FUTURE FACTS: A Forecast of the World As We Will Know It Before the End of the Century

Your own tingling ultrasonic shower/bath, your own home waste recycling system, your videophone, your eye movements to direct your robot vacuum cleaner or typewriter, your vacation home under the sea, your flat wall TV, memory pill, replaceable organs, grow-them-yourself bones. . . they're all here in Rosen's compilation of things within a generation's reach. Some of it's fun, some Big Brotherish; some way in and already here, some way out and iffy. Trouble is, you may be more depressed than delighted at the thought of all that instant information, replay, communication among all those Six-Million-Dollar persons darting around in their hydrogen-powered (pollution-free) cars or swinging onto conveyor belts between office and modular home. Part of the problem is Rosen's upbeat style. The individual ""facts"" are presented as lively but highly condensed one-pagers, like snappy but teasing newspaper pieces or publicity handouts. Indeed the sources--NASA, Exxon, IBM, the Rand Corp., and other major government or industrial/research organizations--guarantee optimism. A thoughtful reader will want to know more, ask if Advance X won't conflict with Advance Y or create more pollution, use more energy, etc., for which Rosen offers only a rare caveat. Also, the condensed style demands that the reader be fluent in a variety of technological languages, from medicine to information theory or nuclear energy. In short, this is a mixed bag of future tricks that may appeal to bright high-schoolers, readers of popular science magazines and perhaps writers, teachers or futurists who want a handy reference file to serve as a jumping-off place.