George Barbier Postcard Book

This is a thought experiment about our world in 2050. It can be fun imagining what our world might look like by then. Robots and flying cars? Custom-grown body parts? A hydrogen economy? As any disappointed sci-fi buff will tell you, the pace of reality is usually slower than human imagination. Fans of George OrwellБЂ™s book 1984, the television series Lost in Space and Space 1999, the films 2001: A Space Odyssey, and (itБЂ™s looking like) Blade RunnerБЂ”set in a perpetually raining 2019 Los AngelesБЂ”see their landmark years come and go. But outside of the ongoing technical explosions in information and biotechnologies, our lives are considerably less different than the writers of these fictional works imagined they would be. WeБЂ™ve discovered quarks and flung people into space, yet still depend on the internal combustion engine. WeБЂ™ve cracked DNA and grown a human ear on a mouseБЂ™s back, yet are still dying of cancer. WeБЂ™ve created fluorescent green pigs by inserting jellyfish genes into them (Green Eggs and Ham, anyone?), yet still catch wild fish from the sea and use dirt and water to grow our food ...»