Predictions

These predictions about the 21st century are from 30 of today's best-known minds - including Richard Dawkins, Umberto Eco, J.K. Galbraith, Steven Pinker, and Peter Singer. The predictions outline the discoveries/changes that the contributors expect to see happen in their field in the 21st century. Each prediction is followed by a profile of the writer, setting his or her work in context and explaining the theories or inventions. Taken as a whole, the book provides a snapshot of the state of knowledge across a broad range of fields at the millennium's end. Chemist Carl Djerassi, inventor of the contraceptive pill, predicts the setting up of fertility banks, full of frozen sperm and eggs, where couples who want to have children will open accounts. Philosopher Peter Singer predicts that animals will be granted the same rights as humans. Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg expects that in the next century there will be an answer to the question "What are the Laws of Everything?" Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick describes a future where humans will be able to read one anothers thoughts, by means of electronic implants in the human body. Economist J.K.
Galbraith hopes for controls on the nuclear threat.