The End of the Future: The Waning of the High-Tech World

by Jean Gimpel

This book represents the first calm, detailed, and rational description of the imminent end of western industrial civilization as we know it. Despite this alarming premise Gimpel is far from pessimistic, save in the short with the sure hand of the historian, he emphasizes how humanity has always recovered from its previous collapses in the past, and will certainly do so again. The unique value of this book is that it gives us a baseline from which we can now work into the future.

This book represents the first calm, detailed, and rational description of the coming end of our current world culture. The author seeks to show that, particularly when we compare actual technological reality in the 1990s with the heady predictions of futurologists back in the 1960s, technology has levelled off, reached a plateau―even in the leading-edge areas like infomatics, space, and medicine.

Even that plateau will prove to be temporary, claims Gimpel, and the end of western industrial society as we know it will inevitably ensue. However exceptional, our civilization has no reason to expect that it will evolve any differently from every civilization before decadence and decay have engulfed them all, one after the other. The unique value of this book is that it gives us a baseline from which we can now work into the future. The conclusion, which is not pessimistic―save in the short term―points out that humanity has always recovered from such collapses, and gone on again to reach new heights. By way of making his case, Gimpel leaves us with a final simple The future, he asserts, is China.

138 pages, Hardcover

First published April 8, 1992

About the author

Jean Gimpel was a man of great physical and intellectual energy, with a big heart and strong sense of justice. A profound and very practical interest in technology, and especially that of the Middle Ages, was the thread that ran through his working life. It yielded two classic studies, The Cathedral Builders (1958) and The Medieval Machine: the Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1976), underpinned two further books, The Cult of Art: against art and artists (1968) and The End of the Future (1995), and helped make him an effective saboteur in the French Resistance. For his services during the Second World War he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Medaille de Resistance and the Legion d'Honneur.

Reviews

[Richard Körner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very outdated and a lot of the predictions the author made didn't come true. He has a strong opinion, but it is still interesting to read for a historical view from the past.