A Short History Of The Future
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| Author | : W. Warren Wagar |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 348 |
| Release | : 1999-08 |
| Genre | : Family & Relationships |
| ISBN | : 9780226869032 |
Narrated by a far-future historian, Peter Jensen leaves an account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the 23rd century as a gift to his granddaughter. A combination of fiction and scholarship, this third edition of Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of this historian's family into the first centuries of the new millennium.
| Author | : Jacques Attali |
| Publisher | : Skyhorse |
| Total Pages | : 294 |
| Release | : 2011-07-01 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1628721332 |
What will planet Earth be like in twenty years? At mid-century? In the year 2100? Prescient and convincing, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future. Never has the world offered more promise for the future and been more fraught with dangers. Attali anticipates an unraveling of American hegemony as transnational corporations sever the ties linking free enterprise to democracy. World tensions will be primed for horrific warfare for resources and dominance. The ultimate question is: Will we leave our children and grandchildren a world that is not only viable but better, or in this nuclear world bequeath to them a planet that will be a living hell? Either way, he warns, the time to act is now.
| Author | : Martin van Creveld |
| Publisher | : Reaktion Books |
| Total Pages | : 297 |
| Release | : 2020-09-07 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1789142296 |
The ability to predict the future is essential to modern life. Planning for population growth or changes in weather patterns or forecasting demand for products and managing inventories would be impossible without it. But how have people through the ages gone about making predictions? What were their underlying assumptions, and what methods did they use? Have increased computer power and the newest algorithms improved our success in anticipating the future, or are we still only as good (or as bad) as our ancestors bent over their auguries? From the ancients watching the flight of birds to the murky activities of Google and Facebook today, Seeing into the Future provides vital insight into the past, present, and—of course—future of prediction.
| Author | : Colin Mason |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 314 |
| Release | : 2012-06-25 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1136572880 |
Has the future a future? Are we bringing history to an end? Observing any one of several individual but critical trends suggests that, without rapid and positive action, history may have only a very short way to run. Whether it is the growth of world population, of greenhouse gas concentrations and the accelerating rate of climate change, the running down of oil and natural gas reserves, growing shortages of fresh water for agriculture, industry and domestic use, or the increasing difficulty in controlling epidemic diseases we are facing a mounting global crisis that will peak in less than a generation, around the year 2030. Taken together, these trends point to a potentially apocalyptic period, if not for the planet itself then certainly for human societies and for humankind. In this compelling book, and update to The 2030 Spike, Colin Mason explains in clear and irrefutable terms what is going on largely below the surface of our daily or weekly news bulletins. The picture he paints is stark, and yet it is not bleak. Being forewarned, we are forearmed, and he draws on his own extensive political experience to describe how much we can do as individuals, and above all collectively, not merely to avert crisis but to engineer thoroughgoing change that can usher in genuinely sustainable and valuable alternatives to the way we live now.
| Author | : Peter J. Bowler |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 307 |
| Release | : 2017-11-02 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1107148731 |
A wide-ranging survey of predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology through the twentieth century.
| Author | : Ronald Wright |
| Publisher | : House of Anansi |
| Total Pages | : 226 |
| Release | : 2004 |
| Genre | : Civilization |
| ISBN | : 0887847064 |
Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.
| Author | : Susan Harding |
| Publisher | : Duke University Press |
| Total Pages | : 375 |
| Release | : 2005-07-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 082238681X |
We live in a world saturated by futures. Our lives are constructed around ideas and images about the future that are as full and as flawed as our understandings of the past. This book is a conceptual toolkit for thinking about the forms and functions that the future takes. Exploring links between panic and nostalgia, waiting and utopia, technology and messianism, prophecy and trauma, it brings together critical meditations on the social, cultural, and intellectual forces that create narratives and practices of the future. The prognosticators, speculators, prophets, and visionaries have their say here, but the emphasis is on small narratives and forgotten conjunctures, on the connections between expectation and experience in everyday life. In tightly linked studies, the contributors excavate forgotten and emergent futures of art, religion, technology, economics, and politics. They trace hidden histories of science fiction, futurism, and millennialism and break down barriers between far-flung cultural spheres. From the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the forests of Java and from the literary salons of Tokyo to the roadside cafés of the Nevada desert, the authors stitch together the disparate images and stories of futures past and present. Histories of the Future is further punctuated by three interludes: a thought-provoking game that invites players to fashion future narratives of their own, a metafiction by renowned novelist Jonathan Lethem, and a remarkable graphic research tool: a timeline of timelines. Contributors. Sasha Archibald, Susan Harding, Jamer Hunt, Pamela Jackson, Susan Lepselter, Jonathan Lethem, Joseph Masco, Christopher Newfield, Elizabeth Pollman, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Rosenberg, Miryam Sas, Kathleen Stewart, Anna Tsing
| Author | : Masha Gessen |
| Publisher | : Penguin |
| Total Pages | : 530 |
| Release | : 2017-10-03 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 159463453X |
WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
| Author | : Jennifer M. Gidley |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 185 |
| Release | : 2017-03-16 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0191054240 |
From the beginning of time, humans have been driven by both a fear of the unknown and a curiosity to know. We have always yearned to know what lies ahead, whether threat or safety, scarcity or abundance. Throughout human history, our forebears tried to create certainty in the unknown, by seeking to influence outcomes with sacrifices to gods, preparing for the unexpected with advice from oracles, and by reading the stars through astrology. As scientific methods improve and computer technology develops we become ever more confident of our capacity to predict and quantify the future by accumulating and interpreting patterns form the past, yet the truth is there is still no certainty to be had. In this Very Short Introduction Jennifer Gidley considers some of our most burning questions: What is "the future "?; Is the future a time yet to come?; Or is it a utopian place?; Does the future have a history?; Is there only one future or are there many possible futures? She asks if the future can ever be truly predicted or if we create our own futures - both hoped for and feared - by our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and concludes by analysing how we can learn to study the future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
| Author | : John Keane |
| Publisher | : The Experiment, LLC |
| Total Pages | : 231 |
| Release | : 2022-09-06 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1615198970 |
The full chronological sweep of democracy, from the assemblies of ancient Mesopotamia and Athens to present perils around the globe. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. This compact history unspools the tumultuous global story that began with democracy’s radical core idea: We can collaborate, as equals, to determine our own futures. Acclaimed political thinker John Keane traces how this concept emerged and evolved, from the earliest “assembly democracies” in Syria-Mesopotamia to European-style “electoral democracy” and to our uncertain present. Today, thanks to our always-on communication channels, governments answer not only to voters on Election Day but to intense scrutiny every day. This is “monitory democracy”—in Keane’s view, the most complex and vibrant model yet—but it’s not invulnerable. Monitory democracy comes with its own pathologies, and the new despotism wields powerful warning systems, from social media to election monitoring, against democracy itself. At this urgent moment, when despots in countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia reject the promises of democratic power-sharing, Keane mounts a bold defense of a precious global ideal.
