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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Tomorrow's People is Susan Greenfield's bold attempt to describe how 21st-century technology is changing the way we think and feel. Our increasing ability to manipulate electronic media, robots, genes, reproductive biology and minds is indeed dramatically changing the way some of us live. Susan Greenfield gets to grip with the most important of these changes and most importantly with the effects they are going to have on future generations.
Baroness Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain is very well placed and qualified as a neuroscientist and acclaimed writer (The Private Life of the Brain) to do some serious star-gazing, only what she is looking at is very grounded at the personal level and the here and now. Her wide and informed perspective runs from gadgets and gizmos to terrorism via DNA and the cyberworld. According to our response to such future changes we can be categorised as technophiles, technophobes or cynics according to Susan Greenfield. But as she rightly points out, the main danger is going to be the growing divide between the technologically advanced world and the rest which will, as she says, be the vast majority. The great challenge for the future is how to avoid the descent into a very dangerous schism between a relatively small developed world locked into economic growth to feed its lifestyle and the ever-growing underdeveloped world that will be increasingly excluded by poverty.
Tomorrow's People is a thought-provoking and challenging book. It can be uncomfortable reading especially as it demands that we think about and make personal decisions about these hugely important issues that will increasingly impact on future generations. As Susan Greenfield warns, "the bottom line of this book is that the private ego is the most precious thing we each have, and it is far more vulnerable now than ever before". --Douglas Palmer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
The book is an exploration of how this century is going to change not just the way we think, but also what we actually think with - our own individual minds. How will new technologies transform the way we see the world? At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we may be standing on the brink of a mind make-over far more cataclysmic than anything that has happened before. As we appreciate the dynamism and sensitivity of our brain circuitry, so the prospect of directly tampering with the essence of our individuality becomes a possibility.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Look through an old album of sepia photographs from the early 1900s. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Look through an old album of sepia photographs from the early 1900s. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I bought this in great excitement, being fascinated by the subject, and a great fan of her "Private Life of the Brain". and began to read ... and I can't remember being quite so disappointed in a purchase in a long time. It is written in the breathless style of a teenage journalist with some space to fill in a techno-journal: this kind of writing went out with Tommorrow's World ca 1975. It is also completely unreferenced within the text, and the key ideas are jumbled in or thrown away in asides.
If you want some good ideas on how things like nano-technology and implanted IT might work out, read Peter F Hamilton or LE Modesitt: they're better researched and better written. Perhaps Baroness Greenfield should have done that first herself.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is described as a "bold attempt to describe how 21st-century technology is changing the way we think and feel", but the reality couldn't be further from the truth. I found this book to be utterly disappointing, and struggled to reach the end of it. With each chapter, I had renewed hope that the book would improve, and I was left sadly lacking right up until the back cover.
The 21st century technology she describes may seem "out there", but to anyone who has ever dabbled in role-play gaming, or who has delved into a collection of sci-fi books, what she describes is nothing new. Essentially, she has rewritten the kind of information you would expect to find in any number of fiction books based in the near future or "cyberpunk" genre - excellent examples of same include Neuromancer and Snow Crash, as well as the role-playing game, Cyberpunk. Greenfield rehashes this information as if it is brand new, and as if she is indeed the first person to have conceived of this technology, and throughout the book there is an air of superiority that makes it genuinely difficult to read.
Perhaps worse still, there is no real examination of what the impact of this speculative technology will have on the human mind, on society, or on the world as a whole. Even the most basic of sci-fi novels or games go into more detail in this respect.
Overall, I found the book to be a frustrating, disappointing, and frankly condescending read. I barely struggled to the end, and I would encourage any potential reader to save yourself the heartache of doing the same.
If you want to speculate about future technology, and about how it will shape our lives, there are excellent fiction and non-fiction books out there that will help you to do so. This most definitely will not.
The 21st century technology she describes may seem "out there", but to anyone who has ever dabbled in role-play gaming, or who has delved into a collection of sci-fi books, what she describes is nothing new. Essentially, she has rewritten the kind of information you would expect to find in any number of fiction books based in the near future or "cyberpunk" genre - excellent examples of same include Neuromancer and Snow Crash, as well as the role-playing game, Cyberpunk. Greenfield rehashes this information as if it is brand new, and as if she is indeed the first person to have conceived of this technology, and throughout the book there is an air of superiority that makes it genuinely difficult to read.
Perhaps worse still, there is no real examination of what the impact of this speculative technology will have on the human mind, on society, or on the world as a whole. Even the most basic of sci-fi novels or games go into more detail in this respect.
Overall, I found the book to be a frustrating, disappointing, and frankly condescending read. I barely struggled to the end, and I would encourage any potential reader to save yourself the heartache of doing the same.
If you want to speculate about future technology, and about how it will shape our lives, there are excellent fiction and non-fiction books out there that will help you to do so. This most definitely will not.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It took several weeks for me to finally finish this book. The writing style was similar to that of a teenager discovering exciting things for the first time - whilst the reader sits like a tired grandparent being told things they already know.
As a scientist, I found the level of this book was too low, but I doubt if the average lay reader would find much of the detail, comprehsensible at all - so I'm not quite sure who the intended audience is for this book.
The final chapters bring together the whole book, and are actually quite interesting. Sadly it is not enough to just read the last chapters, and I imagine many people will have given up long before the end.
As a scientist, I found the level of this book was too low, but I doubt if the average lay reader would find much of the detail, comprehsensible at all - so I'm not quite sure who the intended audience is for this book.
The final chapters bring together the whole book, and are actually quite interesting. Sadly it is not enough to just read the last chapters, and I imagine many people will have given up long before the end.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Future is FemiNazi
Transhumanism and future technology is a subject that fascinates me. Sadly, this book simply infuriated me. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2010 by Bruno
worst book to buy if you know a little bit of science
this comes straight out of mind of a nooooob school going science fiction fanatic.........
Published on 15 April 2009 by Paras M. Salunkhe
Susan Greenfield -- genious, engaging and her words must be heard
I havent got this book yet but i am ordering it today after a speech by Susan Greenfield herself in a seminar about the future and how technology, especially neurotechnology is... Read more
Published on 21 Feb 2007 by The Artist
Not a rosy future
In Tomorrow’s People, Greenfield argues that as a result of the impact of new technology, from biomedical science to information technology (which includes... Read more
Published on 16 Mar 2006 by "dmaisch"
Misleading title
I bought this book because I'm interested in the effect of technology on the individual and society, and the title and summary made it sound interesting. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2004 by Bobby Elliott
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