Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Arthur C. Clarke

Science / Futurism

Clarke systematically dismantles failures of technological imagination—why experts routinely under-predict what physics actually allows—and sketches the outer envelope of what civilizations might eventually build. Karpathy recommended it as 'a wonderful study of science and art of predicting the future,' a template for separating hard physical limits from mere engineering difficulty.