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A History of the Future in 100 Objects Paperback – December 7, 2013

by Adrian Hon (Author)

4.3 80 ratings

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What are the 100 objects that future historians will pick to define our 21st century? A javelin thrown by an 'enhanced' Paralympian, far further than any normal human? Virtual reality interrogation equipment used by police forces? The world's most expensive glass of water, mined from the moons of Mars? Or desire modification drugs that fuel a brand new religion?A History of the Future in 100 Objects describes a hundred slices of the future of everything, spanning politics, technology, art, religion, and entertainment. Some of the objects are described by future historians; others through found materials, short stories, or dialogues. All come from a very real future.

Print length

243 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Skyscraper Publications
Publication date

December 7, 2013
Dimensions

6.46 x 1.02 x 9.37 inches
ISBN-10

0955181097
ISBN-13

978-0955181092
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Skyscraper Publications (December 7, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 243 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0955181097
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0955181092
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.79 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.46 x 1.02 x 9.37 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,716,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 80 ratings

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About the author

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Adrian Hon

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Hi! I'm author of A History of the Future in 100 Objects, and CEO at Six to Start, an award-winning games company and co-creators of "Zombies, Run!"

Originally, I trained as a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, and went on to conduct research at UCSD and at the University of Oxford. Just as I was starting a PhD in neuroscience at Oxford, I left to become Director of Play at Mind Candy, working as the lead designer of the Perplex City alternate reality game. In 2007, I co-founded Six to Start and also become an occasional technology writer for The Telegraph.

Over the last few years, I've had work displayed at MOMA and the Design Museum; conducted research in a Mars simulation in the Utah desert; worked with Disney Imagineering, Death Cab for Cutie, the British Museum, and The Economist; and spoken at TED in Monterey, California.

When it comes to inspiration, I owe a debt of gratitude to Vernor Vinge, Iain Banks, Neal Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lewis Hyde, Ted Chiang, George Orwell, Stanislaw Lem, and many more. Without their stories and ideas, the future would be a darker place.

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4.3 out of 5

80 global ratings

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The Future is coming

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2013

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When I read this I noted that some of the ideas came from some of my favorite authors such as Ian Banks and Vernor Vinge.
They are noted at the end as contributors. I really enjoyed this quick read. Makes me hope that I'll make it to an asteroid but, while not likely, my kids may. Fly High!

One person found this helpful

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Hann Qiu

Very difference type of science fiction experience.

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2015

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Visionary Fiction for sure~ At first I thought the vignettes would all be scattered, but the author manages to actually pull together a narrative half way through the book.

It is definitely a bit first world/metropole centric, would definitely recommend reading The Wretched of the Earth right after reading this.

Read it on the Kindle app on my phone and finished it in a week.

One person found this helpful

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darin wonn

One-of-a-Kind

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2014

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This is an incredible book. Its rare that such an imaginative and thorough view of the future is packaged into such a great narrative. Many of the objects that Hon describes are pretty visionary. As a technology product manager, this has given me a TON of great ideas for my work.

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2015

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This was an interesting read, and most of it seemed plausible. The future seems less distopian than I would expect, though it ends on something of a sad note.

One person found this helpful

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Gregory Marra

Wonderful collection.

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2016

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A great set of interwoven stories imagining what the future will be like. Explored lots of current themes like work, ai, virtual reality, and the future of philosophy. A fun read that can be slowly consumed one story at a time.

One person found this helpful

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As if

More bemusing than amusing

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2014

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I admire the ambition of this book. Attempting to create a believable vision of the future is a difficult enough task, but creating several successive visions of the future that build upon one another is a whole other proposition. For that the author should be lauded. However ambition and success are two different things.

For one, for all the effort that Hon went through to plot out the development of technology and society side by side, he doesn't really spend enough time in each era to give it the breathing room it deserves, and the whole thing blurs together. We look back at the last century and we have a clear picture of the 1920s with its bootleggers, flappers, and prosperity, the 1950s with greasers, jukeboxes, 57 Chevys and a distant but ominous Cold War, and the 1960s with its hippies, druggies, acid rockers, Bell Hueys, and muscle cars. We can picture eras and decades in our past, but Hon doesn't let us do the same for eras of the future. As I said, it all just blurs together.

Then there is the fact that the author's political bias shows through far more than could be considered professional. It is left-wing to the point of bumping up against Poe's Law. An almost religious-like faith that government regulation solves more problems than it creates pops up time and again along with other questionable notions such as the claim that a strong work ethic is some sort of relic of the past, or that human beings do not enjoy driving cars, or that China has any sort of economic future without the abandonment of its totalitarian system. Aside from being unpleasant, these notions have no basis in fact and really sap at the credibility, as does the author's bizarre notion of "post-human" as a hard line dividing the current species from its future version rather than a set of very different and incremental paths to self-evolution (organic augmention, cyber augmention, or a combination of the two).

The book seems to suffer from a clearly defined purpose. For the above reasons, it fails as a truly prescient prediction of the future that technology investors should heed, but it also doesn't make a particularly good pure science-fiction due to the utter lack of human characters; the book is far more concerned with hypothetical gadgets and flash-in-the-pan human MacGuffins. By trying to serve two masters, it ends up appeasing none.

That said, I enjoyed reading the book and there were some interesting ideas spread throughout, but it needs to be taken with more than a grain of salt, and I don't think that was the author's intention.

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David Levinson

I wish I wrote this book

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2014

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Excellent investigation into the next century of human existence, written in a looking backward fashion. It's all plausible, with a mix of the good and bad. Each object is associated with a narrative of the technology examined.

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Sandra Breuer

Is This Our Future? Well .... Read and See What you Think

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014

Fascinating to read in small bites -- each chapter a future object -- read one or two at a time. What's interesting to me is how many of these future objects are already here in one form or another (e.g., robots that make deliveries), while others are concepts I can barely understand. You might think these things will never happen in the next hundred years ... but then you think about what has happened in the past hundred years that we would not have been able to imagine, such as the Internet. In any case each chapter really captures my imagination and makes me think about how things are and how they might soon be. (On the other hand, at the World's Fair of 1964 there was an exhibit of the future -- sign posted on the way out: "I have seen the future" -- and at least half of what was predicted has not happened, such as everyone having a helicopter in the garage. But wait ... maybe drones, now in the hands of so many individuals, are the fulfillment of that prediction.)

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Objective Future

Reviewed in India on February 12, 2017

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A must read - especially for the younger generation , to from what has been , is , and will be .

A. Somerville

An interesting jog thru social & technology ideas

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2014

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As with all futurology, this book will become historic and wrong quite quickly. Yet its value lies in having a strong imagination of a possible future. The macro sense of change for all of Earth and its population over decades. The 100 objects conceit allows the author to jump between interesting issues and possibilities without being sucked into the mundanity of extrapolating every possibility.

I'd say this book was a better read in one day of the complexity of future possibilities than a year of reading Wired magazine.

2 people found this helpful

KFPanda

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2015

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Its a good gift

Jessica

Great read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2014

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Fascinating book, highly recommended for anyone who's interested in the future. Which should be everyone, right? Well written, intelligent and very entertaining - I'd love to see more from this author.

One person found this helpful

B

Really good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2013

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I'm a big fan of books with numbers in the title, and short chapters full of ideas. This has both. Very enjoyable indeed, and deeply stimulating.

One person found this helpful

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A History of the Future in 100 Objects Paperback – December 7, 2013

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