Looking to read up on tech futurology. Can you recommend any authors?

3 points·Blish123··4 comments

Looking to read up on tech futurology. Can you recommend any authors/journalists?

Preferably in the tech space. Or even sci-fi

Highly recommend Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. 2007 Hugo Award for best novel. It's set in the near future (20~30 years?) and gives a compelling picture of what personal tech in the future might look like - especially how augmented reality is used by everyday people. Also touches on terrorism, security, hacking (no user serviceable parts!!).

You can see hints of what he wrote about coming about even today, but he merges everything into a smooth, believable world that makes you wonder why we're not there already.

From a sci-fi perspective, William Gibson writes some good stuff. Spook Country has some interesting ideas around geo-location, wireless connectivity and augmented reality.

Actually, any of the cyberpunk authors might potentially be of interest to you.

Outside of that, there's Ray Kurzweil... and J. Storrs Hall has written a couple of good books on nanotech and AI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Storrs_Hall

I was quite fond of Charlie Stross's Accelerando, but I don't know if it's what you're looking for since it may be too far in the future in parts. However, it's available as a free ebook or just plain html, so that's an advantage.

Also, I think he posts here occasionally, which I found interesting.

A couple that come to mind right away are Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier. I haven't read their books (though I have one of each of theirs on my to-read list), their names come up quite often.

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