The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future

I found this book to be compelling, extremely interesting and motivating. It is simply a brief, non-political overview of our world, and some entirely forseeable possibilities for our future.

If you do not care about your descendants, if you are uninterested by the world and if you do not wish to learn about yourself and give meaning to your life, then this book is not for you.

In response to the review posted by 'Clement Wether': You suggest that computing technology is outside of Martin's area of expertise. A thorough reading of Page 2, Paragraph 4 of the Preface will reveal the following quote: "...I joined IBM and was trained to design computer systems...' as well as several other pieces of information that would prove your suggestion false.

Anyone interested in the world, who hasn't already made their mind up about it should take a close look at this book.

Ironically fat (0/1 people found this helpful)

Given that this is a book about the tendency of our current virulent form of capitalism to waste materials and to encourage lifestyles without a view to their sustainability on a planet with, finally, finite resources, it is remarkably, indeed, scandalously, over-weight and baggy and with even cursorary editing might have been whittled down to one tenth its published volume. As well as being repetitive, it is, in places, banal, and when the author strays outside his area of expertise, i.e. computing technology, ludicrously naive. The sections on religion and on culture as drivers of human conduct and behaviour wouldn't pass muster in an A Level sociology or psychology class. He has very little plausible or interesting to say about the ways in which information and computer technology are likely to impact on cultural change, because his model of human motivation is so limited.

The most chilling aspect of this book is that an author, who is at once so unsophisticated and alarmist in his analysis, should garner such extraordinary reviews from a collection of *eminent* scientists and movers & shakers, happy to puff the edition. If these people, who are in positions of influence and power, sincerely believe in their endorsements of this piece of rune-casting, we've got real problems looming - even if they're not the ones predicted by Martin himself.

Dire, repetitive, unoriginal pulp (3/8 people found this helpful)

This book is utter trash, and it is tedious in the extreme to read, in part because it is very repetitive. Most things are said at least twice, and many things are said three times. Whole sentences are echoed a hundred pages after they first appeared (almost, but not quite verbatim), and it is not as if the sentences are particularly worth repeating.

There is very little original material here. Rather, each chapter is essentially a summary of part of someone else's book -- not an obscure book, but a popular book, usually a past non-fiction best-seller (by authors such as Richard Dawkins, James Lovelock and Vernor Vinge) -- whose ideas have already been discussed to death in the broadsheet supplements, so there's no deep scholarship here. If you're interested in ideas, you'll be familiar with everything in the book.

There's a great deal of pointless scaremongering -- e.g., that we're going to run out of water, and fight wars over it. No, we're not. Why fight a war costing hundreds of billions, when you can buy a desalination plant or a pipeline for a fraction of the cost? The stuff about overpopulation repeats an old and popular idea that happens to be utter nonsense and completely wrong. Poverty and hunger are absolutely not caused by overpopulation (indeed, if the population density is too low, you can't get an economy going), nor is there any good evidence that we are reaching the limits of what population can physically be sustained with our resources. Malthus was wrong about these matters two hundred years ago, and his followers have been wrong about it ever since. Haven't these people noticed yet that it is the thinly populated regions that tend to be the poorest (both globally and within nations), and the most densely populated that tend to be rich? Haven't they noticed, either, that as the population grows, we just keep getting richer? Haven't they noticed that what they suppose are physical limits on available resources always turn out to be merely limits of a particular technology?

Every shallow and unintelligent kind of futurology is here. There's quasi-religious Gaian guff. There's naivety about the possibility of getting people of different religions to tolerate one another. There's vague terror of what will happen when super-intelligent computers take over. There's also a lot of laughable prediction of the present (e.g., the author predicts that in future young people will take drugs on their first date, and will hook up socially via the internet -- duh!)

This book is not worth reading if you're looking for deep and original insights about what might be the real meaning of 21st century. I doubt very much that it is worth reading for any reason at all.

The footnotes and index are rubbish, too.

An incredibly important book (1/1 people found this helpful)

Each chapter begins by laying out some real world problem so vividly and realistically (and therefore terrifingly) that you think 'Oh my God! What can we possibly do?'. But then each chapter goes on to describe practical and realistic solutions so that you think 'That's it! We should do that and we can solve this'.

Utterly amazing.

Good book, but a bit repetative and contradictory (1/1 people found this helpful)

Overall, its a good read, the first few chapters really highlight the problems facing the planet and proposes some good solutions. I hope those in power read it.

The second half of the book declines in quality (hence 4 and not 5 stars), not only does it repeat in detail items which were nicely summarised earlier in the book, but the author can't seem to make up his mind. We're told that super intelligent computers will revolutionise the world without taking over humanity, as they'll always lack human emotion and appreciation of the arts, we're then told soon after that the human brain, complete with all human thought processes, will be completely digitised to fit on a chip accessable to computers! Sadly thats just one of many such contradictions.

The Author sees technology through massively rose tinted spectacles (i'd advise him to watch the Terminator series of movies) and vigorously asserts timelines for every improvement, each of which are implied to be uncorruptable. The book misses many negative historical precendents and seems to be divorced from reality in places. If history is any yard stick to go by most of timetable for the 'improvements' will certainly be incorrect, as were the estimates for widespread nuclear fusion power, men on Mars, etc (pick almost anything from a previous decade), and politics will ensure any such 'improvements' are perverted.

It's a book that delivers hope and despair in equal measure, but should be read by all to widen the debate about what kind of planet we want our children to inherit.

The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future

James Martin

Reader Reviews:

An excellent introduction to the world. (0/0 people found this helpful)

Ironically fat (0/1 people found this helpful)

Dire, repetitive, unoriginal pulp (3/8 people found this helpful)

An incredibly important book (1/1 people found this helpful)

Good book, but a bit repetative and contradictory (1/1 people found this helpful)

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