I just finished reading two books. Both on the future. One is fiction from comedian and filmmaker Albert Brooks. It's titled 2030, The Real Story Of What Happens To America. The other is non fiction by comedian and futurist Mark Stevenson. It's titled "An Optimists Tour of the Future."  One is positive - one negative or visa versa. One is fact - one is fiction or visa versa. Both are a little funny - a little hopeful - a little scary. 

Stevenson's book was written after exhaustive research and interviews. It does a great job of explaining much of what is being explored. Stuff that would normally be way over my head.  Brook's book is from his imagination; but it sure sounds real.

Brooks says planes fly themselves, cars drive themselves, healthcare is dispensed on your refrigerator. Stevenson says with personal human genome - you can have medicines that work perfectly just for you.

We'll live longer - Both authors agree. Implants help today, but will people remove perfectly good body parts and replace them with mechanical ones because they work better? Could medicine and technology help us live for hundreds of years? That's one theory Stevenson explores. Would you want to live that long? If you could, when would you retire? Would you get married if you knew you'd be with that person possibly for centuries? It's called transhumanism and frankly, it's sounds really creepy. But how will it sound in 50 or 100 years? Will people who can afford robotic augmentation see "the normals" as lower life forms?

Stevenson gives examples of how people are slowly adapting to the concept of transhumanism. Take fading eyesight. First it was large print, then spectacles then contact lenses, and now lasik. There's currently experiments with stem cells to return your eyesight to it's former youth. Or hearing, First it was a large cone in your ear then bulky hearing aids to an ear bud. Now cochlear implants are common.

In Brooks world, cancer and Alzheimer's are cured. Most everyone takes a fat pill to stay in shape. The result is "the olds", people over 60, won't die already. They're sucking up everything. 

Brooks envisions a younger generation of “resentment gangs” killing "the olds" for continuing to take from the system. In Stevenson book though, he discovers the world is getting less violent - not more. In Brooks world, the US debt is so high, politicians don't even try to eliminate it. After a disaster an interesting solution is offered;  from the Chinese.

Stevenson sees ways to solve global warming. The future of nanotechnology and commercial space travel. He also wonders if the speed of scientific advances are going faster than a moral sense?

Brooks offers up lots of small medical, technical, and communication advances that sound real. Oh, and in Brooks world, the polar ice caps have melted .

What's interesting to me is the fiction seems just as real as the researched topic. The future is bleak - The future is great - or somewhere in the middle? Think where the human race was 50 to 100 years ago, now think where we'll be 50 or 100 years from now?
 
The future. Stevenson's fact's or Brook's imagination. Fact is, no one really knows what the future will truly be like.