author : Michael Latham

No one book could cover the whole range of Tomorrow’s World, and this selection has been made by Raymond Baxter, James Burke and Michael Latham, the executive editor. The first section, ‘A Day in your Tomorrow’, is concerned with changes and innovations which will affect our daily life – computers, robots, lasers, and so on. Then there are sections on the seas and what may happen in them; on transport; on space-exploration; on machines and materials of the future; and on tomorrow’s medicine and food. Finally the Tomorrow’s World team suggest what life may be like in 150 years time and, in Old Burkster’s Almanac, tell us some of the things which are going to happen in the next 60 years.

It is hard to realise how fast our expectations of what man can do are changing: nearly everyone can remember when a human heart transplant was the stuff of lurid fiction; when a visit to the wastelands of the Moon was wild fantasy; when ideas like plastic eyes that restore sight to the blind, miniature electronic brains, or man-made diamonds and rubies were dreams for schoolboys and mad scientists. Yet they all came true. What lies ahead now?

For each one of us, tomorrow’s world begins only a few brief moments away. And of one thing we can be sure. With every passing month, year, and decade, it will continue to reveal its quota of astonishing developments which ensure that life on Planet Earth will never be quite the same again.

This book looks ahead into this new world by seeing what is happening at the frontiers of science and technology. One chapter considers the potential of ‘Skylab’ and gives a fascinating account of what life in space is really like. Another looks at new advances in medicine – laser-generated 3D displays of X-ray pictures, for example, and yet another at new discoveries in the depths of oceans, and at the hardware which makes their exploitation possible. ‘The Inner World’ is explored in pictures of the microscopic jungle around us, now revealed by new techniques in electron and optical microscopy. There is a discussion of fascinating, and disturbing investigations into the working of the human brain. ‘Larry’ has illustrated a collection of viewers’ ideas on what they think technology should be working to produce – the four-legged chicken, and gravity boots, for instance.