Sunshine all the way

摘要

The British weather washout and the interruption of the Olympics mean it's probably not too late to be recommending summer reading for the late-going holidaymaker. But for those who want something factual but fun... well, that's always a challenge. Mark Stevenson, science communicator and occasional stand-up comedian, is up for the challenge, though, and his book, An Optimist's Tour of the Future, published in hardback last year and in paperback this year, might well fit the bill. Stevenson's self-imposed task is to take himself on a world tour of experts across the range of technologies and ask them the very simple question: "What's next?" And because he's been talking to the people who are actually working on problems and their solutions, many of them engineers even if their titles don't always reflect that, he gets a refreshingly upbeat view. They wouldn't be working on these things if they didn't think they were going to work, would they.