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Looking Forward
You will see this society through the eyes of Scott and Hella, a couple of the next century. Their living quarters are equipped with a cybernator, a seemingly magical computer device, but one that is based on scientific principles now known. It regulates sleeping hours, communications throughout the world, an incredible underwater living complex, and even the daily caloric intake of the young couple. (They are in their forties but can expect to live 200 years.)
The world that Scott and Hella live in is a world that has achieved full weather control, has developed a finger-sized computer that is implanted in the brain of every baby at birth (and the babies are scientifically incubated the women of the twenty-first century need not go through the pains of childbirth), and that has perfected genetic manipulation that allows the human race to be improved by means of science.
Economically, the world is Utopian by our standards. Jobs, wages, and money have long since been phased out. Nothing has a price tag, and personal possessions are not needed. Nationalism has been surpassed, and total disarmament has been achieved; educational technology has made schools and teachers obsolete. The children learn by doing, and are independent in this friendly world by the time they are five.
The chief source of this greater society is the Correlation Center, a gigantic complex of computers that serves but never enslaves mankind. Corcen regulates production, communication, transportation and all other burdensome and monotonous tasks of the past. This frees men and women to achieve creative challenging experiences rather than empty lives of meaningless leisure.
Obviously this book is speculative, but it is soundly based upon scientific developments that are now known. And as the authors state:
You will understand this book best if you are one who sees today only as a stepping stone between yesterday and tomorrow. You will need a sensitivity to the injustices, lost opportunities for happiness, and searing conflicts that characterize our twentieth-century civilization. If your mind can weigh new ideas and evaluate them with insight, this book is for you.
We have no crystal ball. ... We want you to feed our ideas into your own computer, so that you can find even better ideas that may play a part in molding the future of our civilization.
The world that Scott and Hella live in is a world that has achieved full weather control, has developed a finger-sized computer that is implanted in the brain of every baby at birth (and the babies are scientifically incubated the women of the twenty-first century need not go through the pains of childbirth), and that has perfected genetic manipulation that allows the human race to be improved by means of science.
Economically, the world is Utopian by our standards. Jobs, wages, and money have long since been phased out. Nothing has a price tag, and personal possessions are not needed. Nationalism has been surpassed, and total disarmament has been achieved; educational technology has made schools and teachers obsolete. The children learn by doing, and are independent in this friendly world by the time they are five.
The chief source of this greater society is the Correlation Center, a gigantic complex of computers that serves but never enslaves mankind. Corcen regulates production, communication, transportation and all other burdensome and monotonous tasks of the past. This frees men and women to achieve creative challenging experiences rather than empty lives of meaningless leisure.
Obviously this book is speculative, but it is soundly based upon scientific developments that are now known. And as the authors state:
You will understand this book best if you are one who sees today only as a stepping stone between yesterday and tomorrow. You will need a sensitivity to the injustices, lost opportunities for happiness, and searing conflicts that characterize our twentieth-century civilization. If your mind can weigh new ideas and evaluate them with insight, this book is for you.
We have no crystal ball. ... We want you to feed our ideas into your own computer, so that you can find even better ideas that may play a part in molding the future of our civilization.
- GenresNonfiction
204 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 31, 1969
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356 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 18, 2013
I maybe should only have given this three stars but I am currently highly enamored of Jacque Fresco and his vision. The first half of the book is an insightful look back at the history of man and science. The second half is a fictional story describing a possible future if we were to follow Mr. Fresco's recommendations. This part suffers from being a future world imagined in the late sixties so it sounds a little like an episode of Star Trek. Even so, the book identifies a fundamental flaw in modern society, namely our reliance on an impractical money-based system, and suggests a system based on our resources instead. This would probably sound all right to everyone but the one-percenters. I would venture a guess that their lives would improve as well though. If I were a one-percenter and I had to slink around our collapsing society, shielding myself with military force I would have to wonder whether a new society where everyone's needs and desires were met wouldn't be a nicer place to live. Oh well. Just dreaming again.
