Product Description
What do a drought in New York and an earthquake in Seattle have to do with a “nanotube” a few billionths of a meter long at the University of Tokyo? Our Molecular Future reveals a striking new possibility: We are on the verge of being able to protect ourselves from nature’s worst attacks. Tools such as carbon nanotubes may help us cope in ways that until now have been described as science fiction. If we succeed, we might solve a troubling question about scie… More >>
#1 by Avid Reader on February 7, 2010 - 3:58 pm
Anyone familiar with Ray Kurzweil and/or the notion of the Singularity will not be surprised by this book. The difference between Mulhall and other technological prophets is the degree of detail. Actually, the book should have been expanded into two – the first covering background and possible trends, the second dealing with societal and individual reaction and responses to this coming future.
It is a truism but the wild blue yonder never seems wild or blue or so yonder. What we now casually accept as part of everyday life – the ability to communicate with anyone at anytime, the abundance of free knowledge, the vast capabilities of computers, machines without moving parts, the merging of radio, camera, computer and telephone into a single device – this would have seemed almost miraculous even 15 years ago. I have an idea that a future in which we can have whatever we want through nanotech is still a long way off. The problem is two fold: How will such power be controlled and who will do the controlling.
This is yet another opportunity for increasing the authority of the State when, on the face of it, these creations should lead to individual empowerment. The best parts were the technical discussions, what will or will not be possible, when and how all this will come about. The preachy parts were the worst and should have been in another book. When I see the word “should” as in “what we should do is” I feel a warning. Perhaps the most poignant warning was an event that is today occurring: The forgetting of culture and the past. It seems as if our new technology has made all things new without any reference to the past. Like the Hopi (his example), we may once remember this society by our leftovers. The discussion on democracy was good but not nearly extensive enough. If we are to maintain any notion of individual worth, privacy, “rights” and community, this problem must be dealt with even as we advance. My grade: B
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by alien-technology on February 7, 2010 - 4:31 pm
If there is a better book that can get one up to speed on the ramifications of nanotechnology, then I’d like to know about it.
The media does a poor job on covering nanotechnology. Forget the media; read this book instead.
The author was on the Art Bell show recently. Three hours was not enough time to do this book and subject justice.
Art Bell fans will love this book. It covers many of the catastrophe scenarios that Art and George Noory talk about.
Art and George spend little time talking about nanotechnology. Again, read this book and you’ll enjoy their next show on nanotechnology even more.
If you believe this book, then nanotechnology will change your life like nothing that has ever come before.
It’s like reading a science fiction novel, only minus the fiction.
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Wellington on February 7, 2010 - 7:15 pm
You can see this book was written by a journalist rather than a scientist.
Yes, it contains a big deal of information, but this is casually scattered all over the text with little resemblance of order. The feeling you get is that the author searched the internet for a few weeks looking for anything he could find about future technologies and than casually slapped the lot on paper interspersing it with his own rants. I’m not saying this is what he actually did, but surely it is what it feels like.
A lot of futuristic gizmos are described but how are they really supposed to work, how likely is that they are ever really realized and when, if ever, they will be available hardly is.
So the author describes how in the future nanobots will swim in our blood vessels cleaning it from all sort of impurities. That’s all good and well but how will, in practice, this bots work? How will they be built? Where will they get the energy to function from? What kind of intelligence will they have to perform their task? What are the collateral risks of such technology? When can we expect them to be available? Which scientists and researchers think building such devices is possible and which think it is not, and especially why? This kind of information is hardly present and when it is appears shallow in content and scattered seemingly at random all over the book.
If I wanted fancy scenarios rather than hard facts I would have bought a science fiction novel. As a matter of fact a lot of the gizmos the author mentions I personally already encountered in science fiction, only better explained.
Fact is, if I just wanted scattered information I would have searched the internet myself at a much cheaper cost than the book’s. Nowadays most of what you need to know is online, if you buy a book you are looking for a tidy summary and/or a deeper analysis. Did this part of the present technological revolution escape such a futurist author?
Rating: 2 / 5
#4 by Eliud Cabrera on February 7, 2010 - 8:57 pm
I have just finished reading this book, and i must say wow! This is a amazing read from start to end. The book goes over what Nanotechnology is now, and what possiblities are there in the future. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading about Nanotechnology.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Anonymous on February 7, 2010 - 10:13 pm
Fascinating glimpse into the future.
Rarely does one find a book with as many insights into the future as Our Molecular Future. Page after page there are concepts which are entirely foreign to you before reading them, and then seem so self-evident after you have understood them. Clearly, not everything that is depicted in the book is going to come to pass in our lifetimes. However, this was the best book I have read for years. Not since Godel, Escher, Bach have I thought so much while reading!
Rating: 5 / 5