[comp.society.futures] Book Review from BYTE

bzs@ENCORE.COM (Barry Shein) (02/26/89)

This month's (February '89) BYTE magazine has a review of a book that
seems somewhat germaine to this newsgroup:

	No Way: The Nature of the Impossible,
	Edited by Philip J. Davis and David Park.
	W. H. Freeman and Co., NY: 1987, 325 pp, $10.95
	(no ISBN)

A quote from the review:

"It is impossible to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen. It is
impossible to make music at a rate greater than 10,000 bits per
second. It is impossible to create a stable, strained-layer
superlattice.

These statements refer to achievments that were once considered beyond
the practical, physical, or conceptual boundaries of possibility. To
those who accepted them as being true, such statements defined the
limits of our ``real'' and logical world.

Each statement, however, has since been proved wrong..."

Looks interesting, I'm going to try to hunt down a copy.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||

janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen) (02/27/89)

The February Byte also has an interesting (editorial?  preface?) that
describes IBM's view of the future of applications programs as of
cooperating programs drawing on assured common data services.

Bill

kwe@bu-cs.BU.EDU (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England)) (02/28/89)

In article <8902260245.AA16723@multimax.encore.com> bzs@ENCORE.COM (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>This month's (February '89) BYTE magazine has a review of a book that
>seems somewhat germaine to this newsgroup:
>
>	No Way: The Nature of the Impossible,
>	Edited by Philip J. Davis and David Park.
>	W. H. Freeman and Co., NY: 1987, 325 pp, $10.95
>	(no ISBN)
>
>
>Looks interesting, I'm going to try to hunt down a copy.
>
>	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||


	Sounds interesting.  Give us a review or anecdotes from the
book if you think it worthwhile.

	That fellow, DeBono or similar, who writes books on thinking
creatively has a trick I heard about thirdhand that says if you can't
think of a way to do something, try to prove that it can't be done.
People have told me it's a good way to solve problems.

	This book could be creative in that way, too.