The second book examines in depth: theoretical science and cosmology; information technology, computerization, and robots; energy, industry, and nanotechnology; evolution and biotechnology; the environment, natural resources, and ecological science; outer space travel and colonization and the far distant future of the universe; and the limits and scope of human knowledge, with a good amount of contemporary science fiction included throughout the volume. 

Although respectively written in 1997 and 2002, I never published either book. This last year, though, I decided for a number of reasons to published both of them. The books were my first substantial futurist writings—historical markers in the ongoing evolution of my futurist thinking—and signaled the beginning of a twenty-five year career as a futurist.

Both books are highly interdisciplinary, intentionally so, in scope, organization, and educational philosophy. Although both volumes discuss in depth the work of many notable futurists, both books also incorporate relevant insights and theories of writers of diverse academic disciplines, including the physical and biological sciences, history, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology, and literature. The Odyssey of the Future was written to provide students with an interdisciplinary and integrative education that had as its focus (or center of gravity) a futurist perspective that pulled together all the traditional areas of college academic study. 

In fact, it was thinking as an interdisciplinary educator, who was searching for methods to create integrative understanding in students, that originally ignited my deep and sustained professional interest in futures studies. In an illuminating epiphany in the early 1990s I realized that the ideal way to pull together higher education was through the lens of the future: The study and understanding of the future should be the center of gravity in education, guiding and inspiring our entire curriculum and our teaching methods. As I state early in the text of the Odyssey,“The future is the most practical and consciousness-expanding topic that the human mind can entertain.” Reality should be seen and understood “through the eyes of the future.” One key chapter in this book is “The Future of Education,” in which I outline my thoughts on the central importance of a futurist perspective in education; as a budding futurist I proposed that “the future of education should be education on the future.”

After completing The Odyssey of the Future, one area of further study I decided to explore in more detail was the future of science and technology. It seemed to me that the potential mind-boggling advances in science and technology were of critical importance in understanding the wondrous possibilities of the future. Again adopting a multidisciplinary approach, I dove into the writings of scientists, cosmologists, and technological thinkers from numerous disciplines beyond simply the work of professional futurists. As I believe Alvin Toffler once said, “Everyone is a futurist.” Valuing the narrative-literary perspective as essential within a multidisciplinary framework of understanding, I  included in my new readings a number of contemporary science fiction novels. I had been a reader of science fiction since a youth, and my fascination with the genre greatly contributed to my later interest in futures studies. Scientifically informed narratives of the future powerfully inspire and enlighten our consciousness of the future. 

Out of this weaving together of futures studies, scientific and technological thought, and multitudinous science fiction narratives, The Future of Science, Technology, and the Cosmos emerged. The book examines such far-reaching topics as the potential emergence of a “global brain” and “global mind;” downloading consciousness into computers and living in virtual reality; the purposeful creation and evolution of new forms of life; technologically augmenting and transforming the human species; redesigning our earthly environment and terraforming other planets; the search for a grand unified scientific theory of everything; cosmic levels of civilization and galactic engineering; and the future evolution of the universe.  

As I state in the Preface to The Future of Science, Technology, and the Cosmos, in researching and writing this book in some key ways I changed the futurist perspective I presented in The Odyssey of the Future. Both books are “big picture” visions of reality and the future, philosophical and cosmic in scope, and it was especially at this holistic and theoretical level of understanding that I modified my thinking. Although both books take an evolutionary perspective on “life, the universe, and everything,” the second book is more thorough-going and consistently evolutionary, emphasizing the mystery, adventure, and open-ended quality of the future of humanity and the cosmos. 

As we envision and understand it, the future evolves; our futurist visions should evolve. My mind had evolved by the time I finished the second book. As I argue in The Future of Science, Technology, and the Cosmos, there is no end to the human quest for knowledge. With this second book, as a futurist I was clearly now on a journey of discovery, recalibration, and ongoing transformation in my own consciousness. And in line with this evolutionary insight, in recently re-reading this second book, I find a number of ideas I now no longer think are plausible or valid. Although there are many ideas in both books I still believe are valuable, illuminating, and on target, my understanding of the big picture of things—encompassing the possibilities of the future—thankfully has kept changing and growing. As the grand historian Peter Watson stated, “Evolution is the story of us all.”