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Title: Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century--On Earth and Beyond by Martin J. Rees ISBN: 0-465-06862-6 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.42 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Important, but less focused than the title implies
Comment: "The theme of this book," Martin Rees writes, "is that humanity is more at risk than at any earlier phase in its history." Natural risks such as colliding with an asteroid have not changed; they are the baseline. What is new is the power that science has given small numbers of people - possibly as few as one - to endanger the entire species. Our destiny depends increasingly on choices that we make ourselves. These are important themes that should have been developed in more detail. Unfortunately, some of this relatively short book is taken up with futurist padding separated from the main point.
Rees begins with familiar threats from nuclear and biological weapons, noting Fred Ikle's view that only an oppressive police state could assure total government control over novel tools of mass destruction. Rees then turns to the implications of genetic engineering, including the creation of new forms of life that could feed off other materials in our environment. Thanks to genetic engineering, the nature of humans could begin to change within this century; human character and physique will soon be malleable. The potential threats may remind some readers of Frank Herbert's novel The White Plague, in which a lone scientist creates a spectacular method of revenge.
Rees is most effective when he describes the potential implications of scientific experiments, particularly in particle physics. He notes that some experiments are designed to generate conditions more extreme than ever occur naturally. Here readers will learn about the possible human creation of black holes and strangelets. Errors and unpredictable outcomes are a growing cause for worry; calculations of risk are based on probability rather than certainty. Rees tells us that one person's act of irrationality, or even one person's error, could do us all in. That should motivate a circumspect attitude toward technical innovations that pose even a small threat of catastrophic failure, though putting effective brakes on a field of research would require international consensus. Rees speculates that the abandonment of privacy may be the minimal price for maintaining security.
Rees is particularly critical of American attitudes toward science and technology. Commenting that there are some who have a tenuous hold on rationality, he states that "their numbers may grow in the US." Later in the book, he writes that in the US "bizarre beliefs seem almost part of the mainstream." The United States is hardly the only source of irrational people.
Rees then turns to more conventional futurism, discussing the search for extraterrestrial life and human expansion into the solar system. He implicitly advocates that humans should establish colonies beyond the Earth to assure that the species will survive a disaster on its home planet.
There are some errors. Rees writes that the Challenger explosion took place in 1987; it actually was a year earlier. He describes Gerard O'Neill as an engineering professor; O'Neill actually was a professor of physics. Rees links the SETI at Home computer network with the SETI Institute; in fact, that program is associated with Serendip IV, a project invented by professors at the University of California at Berkeley.
Rating: 3
Summary: Frightening But Not Developed
Comment: Martin Rees, in Our Final Hour (A Scientist's Warning), gets his point across. Humanity's chances on earth have a 50/50 probablility, in the author's opinion, of making it into the end of the century. The book is too short, though, to truly give the reader an understanding of the several ways briefly described that may end life as we know it. It is a blur of despair with elements of hope scattered throughout. The author should have trusted the intelligence of the reader a little more and actually been more descriptive in his science. The reader will come away with a numb feeling but no true understanding. This book is still important for what is does provide and is briefly illuminating in its descriptions of science gone too far, as well as the many other varied possible ending prophesied. An important book that will hopefully lead to more thorough accounts. Not for the light of heart.
Rating: 1
Summary: Just A Catalog of News Events
Comment: Most of the book is simply a short summary of news events of the past few years, with a few 'shock and awe' highly unlikely events thrown in to amaze the reader. Rees argues that humanities days are numbered, but a good third of the book is dedicated to discussions of alien life, mankind's travel to the stars, and the future of science - all these activities with time spans much greater than the next 50-100 years that he predicts our 50% probability lies. Save your money- and simply listen to the news.
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Title: Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin J. Rees ISBN: 0465036732 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others (Helix Books) by Martin J. Rees ISBN: 0738200336 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.50 |
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Title: The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World by Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee ISBN: 0805067817 Publisher: Times Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction by John Leslie ISBN: 0415140439 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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Title: Our Cosmic Habitat by Martin Rees ISBN: 0691114773 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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