Future

There are two ways of looking at the future and this 100th Eyewitness guide to it shows us both. On the one hand it can convince us that, in the words of C F Kettering 'we should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.' Apparently Kettering is an American industrialist. On the other hand it is also a total confirmation of Albert Einstein's point of view: 'I never think of the future -- it comes soon enough.' The book does these jobs by showing us close on five dozen pages of the triumphs of human technological achievement. We see nano-robots that can do anything from clean the carpet to destroy tumours, potatoes made frost-resistant by adding fishgenes, self-sorting dustbins and virtual virtually everything. Barbarella come home! In their puff for their century volume the publishers aver that 'Eyewitness Guides have set the standard for today's information books.' They have a point: in the use of context-free pictures and in the confinement or expansion of any subject to fit a double spread they have proved themselves world leaders. But considering the breadth and quality of most of the other 99 titles in the series, this one is a definite lightweight. Not least because only part of our future -- and a minor part at that -- is technological, and this will neither destroy us nor provide a golden age. The quality of our future is much more a social thing, but of course that does not make for hundreds of amazing pictures with snappy captions. So I am happy to go with Einstein on this one and take it as it comes -- a day at a time will do for now -- which makes this book a handy spotter's guide. But set alongside the observation by Kettering's fellow-American Thomas Waller that 'one never knows, do one?' it is but a wonder-ful irrelevance. Happily the self-awarded gold medal on the dust-jacket is peel-offable.