The End of the Future: The Waning of the High-Tech World

by Jean Gimpel

Overview

This book represents the first calm, detailed, and rational description of the imminent end of western industrial civilization as we know it. Despite this alarming premise Gimpel is far from pessimistic, save in the short term: with the sure hand of the historian, he emphasizes how humanity has always recovered from its previous collapses in the past, and will certainly do so again. The unique value of this book is that it gives us a baseline from which we can now work into the future.

This book represents the first calm, detailed, and rational description of the coming end of our current world culture. The author seeks to show that, particularly when we compare actual technological reality in the 1990s with the heady predictions of futurologists back in the 1960s, technology has levelled off, reached a plateau—even in the leading-edge areas like infomatics, space, and medicine.

Even that plateau will prove to be temporary, claims Gimpel, and the end of western industrial society as we know it will inevitably ensue. However exceptional, our civilization has no reason to expect that it will evolve any differently from every civilization before it: decadence and decay have engulfed them all, one after the other. The unique value of this book is that it gives us a baseline from which we can now work into the future. The conclusion, which is not pessimistic—save in the short term—points out that humanity has always recovered from such collapses, and gone on again to reach new heights. By way of making his case, Gimpel leaves us with a final simple thought: The future, he asserts, is China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275952792
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/28/1995
Series:	Praeger Studies on the 21st Century
Pages:	138
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

JEAN GIMPEL is a historian of technology and the cycles of civilization. He is the author of several works devoted to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, including two bestselling books, The Cathedral Builders and The Mediaeval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Futures that Failed
Mythinformation and the Computer Bluff
Space Brought Down to Earth
Back to the Balloon
Materials: Back to Basics
Live Longer—Suffer More
The End of Scientific Magic
The Relentless Cycle of History

Editorial Reviews

Historian of technology Gimpel (The Cathedral Builders, The Medieval Machine) argues that the high-technology society we are led to believe can only expand and accelerate for all eternity, is in fact on its high plateau and will soon begin declining. Rather unconvincingly in some cases and rather sloppily for a scholar of his talent, he proclaims the failure of futurist predictions, personal computers, space flight, high- speed air travel, synthetic materials, modern medicine, and unbridled scientific research. Along the way he castigates environmentalists and occultists. Only in the last chapter does he draw parallels between the technological and economic cycles of the past and our own situation. His conclusion is that we had better start making friends with the poor peoples of the world because we will not be able to dominate them much longer. Translated from La fin de l'avenir. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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