Why do you believe that the world of tomorrow will be better than the world of today?
Because the world of today is mostly better than the world of the past. OK, sure, you can find (or manufacture) counter-points to that by being extremely selective in what you consider "the past", but on balance, technological and social/cultural advancement have made the world a better place. So there are some peaks and valleys in a graph of some hypothetical "world happiness / goodness" index, but so what? If the long-term trend is "better", I'm not too bothered by the idea that "right now" is a local minima.
What do you look forward to in the world of the future?
* The continued advancement of mRNA technology, to enable rapid development of vaccines for new diseases, and new treatments for existing conditions
* Fusion power to provide nearly limitless, clean, cheap energy
* Improvements in desalinization technology to make clean fresh-water more readily available
* Nearly ubiquitous electric vehicles that use the clean energy from fusion (and solar) to provide transport without spewing carbon into the atmosphere
* Even better AI to develop new drugs, and newer, lighter, stronger building materials, and better battery chemistries, etc.
* More advances in genetic engineering to enable the creation of better crops that can, e.t. withstand drought conditions better, to stabilize food supplies, etc.
And so on. Generally, I'm bullish on what technology can do for us. What I'm less bullish on is human nature and our ability to use newer technologies wisely. But even there, I think that we, as a race, will eventually "grow up" and find ways to avoid some of our own self-destructive tendencies. Maybe that part is wishful thinking, but it's where I'm at right now.
Fusion creates heat, not electricity. Turning that heat into electricity is not costless, and puts a lower bound on the price of fusion energy. So we're never going to get "nearly limitless, clean, cheap energy" from fusion.
But we do have a great upcoming source of cheap energy from the big fusion reactor in the sky. Solar power has been dropping in cost 80% per decade for the last 50 years, and that looks to continue for at least the rest of this decade.
There are ideas and projects aiming to go straight from fusion to electricity, maybe through photoelectric effect but without the water heat cycle. Those may be orders of magnitude harder than "normal fusion" but still - people work on that.
I don't think it's particularly relevant what your science book of the 60's says. Of course controlling fusion is a hard problem. Nobody said it was going to be easy, or if they did, they were a fool. But there's no reason to think we won't get there eventually. It might not be in my lifetime, but so what? I'm not trying to be that myopic here.
I'm reminded of something I read, I think it was in Engines of Creation[1] where the author made the following point about technological advancement (possibly paraphrased slightly due to faulty memory): "If a technological advancement isn't fundamentally impossible under the laws of physics, then the only question is when it will happen, not if it will happen."
Fusion has been a couple of decades along for decades. It's pretty much always been 20 years away. I do think it's a bit of a pipe dream. We need it now if it's to be of any use for us. If it takes us nearly another century to get there (that's how long we've been working at it), it's far too late to be of any sort of help.
Because the world of today is mostly better than the world of the past. OK, sure, you can find (or manufacture) counter-points to that by being extremely selective in what you consider "the past", but on balance, technological and social/cultural advancement have made the world a better place. So there are some peaks and valleys in a graph of some hypothetical "world happiness / goodness" index, but so what? If the long-term trend is "better", I'm not too bothered by the idea that "right now" is a local minima.
What do you look forward to in the world of the future?
* The continued advancement of mRNA technology, to enable rapid development of vaccines for new diseases, and new treatments for existing conditions
* Fusion power to provide nearly limitless, clean, cheap energy
* Improvements in desalinization technology to make clean fresh-water more readily available
* Nearly ubiquitous electric vehicles that use the clean energy from fusion (and solar) to provide transport without spewing carbon into the atmosphere
* Even better AI to develop new drugs, and newer, lighter, stronger building materials, and better battery chemistries, etc.
* More advances in genetic engineering to enable the creation of better crops that can, e.t. withstand drought conditions better, to stabilize food supplies, etc.
And so on. Generally, I'm bullish on what technology can do for us. What I'm less bullish on is human nature and our ability to use newer technologies wisely. But even there, I think that we, as a race, will eventually "grow up" and find ways to avoid some of our own self-destructive tendencies. Maybe that part is wishful thinking, but it's where I'm at right now.