In a period in which the future of the European Union is subject to increased scrutiny, it is more vital than ever that the thoughts and views of younger generations are considered. Young People's Visions and Worries for the Future of Europe: Findings from the Europe 2038 Project seeks to do exactly that, presenting the findings of a large-scale research project investigating the opinions and worries of young people between the ages of 16 and 25 across seven European countries. In this unique and timely volume, Strohmeier and Tenenbaum, together with the Europe 2038 consortium, examine young people's endorsement of multiculturalism, diversity, European identity, human rights, and political participation, and unpick the cross-national differences in a range of European countries. Young People's Visions and Worries for the Future of Europe concludes by formulating effective evidence-based recommendations for policy and practice. This work is essential reading for advanced level undergraduate and masters level courses in Psychology, Social Work, Politics, Sociology, Social Policy, and Education, as well as researchers in those fields.

This important Manifesto argues that we still need a concept of society in order to make sense of the forces which structure our lives.
Written by leading social theorist William Outhwaite
Asks if the notion of society is relevant in the twenty-first century
Goes to the heart of contemporary social and political debate
Examines critiques of the concept of society from neoliberals, postmodernists, and globalization theorists

Midway through the eighteenth century, the rate of growth for the world's population was roughly at zero. Immediately after World War II, it was just above 2 percent. Ever since, it has fallen steadily. This new book, the latest offering from a distinguished expert on international economics, tells readers what this stagnation or fall in population will mean--economically, politically, and historically--for the nations of the world.
W. W. Rostow not only traces the whole global arc of this "great population spike"--he looks far beyond it. What he sees will interest anyone curious about what is in store for the world's financial and governmental systems. The Great Population Spike and After: Reflections on the 21st Century contends that, as the decline in population now occurring in the industrialized world spreads to all of the presently developing countries, the global rate of population will fall to the "zero" level circa 2100. (Indeed, with the exception of Africa south of the Sahara, it could reach "zero" long before then.) This being so, how will it be possible to maintain full employment and social services with a decelerating population? What will societies do when the proportion of the working force (as now defined) diminishes radically in relation to the population of poor or elderly dependents? How will the countries of the world confront subsequent decreases in population-related investment?
In answering these queries, this bold study asserts that the United States is not the "last remaining superpower" but the "critical margin" without whose support no constructive action on the world scene can succeed. Rostow takes the view that world peace will depend on ourgovernment's ability to assume responsibly this "critical margin" role. Further, he argues that, over a period of time, the execution of this strategy on the international scene will require a bipartisan, relentless effort to solve the combustible social problems that weaken not only our cities but our whole society.

What existential threats does humanity face? And how can we secure our future? 'The Precipice is a powerful book . . . Ord's love for humanity and hope for its future is infectious' Spectator 'Ord's analysis of the science is exemplary . . . Thrillingly written' Sunday Times We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves - without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. With clear and rigorous thinking, Ord calculates the various risk levels, and shows how our own time fits within the larger story of human history. We can say with certainty that the novel coronavirus does not pose such a risk. But could the next pandemic? And what can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on? A major work that brings together the disciplines of physics, biology, earth and computer science, history, anthropology, statistics, international relations, political science and moral philosophy, The Precipice is a call for a new understanding of our age: a major reorientation in the way we see the world, our history, and the role we play in it.

We are now entering an era where the human world assumes recognition of itself as data. Much of humanity's basis for existence is becoming subordinate to software processes that tabulate, index, and sort the relations that comprise what we perceive as reality. The acceleration of data collection threatens to relinquish ephemeral modes of representation to ceaseless processes of computation. This situation compels the human world to form relations with non-human agencies, to establish exchanges with software processes in order to allow a profound upgrade of our own ontological understanding. By mediating with a higher intelligence, we may be able to rediscover the inner logic of the age of intelligent machines. In The End of the Future, Stephanie Polsky conceives an understanding of the digital through its dynamic intersection with the advent and development of the nation-state, race, colonization, navigational warfare, mercantilism, and capitalism, and the mathematical sciences over the past five centuries, the era during which the world became "modern." The book animates the twenty-first century as an era in which the screen has split off from itself and proliferated onto multiple surfaces, allowing an inverted image of totalitarianism to flash up and be altered to support our present condition of binary apperception. It progresses through a recognition of atomized political power, whose authority lies in the control not of the means of production, but of information, and in which digital media now serves to legitimize and promote a customized micropolitics of identity management. On this new apostolate plane, humanity may be able to shape a new world in which each human soul is captured and reproduced as an autonomous individual bearing affects and identities. The digital infrastructure of the twenty-first century makes it possible for power to operate through an esoteric mathematical means, and for factual material to be manipulated in the interest of advancing the means of control. This volume travels a course from Elizabethan England, to North American slavery, through cybernetic Social Engineering, Cold War counterinsurgency, and the (neo)libertarianism of Silicon Valley in order to arrive at a place where an organizing intelligence that started from an ambition to resourcefully manipulate physical bodies has ended with their profound neutralization.

Using an interdisciplinary social-science approach, Temporal Horizons and Strategic Decisions in US-China Relations: Between Instant and Infinite takes on the challenge of understanding the foreign policy decision process through the lens of the temporal horizon. A temporal horizon is the distance into the future a decision-maker prioritizes when evaluating outcomes and considering possibilities. By looking at a number of recent key moments of US-China relations that have immediate, short-term, long term, and far-reaching implications, the book considers which are predominant in the policy process. Looking at the role of time as a factor in the decision-making process is not new to political science, but this book attempts to break down and articulate the process by looking at a range of specific time frames. The book places special attention on future considerations in a variety of ways, combining the insights of psychology, economics, and future studies to consider political science in a new manner.

Why do we continue to think about, imagine, and forecast the future despite believing we will probably be wrong? Why do we need to do so? What does the future mean, and how do we relate to it? Is it possible that Western societies condition their members into inability to cope with the future?

These and other fundamental questions are explored in "The Future Is Ours," which is written as an intermediate text for use in future-oriented modules within BA courses in International Business, Management, Urban Planning, and Environmental Politics.

Copernicus and Galileo's sun-centered model of the solar system gave us our view of space. Newton and Einstein's mechanical and electromagnetic models of the universe gave us our view of nature. Can the human condition be captured with a similarly universal model? Author Lawrence H. Taub believes so, and he develops three of them-age, sex, and caste-to reveal the deeper currents of history. The models presented in "The Spiritual Imperative" clarify the past, explain the present, and help anticipate the future. Taub uses these models to make insightful forecasts of future discontinuities that answer the major questions facing us today. Some of his predictions include: a regional political-economic block formed in the Far East and what this will mean to the world an alliance between the U.S. and Russia and how this will develop Israeli-Palestinian peace leading to a Pan-Semitic Union that will make the Middle East one of two main world centers of economic, political, and spiritual power in the mid-twenty-first century the replacement of technology with religion and spirituality as the main growth market in the twenty-first century "The Spiritual Imperative" provides insight into where human civilization has been and where it's going.

