TechTV's Catalog of Tomorrow

TechTV's Catalog of Tomorrow provides moderately interesting browsing material, and will help clarify a few buzzwords if you've missed a few newspaper science pages during the past 10 years. Illustrated essays on genetic therapies, microscopic robots, virtual and augmented reality, and novel sources of energy fill this book. There's plenty of marketing material, too, covering everything from the Segway scooter to Boeing private jets. Some of it's exciting, some of it's old news, and some of it's just weird (like one remarkable picture of a guy wearing scuba gear while hanging by a sort of jockstrap inside a giant plastic bag filled with water). In any case, the information on products and technologies has to be taken on its own level (again, that of a newspaper's science page) and some readers may wish for coverage of the social and ethical ideas that will surely influence the future as much as any electric hat.

Scanning this book--you don't really read it; it's too much like a magazine and has too many authorial voices for that--reminds you of looking at Wired magazine four or five years ago. So many technologies, so casually explained! So many people designated "futurists" and "visionaries" by fawning article writers! Sure, having a television screen built into your clothing seems like a hassle, but... maybe there's money to be made! That's the experience you'll find here. Nostalgia can be fun. --David Wall

Topics covered: Problems (like global warming and overpopulation) and solutions (like telemedicine and environmentally benign energy generators) that look like they have a chance of affecting the course of mankind in the future.