SUPER COOL TECH

A broad survey of high-tech wonders large and small, in an eye-catching format.

Looking like a small laptop with plain silver covers when closed and set up to be read with pages flipping bottom to top when open, this successor to Cool Tech (2011) and Cool Stuff 2.0 and How It Works (2007) focuses on newer gadgets from the past half-decade, such as the Xbox One, smart watches, the Raspberry Pi, and hoverboards. Recent tech highlights such as New Horizon’s 2015 Pluto flyby and innovative structures like Sweden’s Icehotel also receive nods. A closing section offers speculative glances at passenger drones, hyperloops, flying cars (as if), quantum computing, and like near-future developments, capped with a set of more general prognostications in broad fields such as “Transportation” and “Everyday Life” (“Schools may be phased out in favor of live streaming of lessons to children’s homes”). Despite the many captions, descriptive comments, and superficial “How It Works” boxed featurettes, it’s the large, bright photos and (more commonly) hyper-realistic graphic images lighting up each single-spread entry that will be the chief draw here. There are no URLs or other leads to further information.

Polished product for techno-browsers—current, if not likely to stay on the cutting edge for long.