September 5, 2014
La primera parte es excelente y muy vigente a pesar de que fue publicada en 1969. En ella se analiza el estado actual de la humanidad resaltando el perpetuo error de vivir en aras de instituciones cuyas bases filosóficas son subjetivas (cof, cof, dinero, democracia). La segunda parte en cambio es una puñeta mental mal narrada sobre el futuro ideal según Fresco. Todo es muy bonito, no hay maldad, no hay leyes y los robots son nuestros sirvientes bajo el control absoluto de una computadora que parece ser el engendro bastardo de Google y HAL (Odisea en el espacio). La cuestión es que nunca se dice “cómo” chingados llegaremos a ese futuro. Se que esta utopía tiene algo que ver con la economía basada en recursos pero nunca explica de que manera se puede pasar de la teoría a la práctica. La duda permanece aún después de ver Zeitsgate 2, Zeitgeist 3 y Paradise or Oblivion. A ver si resuelven este tema en el otro panfleto que regalan en la página del autor (www.thevenusproject.com): Designing the Future.
January 8, 2013
An amazing look into the future, around 2079. The world will be protected and served by robots, and the world's monetary system will be obsolete. Poverty will be eradicated, and so will work. A garden of eden if you will. I cant believe more people do not know about Jacque Fresco. Look him up please.
June 30, 2013
The game plan for precisely how to attain such an advanced society is tenuously described at best, but the fictional world described in part 2 is doubtlessly worth reading, if only for the sheer inspiration it provides.
January 9, 2014
One of the most interesting books that I have had the fortune to read.
May 7, 2015
There are times when sane men speak. I wish people listened. One can dream for a world like this...probably not in my life time but still...
May 6, 2024
I read this book for the purpose of changing my opinion that the future will be bleak and stifling from the encroaching technological advances upsetting the firmly grounded lifestyle of the past. What I received instead however was a very damaging book that negatively impacted my mental health. In this review I want to announce to the world its absurdities so that others won't suffer as I did racking my brain over its nonsense.
Before I begin my critique, positives have to be conceded. The book is well structured; written clearly and constructively to inform the reader of its subject-matter comprehensively. Sociological books of this type are usually hard to understand for a beginner, but this book's simple terms with reference to ideas common to all makes it easy to follow. The second chapter helpfully illustrates its theory by describing a hypothesized society in the year 2070 with 2 characters going through the motions.
The main source of problem for me is its recurrent message of the obsoleteness of past wisdom - "In times of rapid change, the wisdom of the past is usually of litle help in meeting the problems of the present." The authors claim that in their projected future where living conditions are different, past thinker's thoughts on problems faced will be completely useless. When considered deeply, what do the authors intend for the reader to take away from the book? By my interpretation, they intended for us all to forget everything learned sourced from the past because it is supposedly will be inapplicable to the future. All those classics of literature are only to be gawked at and no more.
Now for the critique:
Firstly, it brashly devalues all complex human experiences and knowledge to be relegated to one period. Our minds screams against this because for a stable nation to thrive there must be an accumulation of past knowledge to study from and take guidance by comparing what was to what is now.
Secondly, if wisdom is only applicable to one time period's conditons, it follows that in the future those conditions will change too resulting in that society's wisdom becoming obsolete. What we are left with is an absurd cycle of learning and forgetting.
Thirdly, it doesn't understand the all-encompassing cause of ideas. To explain, if a man was poor in ancient times what would be the solutions proposed to enrich him? It would be with propositions of food, housing and money made available by his employment. To contrast to this book's vision, citizens of this projected society of 2070 still do something to get something whether it be friends, experiences, or new resources. The idea of the past remains that "what you put in, you get out". What I mean to imply is that in whatever condition you put living beings onto, the same basic principles of knowledge formation applies.
Fourthly, in reality this projected world wouldn't exist in the future in the exact form as presented by the authors. The world is a complex place, with many people choosing to live in their own way. Definitely people of that 2070 society would experiment in living in our times by use of virtual reality or visiting remote communities. Added to this certainty that unexpectencies occur and that nature will always pops its head somewhere, there requires to be awareness of the past to deal with those problems. No matter the naive complaint of futurisits, suffering will be an ever-present factor of all life - from lowly beasts to god-like beings.
Fifthly, I contacted the head of the Venus Project to express my confusion as to why a book would want me to forget past experiences due to its insisted obsoleteness in the future. The manager replied that I "mis-interpreted the book's message and of course the past will be remembered. Jacques Fresco would have a different view of the future than Kenneth S. Keyes Jr." I do not agree that I mis-interpreted it because the aforementioned point was said many times clearly throughout the book.
