Product Description

In this visionary look into the future, Freeman Dyson argues that technological changes fundamentally alter our ethical and social arrangements and that three rapidly advancing new technologies -- solar energy, genetic engineering, and worldwide communication -- together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world's wealth. Dyson begins by rejecting the idea that scientific revolutions are primarily concept driven. He shows rather that new tools are more often the sparks that ignite scientific discovery. Such tool-driven revolutions have profound social consequences: the invention of the telescope turning the medieval view of the world upside down, the widespread use of household appliances in the 1950s replacing servants, to cite just two examples. In looking ahead, Dyson suggests that solar energy, genetics, and the Internet will have similarly transformative effects, with the potential to produce a more just and equitable society. Solar power could bring electricity to even the poorest, most remote areas of third-world nations, allowing everyone access to the vast stores of information on the Internet and effectively ending the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Similarly, breakthroughs in genetics may well enable us to give our children healthier lives and grow more efficient crops, thus restoring the economic and human vitality of village cultures devalued and dislocated by the global market. Written with passionate conviction about the ethical uses of science, The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet is both a brilliant reinterpretation of the scientific process and a challenge to use new technologies to close, rather than widen, the gap between rich and poor.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #427250 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Freeman Dyson is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton University. His previous books include Distrubing the Universe, Infinite in All Directions, and Weapons and Hope. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Phi Beta Kappa Award in science.

Customer Reviews

Deceitful
I've read other books from the same author and I liked them, but not this one. I bought it because the title is really catchy. I was deceived because the book is a (too sort) compilation of several talks and articles, may be not very carefully arranged. I did not see a real line of discourse, or conclusions.

Positive aspects of the book are the strong ethical content of Freeman's attitude towards science and his provocative predictions for the future (very much in the line of Freeman's style). You may like them or not, but you cannot deny his originality.