Book Review: Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

I love futuristic estimates of what world will be in coming years. So often most of those are total nonsense, but from the reviews I understood that this book might be different. I was eager to Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Future.

Even though the idea of the book is to guess future, Michio Kaku does guessing with so much facts about current science and knowledge from the leading experts on their field, that many guesses will happen for sure.

Book makes estimates about future of computers, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, space travel, wealth and humanity. It gives estimates about all of the subjects for near future (next 20 years), mid century (2050-2070 timeframe) and end of the century (2100). All estimates are based on facts about current situation and from history of innovations.

I loved every page of the book. It was interesting to know about current situation about innovations and science in different areas. Also the predictions as such were fun to read. All the time I just kept thinking, will i live to see that happen. Hopefully many of the things mentioned in the book will happen on my lifetime. World needs many of the inventions speculated in the book.

 I can highly recommend this book to everyone. It is interesting, provocative and raises lot of thoughts. I can't remember when was the last time I hoped that book wouldn't have ended so fast. And the book was more than 400 pages long. I loved it and many others will too.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Future prediction videos

I really like these future prediction films. It's nice to see how view of the future is such a different by different people. In these future prediction films only one thing is for sure, future will never look like that.

Still in each of the videos there's always some things that makes sense and could perhaps become true in the future. This video is made out of Electrolux Design lab competion. It's a mixture of home and home electronics for the future.



Many of the ideas are quite cool and even bit realistic. Nice to see if any of the ideas will actually fly in coming 20-30 years.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook - the thing our parents used to do

Will Facebook become "the thing our parents used to do"? Idea that our kids will talk in 15 years from now about Facebook as the thing our parents used to use seems bit amusing, but it might become reality soon.

I think it's quite likely that this will actually happen. I can't actually tell a one thing in media that is the same now that was with our parents. They didn't have mobile, TV barely had colors, not to mention Internet and everything there. So why in earth wouldn't change happen as fast with social media also.

Surely there's a lot value in Facebook currently, but will it really last for 10-15 years? I doubt it.. It's now about eight years old and most of the users have been there less than 3 years. So it's easy to say it's still fresh and new. When it will be 15-20 years old, there will definitely be other viable options to keep in touch with friends.

Facebook surely might be live and kicking in 10-15 years from now for sure, but it's not definitely going to be the cool thing out there the young kids will use. I bet it will become the "thing our parents used to do". And as we all know, kids definitely don't want to be like their parents.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review: As the Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez

 As I first time scanned through As The Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez, I knew it would be something totally different. Typography of the book looked strange with lots of different font sizes and lots of free spaces throughout the book. Even I was prepared, book was able to surprise me.

Book turned out to be arrogant, irritating and controversial prophecy of how the future will turn out. I have to say I hated the book many times, and I almost quit the book in half way. There was still something interesting enough to keep me going. The actual content of the book is in many points quite interesting to read. There's lot of good facts about what's happening in the science currently (in year 2001) and lots of good thoughts how the future might turn out to be. It's just the way Juan Enriquez presents his thoughts that made me see red.

Problem with a book that has controversial thoughts about the future is that anyone criticizing it's thoughts can be stamped to be old fashioned and not understanding anything about the trends of the future. I think that's also the style how Juan Enriquez wrote the whole book. It is meant to diss the people who don't believe in his thoughts and prophesies.

Even thought there was some interesting facts and ideas there, I don't honestly buy some of the things in this book. I don't believe that we will start to manipulate products with human genes as much as thought in this book and I don't even believe that genes has such a big affect to everything as the book thinks. I have to say that Juan Enriquez couple of times acknowledges this on the book, but he doesn't really bring it that much forward. After reading The Genius in all of us I've never thought about genetics as the way I used to.

I think that subjects and contents of this book are important. Also I'm sure that Juan Enriquez is really intelligent guy. So there are all the ingredients for a good book; but this one just isn't. It's too american and too preaching for my taste and it doesn't really give room for thinking as it should.

I genuinely hate the typography and way of writing. I don't think there's a single good sentence in this book.

Maybe he thinks that this subject is far more interesting in big letters.. 

and then he tries to be so cool with different formatting..

and then there are even bigger letters to prove the point...

And none of the sentences finish with a dot..

And the whole thing turns out such a mess.

To be honest, I'm not going recommend this book to anyone. I can show it to some of my friends to get the point, but don't waste your time reading this one. There must be better books about the subject. Subjects itself are valuable, but the book isn't.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Take pictures you can focus later

I run into to this new camera type from Lytro, which will take pictures so that you don't need to focus. You can actually leave the focusing to the one's who are looking the picture later. Here's promotional video about their solution:



Here's some picture's from their demo gallery, so you can see and try it yourself. So tick different places in image to focus on that level:


By Lytro / Richard Koci Hernandez
Sophie Hernandez, 13, lost in her favorite book.


By Lytro / Jason Bradley
Shore entry in Monterey Bay, California


By Lytro / Eric Cheng
The colorful crowds of Hollywood, CA.

I don't want to judge too much in this phase of what purpose this could be used, but definitely there will be use for this kind of camera. I would guess it will cost a lot for starters, but as all technology it will come cheaper over time.

It will make one aspect of photography totally different. You can't play with focus as you have used to, but you must use focus much more creatively, since users can focus your pictures later on.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Mind controls, controlling car with brain

Possibilities to undestand brains and use those for controls seems to go fast forward. Here's an example of controlling car with brain sensors. Quite impressive.



I could already see numerous ways to use these brain controls. The first usage most probably isn't to use it for driving a car, but there's lot of things where having brains as extra pair of controls would offer much better possibilities to control machines.

You can check more on their website http://autonomos.inf.fu-berlin.de/  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen