What's the world coming to?: by A. M. Low. 214 pages, 14 X 21 cm. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1951. Price, $3.00
✍ Scribed by I.M. Levitt
- Book ID
- 103077154
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1952
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 82 KB
- Volume
- 253
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0016-0032
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
People like to make predictions. They like to hear predictions. There is a certain fascination in peering into the future and there is a personal feeling of satisfaction in seeing these predictions fulfilled. And there is nothing that tickles the imagination more than proving the prophet wrong. However, it may be said that there is no future in prophecy, for in most cases when the prediction materializes the prophet has long since died.
What's the World Coming To? is a brilliantly written book by a master expositor. In a book of some 200 pages Prof. A. M. Low has lucidly portrayed the shape of things to come. Profound changes are due in the future and the author with a facile and rapid pen indicates the nature of the changes.
Professor Low goes from topics like atomic energy, robot electronic factories, electronic weapons, rockets, to foods of the future. In all these fields Prof. Low has a remarkable grasp of his subject and his intimate style is completely disarming. His blueprint of the future is one which can materialize because of his uncanny success as a prognosticator.
Some discrepancies have crept into his work such as the idea of increases in the world's cultivatible area provided by the melting of the polar ice. Actually the melting of the polar ice will raise the levels of the oceans by 150 feet and so inundate more land than is gained. Again, in a million years the sun will not lose 1 per cent of its mass--it will take thousands of millions of years for that. Dr. Low might have pointed out that already power installations using the heat from the earth's interior are in operation in Italy. These are not criticisms, for survey writing poses a most difficult problem.
What's the World Coming To? is an intriguing book and recommended for those who would glimpse the future, well remembering that "by attempting to look ahead we can hope to control the future in the widest sense." I. M. LEVITT