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Futurology is concerned with predicting the future, not to be confused with ufology, aimed at contacts with other worlds. With divination on coffee grounds, runes, tarot cards, lamb shoulder, too, little in common (although, sometimes it demonstrate amazing accuracy). The main, but not the only method of F. extrapolation is an attempt to predict the development by transferring a trend from the particular to the general. Since it is a science, statistical methods and mathematical analysis are equ...
"Organic behavior in a technological matrix"This is about today, of course. As every science fiction writer knows, any futuristic venture, either in fiction or nonfiction, is an extrapolation from the present. How prescient the writer is depends partly on how well he understands and observes the present and on how lucky he is. I don't know how lucky sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling is going to be as a visionary, but he definitely has a keen insight into the present. To use his words, "the victorio...
It started out really strong, and particularly prophetic considering that it has been in print for 7 years now, which is an era or two in technology terms. Towards the end, beginning with the chapters about the middle east, I felt that it got off track; the three (real life) characters were definitely interesting, but I had no idea what they had to do with technology or even the contemporary culture of information (the events took place in the early 90's).I did enjoy the book, but at a little ov...
Bruce Sterling offers an original perspective on future: there is more to learn about ideas for the next 50 years from this book than many countless others that look at converging trends without a vision of how they come together to a new balanced state.Bruce is world building in his vision of futures, and while the book is not perfect information, it is unique and should be considered by any futurologist. His vision of a biologically integrated future world, where all our technologies are biolo...
Once again proving that science fiction authors are the best futurists, Bruce Sterling delivers a book of cultural observations and ideas that today’s VCs and technologists are surely mining for the raw materials with which they will fashion tomorrow’s material reality.
A book to read and laugh at some fifty years later. Or how occasionally another small mind rises to generate prophecies, because this time it would be different from the millions before him who did the same and failed.
It’s like “Microsoft home of the future” but a book.
Sterling has always been more accurate with his predictions than most other professional futurists combined.
This is the Real Deal. Pure uncut Bruce Sterling without any of those messy complications of plot or character or setting. The Chairman just sits down and tells you what he thinks The Future is going to look like. If you don't have the right constitution for it, you might OD and throw the book across the room with a cry of "What pretentious shit!" But if your mind is open and flexible (and you've already drunk the kool-aid), this book will rock your socks.Sterling structures this book around the...
Days of Future PastReading a book about the future that was written a decade ago is an interesting exercise in time travel. It turns out that many of the trends that Sterling perceived in the early 2000s are alive and growing ten years on.Bruce Sterling has a well-deserved reputation as a futurist whose imaginative grasp is more eclectic and far-reaching than most. In Tomorrow Now Sterling sets out to delineate the outline of how the world might look in the next 50 years.What sets Tomorrow Now a...
Tomorrow Now is an expansive look at the next fifty years by sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling. The book's premise is intriguing, but the execution is hit-and-miss.Sterling's writing style is reminiscent of Tom Friedman (Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat, etc.), which drove me mildly insane as I read the book. Both authors heavily rely on gimmicky initial caps to drive home Important Concepts, as if trademarking new terms mid-sentence. Far worse, these Important Concepts were mixed into s...
What an interesting and informative book! It was not at all what I expected it to be, but I enjoyed it none the less. Bruce Sterling takes a break from science fiction to write a non-fiction book about the future. From genetics to blobjects to the New World Disorder to the infocalypse to the Sixth Mass Extinction, Sterling touches on so many different aspects of what the future will be like. It deserves the awards that it has won.
Reasonably thought provoking, and prescient in a number of ways (this book is what, something like 14 years old now, so we're a good chunk of the way along that 50 year timeline), but very uneven and ultimately quite thin in places. The good parts are great, but there are a lot of areas that aren't really up to snuff.
It's almost like the future is writing itself to Sterling's specifications sometimes. He also specifically mentioned ' ... HIV in the blood supply ' as an indicator of ' a radical level of postindustrial instability ' ( Which is how , in the end , I look at it too now )
Futurist writing just isn't my thing. I've never read this guy's fiction, but the writing style here was really frustrating. Many convoluted sentences that used a ton of words to say nothing. Not for me.
There seemed to be more history than any predictions of the future. Other than a brief but interesting view of biotechnology, I didn't find anything that brought forth ideas that might appear in the next 50 years.
Some great stuff here, especially his introduction and chapter on germtech.
A mixed book. Not sure I "get" or agree with most of it. But it's a view, and a worthy one, to hold in one's head with the others, as one figures out where we are and where we're going.
Bruce Sterling is a fascinating futurist with interesting dazzling speculations about our world that gave pause
Accessible futurism
Meh.
This is an excellent non-fiction book. I feel all futuristic and awesome now.
Should read this again in 50 years ;)
Sterling is the best sort of futurist. Neither wide-eyed with wonder, nor sounding the drumbeat of doom, he just seems to geniunely want to figure out what is coming next. And he's funny, too.
Цікава книга для тих, хто любить футурологію, фантастику та Стерлінга як письменника. І для тих, хто хоче порівняти прогноз із сучасною ситуацією.
Tomorrow is definitely now. This book was written 10 years ago and is still prescient.
A good book to read before writing science fiction, even though it's out of date