Andrej Karpathy's Review of Profiles of the Future

“Arthur C. Clarke's "Profiles of the Future" is a fascinating exploration of the science and art of predicting the future in the context of science and technology. Clarke first studies predictions made in the past and tries to identify common mistakes and patterns. Armed with some takeaways he then focuses his intellect and imagination on charting future progress from 1960 (when the book was written!) to 2100. Reading the book in 2016 puts us approximately in the middle of this interval; Clarke gets some things right and some things wrong, but what's interesting are the trends in which the mispredictions occur and the humbling realization of just how difficult predicting the future is. In particular, it is very clear throughout the book that Clarke is swept up in the 1950's era of excitement. Physical sciences were being completely transformed: X-rays, general relativity, quantum theory, the Manhattan Project, the splitting of the atom, our conquering of the skies (despite many predicti