2081 : a hopeful view of the human future

What will the world be like a century from now? In 2081, Gerard K. O'Neill predicts that it will be as different from today as our world is from the world of 1881. At a time when most predictions of the future ring of doom, here is a hopeful view by a respected physicist whose predictions are firmly grounded in scientific fact.

The first part of O'Neill's prophetic and illuminating book explores the colourful his tory of previous attempts to predict the future-including those of Jules Vemne, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Arthur C. Clarke - examining how their forecasts have stood up, with a view to avoiding past mistakes. O'Neill then describes the five major developments of the present-in computers, automation, space colonies, energy and communica tions that he predicts will determine the course of the next hundred years.

The third part of the book describes life in 2081. Here O'Neill provides a guided tour through the world of our great grandchil dren, a world in which passenger travel at the rate of 6.000 miles per hour will be commonplace; whole towns will be enclosed, making possible, for example, a Hawaiian climate in Pennsylvania; house hold robots will communicate with people by voice and even clean the house; and a voyage of a few days to a solar-powered space colony will be as unremarkable as a Caribbean cruise is to us today. He also examines the direction political and social institutions are likely to take, predicting that there will be far more surveillance-even in democratic countries. After each section of the tour, O'Neill explains the reasoning, based on current scientific knowledge and informed conjecture, that has led him to his conclusions.

2081 is an absorbing and imaginative look at the world of tomorrow, a new 1984, but one that looks forward to a bright future.