快猫短视频

THE main problem with writing about the future is that it hasn鈥檛 happened yet. As a popular science genre, it is necessarily speculative, and for an author it can be dangerous ground. Say too much and your vision is dismissed as improbable. Say too little and you will be accused of having no more of a clue about the future than anyone else.

British science writer Michael Hanlon is the latest to venture into this territory, and has some thought-provoking moments. For instance, linguists believe that humans may speak only a couple of languages by the end of the 24th century. The deaths of thousands of minority tongues will hit us hard, Hanlon says: with each one, humanity loses a mode of thinking.

Then there is Africa. By 2100, African meltdown in the face of explosive population growth could leave a billion people starving, a continent mired in misery and 100 million refugees a year attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe in what Hanlon suggests may be 鈥渢he greatest disaster the world has ever seen鈥�.

However, his discussion of the future of Africa and Asia, home to 80 per cent of the planet鈥檚 people, fills only a dozen pages. Here is where the book falters: there is no depth to the analysis. Everything is sketched and hazy; nothing is argued with rigour. Instead, the book is padded with science fiction: an alien visitation, for example, and a baffling short story about a future solar eclipse.

In each of these cases, Hanlon chooses to flesh out the details of an arbitrary scenario rather than face up to the more difficult task of arguing how and why such a scenario might arise. Take, for example, what is possibly the most interesting suggestion in the book: in 10,000 years鈥� time, he says, we will all still use bicycles. No Segways or flying cars 鈥� for Hanlon, the bicycle is 鈥渢he purest and most beautifully efficient machine ever invented鈥�.

It is a lovely idea, but would bear some development. In 10,000 years, will there still be roads to ride these bikes on? And what is so beautifully efficient about the bike? Are any other aspects of today鈥檚 technology similarly future-proof, and why?

It is as important as it is natural for humans to occasionally move out of the present and think hard about the future, and Hanlon highlights some points we ought to consider. The prose is fluid and engaging, but the lack of synthesis or argument makes it difficult to know what to make of his speculations. The book covers some fascinating ground, but remains only superficially interesting, an hors d鈥檕euvre rather than the main course. Faced with the prospect of eternity, that鈥檚 not enough to satisfy.