Summary of Dr. Steven Novella's The Skeptics' Guide to the Future

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The author works for a company that builds autonomous robot servants, and he uses one every morning to get dressed. He was not initially excited about the technology, but eventually grew to appreciate it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350039511

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Insights on Dr. Steven Novella's The Skeptics Guide to the Future

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The future Museum of the Future wanted to exhibit was filled with retro-futuristic robots and virtual reality. It was strange, though, with its analog aesthetic.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

We can learn from futurism’s checkered past and correct what errors we can find, but we must understand that predictions of the future are simply reflections of the present. We are still bad at predicting what the future will bring.

#2

We can’t predict specific weather, but we can predict overall changes in climate. It’s easier to predict that travel will get faster in the future than the specifics of automotive technology.

#3

The future is what we make it. We will explore emerging technologies, and speculate about fantastical tech from possible futures. We will always be critical of our enthusiasm for the future, and always bring it back down to reality.

#4

Futurism is not what it used to be. In traveling back in time and into the future, we can look at some of the visions of yesterday’s future and see what they got right and what they got spectacularly wrong.

#5

The future is difficult to predict, and it is often overestimated short-term progress and underestimated long-term progress. Each technology follows its own pattern of progress, and it can be difficult to pick technological winners and losers.

#6

The future is often depicted as having advanced technologies that are far beyond what is available today. However, this is a fallacy. Anticipate roadblocks, blind alleys, and troubling hurdles, and your estimates will likely be closer to the mark.

#7

The Philco-Ford Corporation film in 1967, starring Wink Martindale, imagined the world of 1999. They relied on their own hidden assumptions to predict that many aspects of daily life would change simply because future technology would allow for such change. But history has shown that past technology persists into the future.

#8

The future is a complex blend of the new and the old. The trick is predicting which things will change, and which will substantially stay the same. Old technology can be remarkably persistent.

#9

There are many competing concerns when it comes to new technologies, and it is difficult to predict how they will play out. We must recognize that there are many competing concerns, and that they will often be difficult to combine.

#10

The assumption that people will have more leisure time in the future is not reasonable today. This was not the case a century ago, as industrialization freed developed societies from previous crushing drudgery.

#11

The future is a foreign country, and people there will not be like us. They will have different priorities, ethics, and a different relationship with their technology. We can see this today as parents don’t understand how their own children use the latest social media app.

#12

The assumption that society and technology in the future will be more planned, designed, and controlled is based on the notion that the powers that be will craft our future