It’s a bit like starting the family reunion dinner toast with the words “I am not a great speaker…”. Well, perhaps not, but everybody around the table know what to expect for the next 20 minutes – at least. A popular entry remark among a good deal of mediocre futurists is: ”It is difficult to read – in particular the future”. Apparently they consider it a good excuse for taking the floor to discuss the future at length based upon some highly speculative, but often entertaining visions. Every now and then the visions end up in print – in popular magazines and books.

The book “50 years from today” which holds a collection of visions by Nobel Prize winners and other intellectual capacities, edited by Mike Wallace is yet another attempt at the rather challenging – and often ill-fated – task of predicting the future today. On the one hand avoiding to state the obvious, and on the other not ending up looking hopelessly naive when revisiting the text 50 years from now.

The book is interesting reading. Not just entertaining. The future scenarios are thought-provoking, slightly scary and – I believe – in many cases quite off track compared with the actual scenarios some of us will eperience in 2057. This is reflected in the degree creativity put into setting the future scenarios. It differs a lot. Ranging from utopia to dystopia, and from science fiction to cautious extrapolations of current trends. Ranging from essays such as George Smoot’s discussing the human enhancement ideas, a kind of post Darwinist evolutionary explosion, where man evolves rapidly through genetical engineering – over ex-president Kim Dae-jung’s hi-tec Eden, where space, the ocean and robots ensure a bright future of mankind – to the – in my view – somewhat pathetic clinging to supposedly eternal standards such as “most of us will continue to find comfort and joy by discovering God’s love and grace” in Francis Collins’ essay. I suspect that some of the essays where produced with a lot of good intentions – and too little time.

In most cases the texts are built around the scientific background of the authors with a tendency of conservatism – and pessimism. In a few cases this leads to predictions already now met by reality – such as John Mather’s expectation that we will find an Earth-like planet outside the Solar system within the next two decades. But some of the more interesting aspects emerge when the authors leave their own field of expertise as in the abovementioned case of Smoot who’s an astrophysicist.

Among the futuristic highlights are also Craig Newmark’s “Blogging from the future” where he introduces the potential of a netbased, global democracy – the mass of humanity. It starts with a recording of governance via Congresspedia and connects the moderate mass of humanity in OneVoice. OneVoice will express the will of the mass and run things regardless of extremists. Naive? Perhaps. Possible? Indeed.

To be honest, reaching the final chapters I did find the book a bit boring, have read similar predictions by wise men and women over and over. Still, it does contain elements of great insight.

NB: Why is it that in general biologists and health care experts are much more pessimistic than politicians and astronomers? Chance or proximity to realities?