westsidebooksdenver

[westsidebooksdenver]

Books designed by Talwin Morris, late 19th-early 20th century.

[westsidebooksdenver]

Always fun to read past predictions of the future. Spoiler: Our friend Sir George Thomson was very, very wrong.

[commentary in brackets]

"The future will see, I think, men's brains [💁‍♂️🧠] released from a tangle of hindrances that come from wrongly sorted impressions or barriers [🚧] that have been set up. Whether it will be done by physical action [🤜🧠], by feeding in perhaps electrical impulses of the right kind [⚡️🧠], or more subtly by an extension to earliest youth of the methods of the psychiatrist [👶🧠👨‍⚕️], is anybody's guess. When brains have reached the natural limit, and probably before then, it will become possible to produce better ones by selected mutations [<<<🧠🧠🧠]. Most mutations are harmful [🧟‍♂️], but if none improved the brain we should still be primitive primates [🦧], not to say jellyfish [🐙], and it seems most unlikely that the limit of the possible has been reached.

There is no reason to anticipate that anything irreparable will go wrong with the earth [🌍] physically for many millions of years, and are there not other planets and other stars [🪐✨]? It is difficult to exterminate a species once well established [🦖🦕🦤??], and man's best efforts to kill himself are unlikely to be more successful than those of the plague bacillus or the influenza virus. Even with the present brains [🧠🧠🧠] of intelligent people Man [💁‍♂️] may expect a glorious future [🤦‍♂️]. Who will dare to set limits to what he may reach as his brain [🧠] improves? The future is not foreseeable!"

Indeed, Sir George, it is not.

At least these vintage book covers are great.

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[westsidebooksdenver]

"Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay."

-Robert Frost, 1923

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