Non-fiction - Future Technology - Christchurch City Libraries
Stories of technological development from Sci-fi and Trekkie tech, to humanity's future frontier. Find out about asteroid mining, terra forming, robotics and Artificial intelligence, life extension and gene technology and the moral questions they raise. Read predictions on how we will live, work, travel, the energy we will use, and how it will affect society and the economy. Discover how new technologies will shape the future of humanity. A Christchurch City Libraries list.
Ever wonder why we don't have flying cars or even driverless cars despite persistent suggestions that the latter are just round the corner? Tech journo Nicole Kobie delivers an entertaining history of innovation and introduces us to the original…
Quantum computing has the potential to break problem-solving and "classical computers" out of a binary straitjacket with the application of quantum mechanics. Michio Kaku starts his book with two claims of "quantum supremacy", where it was…
"The future's so bright I gotta wear smart shades" is a modified Timbuk 3 quotation that could be applied to this enthusiastic embrace of future technology. Pablo Holman optimises the optimism as he surveys the industries that could be supercharged…
The writers are concerned that if Artificial Intelligence becomes smarter than humans it might decide we are a drag on progress and do away with us. This might remind you of a Terminator movie or two but Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares warn that…
Take a hyper-drive blast through the latest scientific advances and gizmos of the future with this collation of the future in cheerful briefs. Simply Emerging Technology will give you a taste for the likes of microbots and quantum dots, brain scans…
Harry Parker stepped on a makeshift-mine in Afghanistan and lost both his legs in 2009. The British soldier was rushed to hospital and medics saved his life before he began the hunt for the latest technologies with which to rebuild his future. He…
When DNA was unveiled as the double-helix of life in the 1950s, little did we know that there was an even bigger story hidden in RNA, initially downplayed as the servile messenger of DNA. Nobel Prize winner Thomas Cech vividly explains the journey…
Advances in genetics, biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have given us, to quote the author, "god-like powers". Futurist Jamie Metzl assesses the potential benefits but also sounds a few warnings as we head to a technological future…
Can science fiction predict the future? From the authors of the popular weekly podcast and book, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, comes their latest book The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future. They look back at the work of futurists past and their…
Yuval Harari, the bestselling author of Sapiens, brings his powers of analysis to bear on information and how we have used it throughout history. One of his key concerns is the poor standard of much of the information on the internet which AI uses,…
Trekkies rejoice! Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel enthusiastically brings you warp drives, tractor beams, antimatter containment cloaking devices, phasers and other treknology explaining what needs to happen for these fictional ideas to be possible and…
It's the chilling technology from our dystopian nightmares - an AI that can conclusively identify anybody, just by a single photo of a face. This is what the enigmatic startup Clearview AI claimed to have developed, when author Kashmir Hill came…
New technologies - AI, robots, and synthetic biology, to name only a few - are developing faster than ever before. This approaching surge has the potential to improve our lives and solve humankind's most pressing problems, but what if it causes more…
What if we could make ourselves faster, stronger, smarter? Remove diseases or deficiencies from existence? The technology is already here - and it's only developing further. However, with it comes an uncertain, frightening future that raises plenty…
Writer and cultural historian John Higgs take a mischievous yet enlightening look at the future. He thinks we gave up on the future in the eighties, as illustrated by the changes in dystopian fiction, and posits the question "Do we have a bright…
Journalist Tim Dunlop in his latest book joins us in a conversation on the media, government, wealth, work, and education and sets before us a pathway to a more joyful world. Tim says democracy is failing due to the rapid rate of technological…
"Don't kick the robot" is central to the premise of Kate Farling's rumination on the future with our android friends. She suggests we learn from our history of pressing animals into work on the farm and more surprising workplaces. "A provocative…
A leading futurist assesses the progress AI has made in recent years and scans the horizon for risk and opportunity before providing advice for individuals and a charter for governments. Areas of focus for Partick Dixon include the future of jobs,…
In predicting our future with social robots Eve Herold actually gives us a readable survey on the many tasks robots already do for us. She has some interesting ruminations on the risks to our own emotional states if we don't treat our cybernetic…
