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Mark Stevenson has been to the future a few years ahead of the rest of us - and reckons it has a lot going for it. His voyage of discovery takes him to Oxford to meet Transhumanists (they intend to live forever), to Boston where he confronts a robot with mood swings, to an underwater cabinet meeting in the Indian Ocean, and Australia to question the Outback's smartest farmer. He clambers around space planes in the Mojave desert, gets to grips with the potential of nanotechnology, delves deep into the possibilities of biotech, sees an energy renaissance on a printer, a revolution in communications, has his genome profiled, and glimpses the next stage of human evolution...and tries to make sense of what's in store. Insightful and often very funny, "An Optimist's Tour of the Future" is a book that tracks one curious man's journey to find out 'what's next?'
Mark Stevenson divides his time between running agencies for science communications and cultural learning and performing and writing comedy. He lives in Telegraph Hill, south London.
'Blind optimism is the last thing the world needs - a recipe for disappointment. But what about optimism based on careful reasoning? On digging below the surface for the ideas and the trends that really do add up to something promising? That's what's on offer here. Stevenson wears no blindfold. His tools are curiosity, open-mindedness, clarity and reason. That makes his journey intriguing... and ultimately exhilarating' - Chris Anderson, TED Curator