In conclusion this book failed to change my mind that progressed technological applications to every area of human life would be good. Nature demands a balance between ease and effort in order to attain satisfaction for beings living under it. But most importantly of all this book has a horrible reacurrent message that if accepted uncritically would entirely blight one's mind. The only reason as to why someone would teach this misguided insight is that Kenneth S. Keyes Jr. and Jacque Fresco wanted to distance themselves from their times because of their own biased discomfort to it and wishing to escape to an unrealistic future where everything will be different. I hope I reassured the reader that the wisdom of the past WILL be of much use to the problems of the future. I recommend sound futuristic books such as H.G. Wells' 'The Shape of Things to Come' that rightfully see the future as a development of the past and not a blank slate.
Before I begin my critique, positives have to be conceded. The book is well structured; written clearly and constructively to inform the reader of its subject-matter comprehensively. Sociological books of this type are usually hard to understand for a beginner, but this book's simple terms with reference to ideas common to all makes it easy to follow. The second chapter helpfully illustrates its theory by describing a hypothesized society in the year 2070 with 2 characters going through the motions.
The main source of problem for me is its recurrent message of the obsoleteness of past wisdom - "In times of rapid change, the wisdom of the past is usually of litle help in meeting the problems of the present." The authors claim that in their projected future where living conditions are different, past thinker's thoughts on problems faced will be completely useless. When considered deeply, what do the authors intend for the reader to take away from the book? By my interpretation, they intended for us all to forget everything learned sourced from the past because it is supposedly will be inapplicable to the future. All those classics of literature are only to be gawked at and no more.
Now for the critique:
Firstly, it brashly devalues all complex human experiences and knowledge to be relegated to one period. Our minds screams against this because for a stable nation to thrive there must be an accumulation of past knowledge to study from and take guidance by comparing what was to what is now.
Secondly, if wisdom is only applicable to one time period's conditons, it follows that in the future those conditions will change too resulting in that society's wisdom becoming obsolete. What we are left with is an absurd cycle of learning and forgetting.
Thirdly, it doesn't understand the all-encompassing cause of ideas. To explain, if a man was poor in ancient times what would be the solutions proposed to enrich him? It would be with propositions of food, housing and money made available by his employment. To contrast to this book's vision, citizens of this projected society of 2070 still do something to get something whether it be friends, experiences, or new resources. The idea of the past remains that "what you put in, you get out". What I mean to imply is that in whatever condition you put living beings onto, the same basic principles of knowledge formation applies.
Fourthly, in reality this projected world wouldn't exist in the future in the exact form as presented by the authors. The world is a complex place, with many people choosing to live in their own way. Definitely people of that 2070 society would experiment in living in our times by use of virtual reality or visiting remote communities. Added to this certainty that unexpectencies occur and that nature will always pops its head somewhere, there requires to be awareness of the past to deal with those problems. No matter the naive complaint of futurisits, suffering will be an ever-present factor of all life - from lowly beasts to god-like beings.
Fifthly, I contacted the head of the Venus Project to express my confusion as to why a book would want me to forget past experiences due to its insisted obsoleteness in the future. The manager replied that I "mis-interpreted the book's message and of course the past will be remembered. Jacques Fresco would have a different view of the future than Kenneth S. Keyes Jr." I do not agree that I mis-interpreted it because the aforementioned point was said many times clearly throughout the book.
In conclusion this book failed to change my mind that progressed technological applications to every area of human life would be good. Nature demands a balance between ease and effort in order to attain satisfaction for beings living under it. But most importantly of all this book has a horrible reacurrent message that if accepted uncritically would entirely blight one's mind. The only reason as to why someone would teach this misguided insight is that Kenneth S. Keyes Jr. and Jacque Fresco wanted to distance themselves from their times because of their own biased discomfort to it and wishing to escape to an unrealistic future where everything will be different. I hope I reassured the reader that the wisdom of the past WILL be of much use to the problems of the future. I recommend sound futuristic books such as H.G. Wells' 'The Shape of Things to Come' that rightfully see the future as a development of the past and not a blank slate.
December 30, 2017
First part is plainly perfect. A good piece for anyone being introduced to Resource Based Economy's possibilities and controlling factors.
Last half is extrapolation of life in RBE based on possible under development technology or developed technology. However, as JF himself says, there are no final frontiers. Therefore, its just one of uncountable possibility.
Last half is extrapolation of life in RBE based on possible under development technology or developed technology. However, as JF himself says, there are no final frontiers. Therefore, its just one of uncountable possibility.
August 13, 2019
Such a wonderful posible vision of the world. I love it. I enjoy so much all of Jacque Fresco books.
March 9, 2021
Прослушал книгу на русском. Интересно услышать мнение о развитии общества и технологии с точки зрения учёных начала прошлого столетия и понаблюдать в чем были близки и в чём нет.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews