The Future for Curious People

The Future for Curious People
Author: Gregory Sherl
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2014-09-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616204265

“Comic and Exuberant . . . A fine and tender tale for anyone who has tried to let go of the past and envision the future while falling in love.” —Rhonda Riley, author of The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope What if you could know your romantic future? What if an envisionist could enter the name of your prospective mate into a computer that would show you a film of your future life together? In The Future for Curious People, a young librarian named Evelyn becomes obsessed with this new technology: she can’t stop visiting Dr. Chin’s office because she needs to know that she’ll meet someone and be happy one day. Godfrey, another client, ends up at the envisionist’s office only because his fiancée insisted they know their fate before taking the plunge. But when Godfrey meets Evelyn in the waiting room, true love may be right in front of them, but they are too preoccupied—and too burdened by their pasts—to recognize it. This smart, fresh love story, with its quirky twists and turns, ponders life’s big questions—about happiness, fate, and our very existence—as it follows Evelyn and Godfrey’s quest for the elusive answers. “A love story about love stories . . . The pages burst with laugh-out-loud scenes and crisply original set-ups. I loved it!” —Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine “Somewhere between Jorge Luis Borge’s ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you will find Gregory Sherl’s warm, intelligent debut novel.” —Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State “Enormously appealing . . . Evelyn and Godfrey are two unforgettable characters you’ll root for and remember long after you’ve read the last page of this wildly original, deeply moving novel.” —Mindy Friddle, author of Secret Keepers

Inventing the Future

Inventing the Future
Author: Nick Srnicek
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1784780987

This major new manifesto offers a “clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society” and shows how left-wing politics can be rebuilt for the 21st century (Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism) Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms. This new edition includes a new chapter where they respond to their various critics.

The Future of the World

The Future of the World
Author: Jenny Andersson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2018-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192545515

The Future of the World is devoted to the intriguing field of study which emerged after World War Two, futurism or futurology. Jenny Andersson explains how futurist scholars and researchers imagined the Cold War and post Cold War world and the tools and methods they would use to influence and change that world. Futurists were a motley crew of Cold War warriors, nuclear scientists, journalists, and peace activists. Some argued it should be a closed sphere of science defined by delimited probabilities. They were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm. Futurism also drew on an eclectic range of repertoires, some of which were deduced from positivist social science, mathematics, and nuclear physics, and some of which sprung from alternative forms of knowledge in science fiction, journalism, or religion. These different forms of prediction laid very different claims to how accurately futures could be known, and what kind of control could be exerted over what was yet to come. The Future of the World carefully examines these different engagements with the future, and inscribes them in the intellectual history of the post war period. Using unexplored archival collections, The Future of the World reconstructs the Cold War networks of futurologists and futurists.

The Future Is Rural

The Future Is Rural
Author: Jason Bradford
Publisher:
Total Pages: 111
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9780989599559

The Future is Rural challenges the conventional wisdom about the future of food in our modern, globalized world. It is a much-needed reality check that explains why certain trends we take for granted-like the decline of rural areas and the dependence of farming and the food system on fossil fuels-are historical anomalies that will reverse over the coming decades. Renewable sources of energy must replace fossil fuels, but they will not power economies at the same scale as today. Priorities will profoundly shift, and food will become a central concern. Lessons learned from resilience science and alternatives to industrial agriculture provide a foundation for people to transition to more rural and locally focused lives.Jason Bradford, a biologist and farmer, offers a deeply researched report on the future of food that reveals key blind spots in conventional wisdom on energy, technology, and demographics. The Future Is Rural presents Bradford's analysis from his career in ecology and agriculture, as well as a synthesis of the historical and scientific underpinnings of the astonishing changes that will transform the food system and society as a whole.

The Future Of Fusion Energy

The Future Of Fusion Energy
Author: Jason Parisi
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2019-01-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1786345447

'The text provides an interesting history of previous and anticipated accomplishments, ending with a chapter on the relationship of fusion power to nuclear weaponry. They conclude on an optimistic note, well worth being understood by the general public.'CHOICEThe gap between the state of fusion energy research and public understanding is vast. In an entertaining and engaging narrative, this popular science book gives readers the basic tools to understand how fusion works, its potential, and contemporary research problems.Written by two young researchers in the field, The Future of Fusion Energy explains how physical laws and the Earth's energy resources motivate the current fusion program — a program that is approaching a critical point. The world's largest science project and biggest ever fusion reactor, ITER, is nearing completion. Its success could trigger a worldwide race to build a power plant, but failure could delay fusion by decades. To these ends, this book details how ITER's results could be used to design an economically competitive power plant as well as some of the many alternative fusion concepts.

Does Israel Have a Future?

Does Israel Have a Future?
Author: Constance Hilliard
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 1597976407

The Jewish people are in greater danger than ever before. Given the debacle in Iraq, many Americans who had not taken a serious interest in the Middle East have begun asking themselves, What are we doing wrong? Why do we keep misreading the signals coming from that part of the world? More fundamentally, where will Israel be in two, five, ten years from now? Should Zionism be replaced by a post-Zionist state that welcomes all people, rather than one that privileges only the Jews? Will there even be a Jewish state? These are the questions Constance Hilliard addresses in Does Israel Have a Future?, forgoing polemics and wishful thinking for straight talk and painful truths. In this thoroughly researched book, Hilliard presents an honest assessment of the Jewish state's chances for survival given the forces ranged against it. The discussions about the future of the Jewish state analyzed in this book are some of the most significant to engage Israelis since 1948, dominating the airwaves, newspapers, and café conversations. Distilling these disparate views into a simple, straightforward exploration of one of the most explosive issues of our time--one into which few people outside Israel have delved as deeply as Hilliard has--the author presents a provocative argument that will appeal to scholars and students of international affairs, political science, and the Middle East, as well as general readers concerned about Israel's future.

The Future of Post-human Sexuality

The Future of Post-human Sexuality
Author: Peter Baofu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2010
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

What precisely resides in â oesexualityâ which warrants the popular discourse on sexuality as â oepart of our world freedom, â or something as an inspiring source for â oeour own creationâ of â oenew forms of relationshipsâ or â oenew forms of loveâ never before possible in human history? This popular treatment of sexual freedom has become so politically correct, in this day and age of ours, that it fast degenerates into a seductive ideology which has impoverished our understanding of sexuality by blinding us from its dark sides. Contrary to this intoxicating conventional wisdom, the dark sides of this seductive ideology have yet to be systematically understood and that its very creative freedom is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that its advocates would like us to believe. Of course, this is not to suggest that sexuality should not be about freedom nor creativity, or that the literature in sexual studies (and other related fields like gender studies, queer studies, and cultural studies, for example) should be ignored because of their scholarly nonsense. Needless to say, neither of these two extreme views is reasonable either. Instead, the purpose of this book is to provide an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of sexuality, in special relation to the sexual body and spirit, in conjunction with the mindâ "while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). This seminal project, if successful, will fundamentally change the way that we think about the nature of sexuality, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its â oepost-humanâ fate.

No Time Like the Future

No Time Like the Future
Author: Michael J. Fox
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250265622

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A moving account of resilience, hope, fear and mortality, and how these things resonate in our lives, by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox. The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Michael is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading non-profit funder of PD science. His two previous bestselling memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, dealt with how he came to terms with the illness, all the while exhibiting his iconic optimism. His new memoir reassesses this outlook, as events in the past decade presented additional challenges. In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, but with Fox’s trademark sense of humor, his book provides a vehicle for reflection about our lives, our loves, and our losses. Running through the narrative is the drama of the medical madness Fox recently experienced, that included his daily negotiations with the Parkinson’s disease he’s had since 1991, and a spinal cord issue that necessitated immediate surgery. His challenge to learn how to walk again, only to suffer a devastating fall, nearly caused him to ditch his trademark optimism and “get out of the lemonade business altogether.” Does he make it all of the way back? Read the book.

The Future of (Post)Socialism

The Future of (Post)Socialism
Author: John Frederick Bailyn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438471440

If socialism did not end as abruptly as is sometimes perceived, what remnants of it linger today and will continue to linger? Moreover, if postsocialism is an umbrella term for the uncertain times of various transitions that followed in socialism's wake, how might the "post" be rendered complicated by the notion that the unfinished business of socialism continues to influence the trajectory of the future? The Future of (Post)Socialism examines this unfinished business through various disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that seek to illuminate the postsocialist future as a cultural and social fact. Drawn from the fields of history, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, education, linguistics, literature, and cultural studies, contributors analyze various cultural forms and practices of the formerly socialist cultural spaces of Eastern Europe. In so doing, they question the teleology of linear transitional narratives and of assumptions about postsocialist linear progress, concluding that things operate more as continued interruptions of a perpetually liminal state rather than as neat endings and new beginnings.

The Future of Post-Human War and Peace

The Future of Post-Human War and Peace
Author: Peter Baofu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2010-04-16
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1443821713

Is peace really so precious that it is popularly viewed in irenology (peace studies) of our time as “natural” and “a prime force in human behavior”—whereas war, its opposite, is instead condemned as “sinful” and “not” natural? In fact, there is even the prestigious Nobel “peace” prize to be awarded to those who contribute to world peace but not an equivalent Nobel “war” prize to those who do the contrary. This euphoric view of peace is by no means a constant conventional wisdom in human history, as it can be sharply contrasted with an equally seductive view of war in polemology (war studies). For instance, only several decades ago, the well-known writer Thomas Mann once approvingly asked about war: “Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope?” (WK 2009a) This fickleness of conventional wisdom on war and peace has blinded us from the dark sides of both war and peace, with the consequence of impoverishing our understanding of the human condition and its future. Contrary to the two opposing sides of this conventional wisdom in its fickle history, war and peace are neither possible nor desirable to the extent that their respective ideologues would like us to believe. In addition, war and peace cannot exist with each other. Of course, this is not to suggest that irenology (peace studies) and polemology (war studies) are worthless, or that other fields of study (related to war studies and peace studies) like “political science, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, history, anthropology, religious studies,…gender studies, as well as a variety of others” should be ignored. (WK 2009) Needless to say, neither of these two extreme views is reasonable either. Instead, this book accepts the challenging task to provide an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of war and peace, especially in relation to aggression and pacificity—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). Thus, this book offers a new theory to transcend the existing approaches in the literature on war and peace in a way not conceived before. If successful, this seminal project is to fundamentally change the way that we think about war and peace, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.