Zombies are everywhere these days. We are consuming zombies as much as they are said to be consuming us in mediated apocalyptic scenarios on popular television shows, video game franchises and movies. The zombie industry generates billions a year through media texts and other cultural manifestations (zombie races and zombie-themed parks, to name a few). Zombies, like vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards, have become both big dollars for cultural producers and the subject of audience fascination and fetishization. With popular television shows such as AMC s The Walking Dead (based on the popular graphic novel) and movie franchises such as the ones pioneered by George Romero, global fascination with zombies does not show signs of diminishing. In The Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, edited by Murali Balaji, scholars ask why our culture has becomes so fascinated by the zombie apocalypse. Essays address this question from a range of theoretical perspectives that tie our consumption of zombies to larger narratives of race, gender, sexuality, politics, economics and the end of the world. Thinking Dead brings together an array of media and cultural studies scholars whose contributions to understanding our obsession with zombies will far outlast the current trends of zombie popularity.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Unapologetically optimistic and bracingly realistic, this is the most inspiring book on 'ethical living' I've ever read.' Oliver Burkeman, Guardian 'A monumental event.' Rutger Bregman, author of Humankind 'A book of great daring, clarity, insight and imagination. To be simultaneously so realistic and so optimistic, and always so damn readable... well that is a miracle for which he should be greatly applauded.' Stephen Fry Humanity is in its infancy. Our future could last for millions of years - or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering, or never live at all, depending on what we choose to do today. As we approach a critical juncture in our history, we can make profound moral decisions about how humanity's course plays out. We can create positive change on behalf of future generations, to prevent the use of catastrophic weapons and maintain peace between the world's great powers. We can improve our moral values, navigating the rise of AI and climate change more fairly for generations to come. The challenges we face are enormous. But so is the influence we have. If we choose wisely, our distant descendants will look back on us fondly, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world that is beautiful and just.

Posthuman Personhood takes up the ethical challenge posed by Francis Fukuyama's work, Our Posthuman Future. Daryl J. Wennemann argues that the traditional concept of personhood may be fruitfully applied to the ethical challenge we face in a posthuman age. He draws upon Wilfrid Sellars' treatment of the concept of a person within "the manifest image of man in the world." Sellars proposed that we develop a stereoscopic view of reality that includes both a scientific understanding of the world and a meaningful place for persons living and acting in the world. Following Mary Anne Warren, Wennemann develops a distinction between two meanings of the term "human," a biological meaning and a moral meaning, and maintains that all (biologically) human beings are persons. But, it is not necessarily the case that all persons must be (biologically) human. After drawing on a contemporary version of Kant's distinction between a theoretical possibility and a real possibility, the book posits that biologically non-human persons like robots, computers, or aliens are a theoretical possibility but that we do not know if they are a real possibility. Finally, Wennemann describes an ethic of self-limitation for the posthuman age.

This book demonstrates the power of neural networks in learning complex behavior from the underlying financial time series data. The results presented also show how neural networks can successfully be applied to volatility modeling, option pricing, and value-at-risk modeling. These features mean that they can be applied to market-risk problems to overcome classic problems associated with statistical models.

Friday is the New Saturday makes a compelling, provocative and timely case for societal change. Drawing on an eclectic range of economic theory, history and data, Dr Pedro Gomes argues that a four-day working week will bring about a powerful economic renewal for the benefit of all society. It will stimulate demand, productivity, innovation and wages, whilst reducing unemployment and crushing populist movements. The arguments come from both the left and right of the political spectrum to show that a polarised society can still find common ground. In the 1800s, people in the West worked six days each week, resting on Sundays. In the 1900s, firms began to give workers Saturdays off as well, realising that a two-day weekend helped the economy. In the 2000s, Friday will become the new Saturday, and we will never look back.

This book foretells of events that will occur in 2012, and into the new millennium. It has a unique yet controversial edge, that involves extraterrestrials arriving on Earth to assist mankind. Actual contact has been made through the medium Gilda. Through her transcripts and questions, she answers details of what will manifest. The public must embrace the reality of their future. Extraterrestrials have announced their arrival and are here to stay. "Will I Survive?," will echo in the mind of all humanity.

