schmidt is glib but far less informative when projecting where the confluence of current technologies is likely to take us. He touches on nanotechnology and improvements in computing power, among other fields, and offers projections about how medicine, communication and interpersonal relationships are apt to change, but he largely does so superficially and perhaps overly optimistically: 'In the kind of world we can aspire to, everybody will have enough and nobody will have to work very hard to get it.' Though he acknowledges that some convergences can be harmful, he dismisses this downside with equal ease, concluding simply that we need to be vigilant about the choices we make. Illus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Schmidt is best known as the long time editor of Analog the more science oriented of the science fiction magazines. He also has a doctorate in physics. Both these facts make him a perfect person to explain how advances in science and technology have altered our lives, how they will continue to do so and why we should understand the process. Schmidt reminds us that computers, CAT scans, cell phones and gene therapy were all just fiction fifty years ago. Nanotechnology is now being used in industry. Cloning is a fact. So we should expect other ideas that sound preposterous to become a reality. But Schmidt also points out that the convergence of technologies can give results the inventors never imagined. Wilbur Wright lived to see an airplane deliver an atom bomb. Changes we make to our own bodies to cure disease or prevent birth defects could change the way we define who is human. Schmidt warns us that we can't be complacent and that it is our responsibility to understand the ramifications and be prepared to deal with them. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This knowledgeable, fascinating glimpse into the future is a must read for everyone interested in technology, upcoming innovations in business, science fiction, and the future.