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Year Million: Science At The Far Edge Of Knowledge (2008)

by Damien Broderick(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0977743349 (ISBN13: 9780977743346)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Atlas Books

review 1: Well, I must admit, I thought I'd find this a lot more intriguing than I did. Some of the writers seemed to stray off-topic, in my opinion, and go right to the end of the universe rather than sticking to the year one million. Some entries I just couldn't get into due to the writing style and leaving me wondering what point the writer was trying to make. Something of a disappointment, I'm afraid, although some interesting postulations on future technologies.
review 2: These visions of the future were all surprisingly similar but all had interesting twists and were well thought out. Basically, the descendants of humans will probably be immortal super intelligences (if we don't kill ourselves) and we'll eventually live in something like a dyson sphere. There ... morewere interesting thoughts on whether we dismantle the universe and add to our dyson sphere or slowly colonize the universe (oddly none of the scientists were ready to realistically admit the possibility of faster than light travel). I also really enjoyed one of the essays that talked about future mathematics mainly because I love prime numbers. There was one quack in the group though that seemed to think all matter would one day become conscious (including rocks) with some vague reference to quantum mechanics. It didn't make any sense, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he couldn't explain his ideas well. I kind of found the last few essays a little depressing when they speculated about the "end" of the universe. Intelligent life will live in an ever expanding dark cold void feeding off of quantum fluctuations becoming more and more isolated, living within virtual realities that recreate the past for infinity. That was a downer... hopefully we'll have an infinite variety of infinite universes to explore, otherwise the future looks ultimately bleak and pointless, although, I guess infinity can seem bleak and pointless as well... crap! less

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