The Meaning of the 21st Century

I spent last week in England, and am now back in Silicon Valley, trying to get back into the swing of year-end things.

As part of my homework for the England trip, I've been reading James Martin's The Meaning of the 21st Century (here's an Amazon link) and have been quite impressed by it. It's a bit of a compendium of futures and cutting-edge science, and unintentionally a good introduction to current futures and forecasting in science, energy, environment, and a bunch of other fields. Martin has a pretty substantial reputation as a serious thinker about emerging technologies and their impacts, and this new book is very good.

The choice of the term "meaning" is quite intriguing. We generally don't think of centuries as having meanings; Martin could have just as easily titled his book The Challenges of the 21st Century, or The Problems of the 21st Century, so the choice of a different, rather richer, word is a good indication that he's up to something more substantive than usual.

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