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It’s the twenty-first century and let’s be honest—things are a little disappointing. Despite every World’s Fair prediction, every futuristic ride at Disneyland, and the advertisements on the last page of every comic book, we are not living the future we were promised. By now, life was supposed to be a fully automated, atomic-powered, germ-free Utopia, a place where a grown man could wear a velvet spandex unitard and not be laughed at. Where are the ray guns, the flying cars, and the hoverboards that we expected? What happened to our promised moon colonies? Our servant robots?
In Where’s My Jetpack?, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson takes a hilarious look at the future we always imagined for ourselves. He exposes technology, spotlights existing prototypes, and reveals drawing-board plans. You will learn which technologies are already available, who made them, and where to find them. If the technology is not public, you will learn how to build, buy, or steal it. And if doesn’t yet exist, you will learn what stands in the way of making it real. With thirty entries spanning everything from teleportation to self-contained skyscraper cities, and superbly illustrated by Richard Horne (101 Things to Do Before You Die), Where’s My Jetpack? is an endlessly entertaining, one-of-a-kind look at the world that we always wanted.
The FUTURE
| Customer Rating:  | | This book deals with such ideas as hover cars, robot servants, and underwater hotels. And why some never got off the ground while others, while they exist, don't exist in the huge numbers they should. For example, we do have underwater hotels, well, a few, but nowhere near enough to make everybody happy. I want robotic maids, I want X-Ray specs, I want teleportation! Fun, full of facts and hopeful. Soon, soon we WILL have all this stuff. It just may take longer than we thought. |
I Got Yer Jetpack Right Here...
| Customer Rating:  | When I was little, my uncle collected newspaper clippings of various articles about the American foray into space. Like my father, he was a big fan of science fiction, so it was only natural that he bequeathed his collection to me. And for a little while, I kept it up.
But eventually I got bored with it. For one, there wasn't anything new happening in space--certainly nothing on the scale of a lunar landing. For another, a lot of the optimistic predictions about space development weren't coming true and in fact were becoming something of a cliché. Where's My Jetpack? seemed like a response to that disillusionment, so I was glad I picked it up.
The book is well-illustrated with blue and white line art of various subjects. The cover is reflective, and the pages are trimmed with shiny blue material so that it sparkles when you look at the book from the side. It looks like a gimmicky-type of book, the kind that has no useful information in it but that you put on your bookshelf to make everyone think you're smart.
I'm pleased to report that Where's My Jetpack? actually has content in it worth reading. When it comes to science fiction and fact, I'm pretty well read. While I'm no engineer, I knew all about jetpacks, zeppelins, moving sidewalks, self-steering cars, flying cars, hoverboards, and teleportation. Fortunately, the author does too - and he nails each subject with just the right combination of humor and relevant information. Some of these topics are pretty esoteric -- for example, few people realize that we technically achieved teleportation years ago - but it's all here.
There's other stuff I didn't know about. Anti-sleeping pills are a new one. I haven't kept up on universal translators or food pills, and I didn't know the status of space elevators. I'm also mildly creeped out by a section on dolphin guides, wherein a woman built a house for her "dolphin companion" and the dolphin started exhibiting "courting behavior." Ick.
The fact that there's something in here for everyone makes the book worth the price. Although it's technically classified as humor, Where's My Jetpack? sometimes comes off as a little too eager to please, with jokes that are so topical the book will be horribly dated a decade out. Then again, the nature of the book probably guarantees it will be outdated anyway.
Although the jokes sometimes fall flat, Where's My Jetpack? is a breezy, educational read. If you're still wondering why there's no robots serving you, why you can't fly to your neighbor's house in style, or why you still have to sleep a few hours each night, Where's My Jetpack will gleefully tell you why.
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Our future could have been so much cooler
| Customer Rating: | So many of the inventions mentioned in this book sound like products from the Sharper Image or the SkyMall catalogs, and that's good and bad. It's good because almost everything I see in those catalogs makes me think "How cool" or "How interesting." It's bad, though, because I've never actually bought anything from either of those catalogs, and if the rest of the folks in this world are like me, they probably haven't either.
Still, Wilson's treatise on the technological future we're missing out on is not only humorous and tongue-in-cheek but factual and realistically interesting the whole way through. I had no idea that actual underwater hotels existed, or that zeppelins are mounting a resurgence as luxury airliners. I wasn't aware of cryogenics other than rumors about Walt Disney and humorous stories about 70's super spies being frozen.
