What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science

An interesting but unbalanced collection of essays

The latest developments in science are the source of enduring fascination, by both the insiders and outsiders of the scientific community. Even more fascinating are the speculations about what may lay just around the corner, within next few years or decades of scientific research. The future always tends to be more exciting than even the most amazing advances of today. In that respect, this book is a very good overview of the status of some of the most advanced current research and the directions in which it is headed. It is written by many young but well established experts in the field, and they are the best guide to all the upcoming developments. Their presentation of their own work is well geared towards a general reader, and overall they tell some very interesting and compelling stories. If you are at all interested in science, this will be an engaging read. However, it is not always clear if some of the predictions that are offered here are based on solid scientific understanding of where that particular field is headed, or are they more of a wishful thinking at the author's part. Another thing that I don't like about this book is the lack of diversity among the chosen scientific topics. Most of the chapters are dedicated to one of the three main themes: fundamental Physics, human mind and behavior, or climate change. The reader will thus get a rather skewed and unbalanced view of the kinds of research that are done these days.

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