Dystopian States of America is a crucial resource that studies the impact of dystopian works on American society-including ways in which they reflect our deep and persistent fears about environmental calamities, authoritarian governments, invasive technologies, and human weakness. Dystopian States of America provides students and researchers with an illuminating resource for understanding the impact and relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic works in contemporary American culture. Through its wide survey of dystopian works in numerous forms and genres, the book encourages readers to connect with these works of fiction and understand how the catastrophically grim or disquieting worlds they portray offer insights into our own current situation. In addition to providing more than 150 encyclopedia articles on a large and representative sample of dystopian/apocalyptic narratives in fiction, film, television, and video games (including popular works that often escape critical inquiry), Dystopian States of America features a suite of critical essays on five themes-war, pandemics, totalitarianism, environmental calamity, and technological overreach-that serve as the foundation for most dystopian worlds of the imagination. These offerings complement one another, enabling readers to explore dystopian conceptions of America and the world from multiple perspectives and vantage points. Provides readers with an accessible, well-organized, and thorough introduction to dystopian/apocalyptic narratives, with a focus on the ways that these stories foster increased awareness of the world we live in now Casts a wide net to identify dystopian works in diverse genres and forms-from classic novels to video games-reaching beyond "serious" literature to appreciate the depth of this body of work and its impact Covers a wide survey of works-more than 150-in digestible and accessible encyclopedia entries, each contributed by an established scholar in literary studies, film studies, history, or an associated field Provides five extended scholarly essays on recurring subject themes in apocalyptic and dystopian works

What is Human Intellectual Evolution? Could Darwin's concept of evolution be incomplete? Darwin's theory just might be insufficient, mainly because Darwin didn't apply his theory to the most complex organism of all; the human intellect. There is no question that in the past, numerous civilizations have ascended and then receded in terms of military power, influence and economic clout. Why? Will it happen to us? Human Intellectual Evolution accurately explains the past and greatly enhances the odds of successfully predicting the future. Human Intellectual Evolution drives the process of history forward and illuminates the path ahead. Understanding the three variables that affect the rate of intellectual development is critical to predicting the future and more profitably directing our time, energy and money. The future of the United States, what happens next in China, and the stability of the Middle East are all critical questions with global consequences. Profit and success will accrue to individuals who best grasp the concept of Human Intellectual Evolution and have the courage and fortitude to act upon their convictions.

This book highlights an interdisciplinary terrain where the humanities and social sciences combine with digital methods. It argues that while disciplinary frictions still condition the potential of digital projects, the nature of the urban phenomenon pushes us toward an interdisciplinary and digital future where the primacy of cities is assured.

Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course? In The Future of Serious Art, Bidisha uses her personal journey through novels, TV and film to mirror the seismic changes that have occurred in culture and its industries in recent years. The digital revolution has brought all of TV, cinema and music into the palms of our hands. It's easier than ever to bring stories to life, but what happens when artistic work is rebranded as 'content creation'? Where does this leave literary novelists and arthouse filmmakers? What about those auteur-directors who make mainstream but thoughtful films for the big screen? As a storyteller herself, and a woman of colour who isn't a millennial, Bidisha asks who is taken seriously as an artist, what is taken seriously as art now and how that might change over the next century. This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author's original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.

This book documents the first five years of life of the children of the influential Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking almost 19,000 babies born in 2000 and 2001 in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This book is the second in a series of books which will report on the findings from the data and follows on from "Children of the 21st Century: From Birth to Nine Months" (The Policy Press, 2005). It takes an extended look at the children's lives and development as they grow and begin formal education, and the implications for family policy, and service planning in health and social services. The chapters in this book are written by experts across a wide range of social science and health fields and form a unique look at the early lives of children that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. It is essential reading for academics, students and researchers in these fields. It will also be of interest to policy makers and practitioners with an interest in children's early years, family life, child development, child poverty, childcare and education and health care.

This book discusses how to build optimization tools able to generate better future studies. It aims at showing how these tools can be used to develop an adaptive learning environment that can be used for decision making in the presence of uncertainties. The book starts with existing fuzzy techniques and multicriteria decision making approaches and shows how to combine them in more effective tools to model future events and take therefore better decisions. The first part of the book is dedicated to the theories behind fuzzy optimization and fuzzy cognitive map, while the second part presents new approaches developed by the authors with their practical application to trend impact analysis, scenario planning and strategic formulation. The book is aimed at two groups of readers, interested in linking the future studies with artificial intelligence. The first group includes social scientists seeking for improved methods for strategic prospective. The second group includes computer scientists and engineers seeking for new applications and current developments of Soft Computing methods for forecasting in social science, but not limited to this.