While the illustrations by Richard Horne are fun and topical, it really would have been great to see pictures of the different devices and inventions about which Wilson writes. However, since this is obviously meant to be a fun, light reading type of book, the explanations and descriptions do not get too in depth, and neither do the visuals.
It's as if Wilson just wants to tease his readers into further exploration and discovery on their own. And perhaps that's the point after all: with a little curiosity and research, ordinary people can become more entrenched in the science fiction devices that will become commonplace, and exert their influence now to affect our technological future.
So, while I don't care about yelling and screaming "I want my jetpack," I will definitely be keeping a closer eye on what is available and possible and doing everything I can to make it a reality. |
Undoubtedly You've Pondered Where Are Many of These Future Technology Visions? Where's My JetPack? Gives some of the Answers!
| Customer Rating: | There are a few books out there that have mastered the format of providing answers to scientific, medical or everyday myths in an entertaining, therefore easy to read non journal/textbook sounding way. Where's my Jetpack? however is the first of these great books, that I have come across anyway which tackles the imagined future of decades ago compared to the reality of that future time of being today. Many science fiction novels, TV shows and even advertisements on the back of comic books foretold a future of gadgets, transportation, robot helpers and living environments that would make life so much easier and interesting for your average human. Who hasn't had the conversation of where are the flying cars, underwater cities and so on with their friends at some stage. Even Seinfeld had an episode where George and Jerry brought this up. Up to now though no has provided the answers to why some of these things aren't around or in fact told us that some of them are. Where's My Jetpack? is a great short, fast, informative read that will provide you with lots of information to bring up these very questions again the next time you see your friends.
I found Where's My JetPack to be really interesting. It might not go into the depth that some people want on each topic but it does provide enough info to know why something will never happen, or where the product can be found if it is already out there, if we can expect to ever see it in the future or that mankind had it but didn't want it (Smell O- Vision).
A great example of a topic covered is the whole invisible man science fiction creation which although not invented by was made popular by H.G. Wells and authors since then such as H.F. Saint. I will readily admit I have been a huge fan of the fiction novels in this genre and Wilson's information on the whole miniature cameras and image projections in the cloak actually turns something you thought would always only be fiction into something that could feasibly become reality one day. I really hope some fiction authors use this cloak method and write some good fiction with it.
Other stuff I had never even thought about was also very intriguing such as the elevator to space. I mean it makes sense when you think about it, we don't use jet propulsion to get to the 100th story of an office building so obviously this would be the safer, more cost effective way to get satellites, space station material and even people into space. I'd never even thought of that the sue companies for your own stupidity, that initially was born in the US and is now plaguing the world impacts future helpful to society inventions such as the moving sidewalk. We could right now have faster moving people movers at the airports and elsewhere right now if not for this greedy element of society.
Where's My JetPack? is a very good book, I highly recommend it. If you are after other great entertaining as well as educational reads on science also check out Great Mythconceptions: The Science Behind the Myths by Karl Kruszelnicki, Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies?: The Truth Behind Old Wives' Tales by Thomas Craughwell, Can You Drill a Hole Through Your Head and Survive?: 180 Fascinating Questions and Amazing Answers About Science, Health and Nature by Simon Rogers and Can a Guy Get Pregnant? : Scientific Answers to Everyday (and Not-So-Everyday) Questions by Bill Sones.
Topics covered inside Where's My JetPack? are -
The Jetpack
Zepplins (Huge Goodyear type airships)
Moving Sidewalks
Self Steering/Flying Cars
Hoverboard
Teleportation
Underwater & Space Hotels / Moon Colonies / Skyscraper Cities
Dolphin Guides / Artificial Human Gills
Holograms
Smell O Vision
Robot Pets / Servants / Smart House
Mind Reading Devices / X-Ray Specs
Anti - Sleeping Pill
Invisible Camouflage
Universal Translator
Unisex Jumpsuit
Food Pill
Ray Guns
Space Mirror / Elevator
Cryogenic Freezing
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Intelligent and brilliant
| Customer Rating: | | "Where's My Jetpack?" is a great book, written in a fresh and cunnig style and with an amazing design. I think it could be an interesting compedium for all the mid-50 sci-fi fans who desire to know something about those incredible inventions they read about. I really enjoyed it. |
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