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From International Socialism, No.22, Autumn 1965, p.33.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The World in 1984
Ed. Nigel Calder
Penguin, 2 Vols, 4s each
These two volumes are made up of about 100 articles especially commissioned for the New Scientist where they first appeared. The series includes as many as possible of the discernible contemporary trends in the physical and social sciences. Each article was to give the short range prediction, that is to 1984, of the effects on human life of these trends which today are still in developmental stages or which at least have far from reached their maximum possibilities of application.
Collected together these articles could serve usefully as notes and suggestive themes to be followed up by an author wanting to prepare a general popular predictive survey. The editor’s summarisation does not really accomplish this; it is just an additional note commenting on notes.
Of course the general reader can get some ideas about the highlights as well as about the less familiar preoccupations of science in our times and where they lead to in every day applications. Yet at eight bob the set, this seems an expensive collection that could have been much more interesting, informative and instructive in some other form.
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Last updated on 12.5.2008