Soonish

Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything

By: Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith

Narrated by: Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith

From a top scientist and the creator of the hugely popular web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a hilarious investigation into future technologies - from how to fling a ship into deep space on the cheap to 3-D organ printing.

What will the world of tomorrow be like? How does progress happen? And why do we not have a lunar colony already? What is the holdup?

In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next - from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research and interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.

New technologies are almost never the work of isolated geniuses with a neat idea. A given future technology may need any number of intermediate technologies to develop first, and many of these critical advances may appear to be irrelevant when they are first discovered. The journey to progress is full of strange detours and blind alleys that tell us so much about the human mind and the march of civilization. To this end, Soonish investigates 10 different emerging fields, from programmable matter to augmented reality, from space elevators to robotic construction, to show us the amazing world we will have, you know, soonish.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2017 Zach Weinersmith and Kelly Weinersmith (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

A lot of potential derailed by bad jokes

The idea of this book is really cool and unique--looking at the costs and practical concerns that affect whether new technologies will be successful in everyday implementation and why. The authors have spent a lot of time researching emerging technologies and point out the cost and practical engineering problems that must be overcome. Neither are actively involved in research or development of the technologies, so all their information is second hand and probably not as complete as it could be, but it still could make for an interesting read.

If only they had stopped there. But no, the authors had to inject their poor sense of humor into the book. They are constantly injecting footnotes into book (when they really mean sidenotes), only half of which are relevant or interesting. They also try to make jokes that just aren't funny. And their delivery of the narration is very flat and expository which is a little boring to listen to. And I didn't appreciate the sexist language used throughout.

Overall, this book had a great idea and great potential, but the bad jokes, poor narration, and not understanding the difference between a sidenote and a footnote yet inserting one in every 10-20 seconds took away from what could potentially be an excellent book.

Funny nerd candy

The authors are really funny, and they talk about a bunch of wild ideas that people are working on, and they look at the pros and cons. Some of the ideas really expand your mind about what can be done. You can tell the amount of research and interviews that went into making this book was immense. The authors are pretty funny as well!

Entertaining and educational

Surprisingly fun and entertaining book about the technologies that are just behind the horizon. Must read while it’s still relevant since in some areas (reusable rockets) huge improvements were made since it was written. We’re still no closer to fusion though :P

Probably a great summer read as well. Highly recommended.

GREAT

loved this book. I learned a ton of interesting information about many emerging technologies and ideas. Made me look things up, thank you

Not Great

A collection of facts is not a book, this seems to only be a collection of facts. My brain is bleeding.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Future

The Weinersmiths’ book is to popular science/futurology what John Oliver is to investigative journalism

The Future Is Now In this book.

The WeinerSmiths entertainingly explore emerging tech. If you like hearing about new technologies, this might be your cup of tea.

I love books like this. Definitely worth the read

I suggest this to anyone that is interested in technology and where it is headed. The authors are also great at narrating, and have the rare talent of doing their book justice. I highly suggest this to people that want to learn some of the groundbreaking technologies coming to light, and where they could be relatively soon.

Hated it over time

Started out promising. But it became subtly dislikeable over time ... Every time the lady author / performer used an example, it was "she." Even if the example would be of an NFL player running, she would say: "Imagine HER (the NFL player) running ..." Little social reprogramming nods like that detracted from the book, in my opinion. Why didn't they just use Zer and Zim and really start getting us in the liberal mindset?

The beginning of black mirror

Very interesting concept and I’m glad I picked up this book. Could visualize most of these groundbreaking technologies bettering our lives. And the other hand I could see how distractive some of these ideas could be. What does come to my mind is a concept of social credit score affecting how some of these applications will work for individuals. Look forward to the next 10 years and seeing what comes to reality and what doesn’t.