- Wilson, Daniel H.
Where's My Jetpack?
New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.
ISBN 1-59691-136-0.
-
One of the best things about the past was that the future was so much
cooler then! I mean, here we are, more than halfway through the first
decade of the flippin' twenty-first century for heaven's
sake, and there's nary a flying car, robot servant, underwater city,
orbital hotel, or high-speed slidewalk anywhere in sight, and many of
the joyless scolds who pass for visionaries in this timid and
unimaginative age think we'd all be better off renouncing technology
and going back to being hunter-gatherers—sheesh.
This book, by a technology columnist for
Popular
Mechanics, wryly surveys the promise and present-day
reality of a variety of wonders from the golden age
of boundless technological optimism. You may be surprised
at the slow yet steady progress being made toward some
of these visionary goals (but don't hold your breath
waiting for the Star Trek transporter!). I was completely
unaware, for example, of the “anti-sleeping pill”
modafinil,
which, based upon tests by the French Foreign Legion, the UK
Ministry of Defence, and the U.S. Air Force, appears to allow
maintaining complete alertness for up to 40 hours with no sleep
and minimal side effects. And they said programmer productivity
had reached its limits!
The book is illustrated with stylish graphics, but there are
no photos of the real-world gizmos mentioned in the next, nor
are there source citations or links to Web sites describing
them—you're on your own following up the details. To answer
the question in the title, “Where's My Jetpack?”,
look
here
and
here.
August 2007 