The time for action is now. The fate of the world's coasts rests on a knife edge as global warming melts ice sheets and glaciers from the Alps to the Andes. The choices we make now will determine whether oceans rise by a coast-swamping 1 metre by 2100 or whether we can save our coastal communities. From the glaciers of Antarctica and the high Andes, to the small island states of the Pacific and the coastal cities of Miami, New York, Venice and Rotterdam - Alister Doyle tracks the thaw that threatens life as we know it, shining a light on the most vulnerable people at the shoreline who are already moving inland, on the scientists puzzling about what is going on, and on the ideas about how to limit the damage.

After decades of missed opportunities, the door to a sustainable future has closed, and the future we face now is one in which today's industrial civilization unravels in the face of uncontrolled climate change and resource depletion. What is the world going to look like when all these changes have run their course? Author John Michael Greer seeks to answer this question, and with some degree of accuracy, since civilizations tend to collapse in remarkably similar ways. Dark Age America, then, seeks to map out in advance the history of collapse, giving us an idea of what the next five hundred years or so might look like as globalization ends and North American civilization reaches the end of its lifecycle and enters the stages of decline and fall. In many ways, this is Greer's most uncompromising work, though by no means without hope to offer. Knowing where we're headed collectively is a crucial step in responding constructively to the challenges of the future and doing what we can now to help our descendants make the most of the world we're leaving them. John Michael Greer, historian of ideas and one of the most influential authors exploring the future of industrial society, writes the widely cited weekly blog the Archdruid Report and has published more than thirty books including The Long Descent, The Ecotechnic Future, The Wealth of Nature, and After Progress. He lives in Cumberland, Maryland, an old mill town in the Appalachians, with his wife Sara.

What will the next generation of Russian leaders be like? How will they regard the United States, democracy, free speech, and immigration? What do they think of their current leaders? And what sorts of tactics will they bring to international negotiating tables, political and otherwise? No Illusions provides an engaging, intimate, and unprecedented window onto the mindsets of the next generation of leaders in Russian politics, business, and economics. In it, Ellen Mickiewicz, one of the world's foremost experts on Russian media, politics and culture, draws on interviews with students in Russia's three most elite universities, the training grounds for all of the nation's leadership. Allowing these students to speak in their own words, she shares their thoughts on international relations, the domestic and international media, democracy, and their government. She also shows how their total immersion in the world of the internet - an immersion that sets them apart from the current generation of Russian leadership and much of the rest of the country - frames the way that they think and affects their trust in their leaders, the media, and their colleagues. They view the world around themselves with soberness and deep skepticism. Their worldviews are complex and often contradictory, reflecting complicated personalities who are adaptable, yet also subject to much internal strife. Many plan for future careers in politics while expressing ambivalence about the political process; they proclaim cosmopolitan worldviews and deeply xenophobic attitudes at the same time; they have favorable views of democracy, but not of the American model; they are shrewd critics of government propaganda and yet clearly have absorbed residue of Cold War paranoia. Mickiewicz also looks at the nation's recent protests and nascent political movements to show how they came about and to consider what promise they might hold for a more democratic Russia. She profiles several of Russia's up-and-coming leaders, including charismatic and controversial activist and politician Aleksei Navalny, perhaps one of the more formidable threats to the Putin regime. As this book shows, the next generation of Russian leaders will almost certainly hold a worldview different from the current one, but it is not likely to be a worldview that readily embraces American democracy. No Illusions is a thought-provoking and often surprising glimpse into the future of Russia's foreign relations.

In 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people alive - compared with 7 billion today - and the number will still be rising. The population aged over sixty-five will have more than doubled, to more than 16 per cent; China's GDP will be 80 per cent more than America's; and the number of cars on India's roads will have increased by 3,880 per cent. And, in 2050 it should be clear whether we are alone in the universe. What other megachanges can we expect - and what will their impact be? This comprehensive and compelling book will cover the most significant trends that are shaping the coming decades, with each of its twenty chapters elegantly and authoritatively outlined by Economist contributors, and rich in supporting facts and figures. It will chart the rise and fall of fertility rates across continents; how energy resources will change in light of new technology, and how different nations will deal with major developments in science and warfare. Megachange is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what the next four decades hold in store.

Future Politics confronts one of the most important questions of our time: how will digital technology transform politics and society? The great political debate of the last century was about how much of our collective life should be determined by the state and what should be left to the market and civil society. In the future, the question will be how far our lives should be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms? Jamie Susskind argues that rapid and relentless innovation in a range of technologies - from artificial intelligence to virtual reality - will transform the way we live together. Calling for a fundamental change in the way we think about politics, he describes a world in which certain technologies and platforms, and those who control them, come to hold great power over us. Some will gather data about our lives, causing us to avoid conduct perceived as shameful, sinful, or wrong. Others will filter our perception of the world, choosing what we know, shaping what we think, affecting how we feel, and guiding how we act. Still others will force us to behave certain ways, like self-driving cars that refuse to drive over the speed limit. Those who control these technologies - usually big tech firms and the state - will increasingly control us. They will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what we may do and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will resolve vital questions of social justice, allocating social goods and sorting us into hierarchies of status and esteem. They will decide the future of democracy, causing it to flourish or decay. A groundbreaking work of political analysis, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, what it means for a political system to be just or democratic, and proposes ways in which we can - and must - regain control.

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and introduces the people and systems that will replace them. In an internet-enhanced society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. The Future of the Professions explains how increasingly capable technologies - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will place the 'practical expertise' of the finest specialists at the fingertips of everyone, often at no or low cost and without face-to-face interaction. The authors challenge the 'grand bargain' - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of their best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose five new models for producing and distributing expertise in society. The book raises profound policy issues, not least about employment (they envisage a new generation of 'open-collared workers') and about control over online expertise (they warn of new 'gatekeepers') - in an era when machines become more capable than human beings at most tasks. With a new preface exploring recent critical developments, this updated edition builds on the authors' groundbreaking research into more than a dozen professions. Illustrated with numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century.

'Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum contribute significantly to one of the most important issues of our time-how to move forward in the Fourth Industrial Revolution' -Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab offers a practical companion and field guide to his previous book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Today, technology is changing everything-how we relate to one another, the way we work, how our economies and governments function, and even what it means to be human. Incredible advances-from cryptocurrencies to AI to the internet of things-are already transforming society in unprecedented ways. But the Fourth Industrial Revolution is still in its infancy, says Schwab, and at a time of such tremendous uncertainty and change, it's our actions that will determine the trajectory the future will take. Drawing on contributions from 200 top experts in fields ranging from machine learning to geo-engineering to nanotechnology, to data ethics, Schwab equips readers with the practical tools to leverage the technologies of the future to leave the world better, safer, and more resilient than we found it. 'The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are extraordinary. Leadership has to be equally extraordinary to manage the complexities of systemic change' - Eric Schmidt, Technical Advisor, Alphabet

We've weathered tough times before. History teaches us that periods of "creative destruction," like the Great Depression of the 1930s, also present opportunities to remake our economy and society and to generate whole new eras of economic growth and prosperity. In "The Great Reset," bestselling author and economic development expert Richard Florida provides an engaging and sweeping examination of these previous economic epochs, or "resets," while looking toward the future to identify the patterns that will drive the next Great Reset and transform virtually every aspect of our lives. He distills the deep forces that alter physical and social landscapes--how and where we live, how we work, how we invest in individuals and infrastructure, how we shape our cities and regions--and shows the ways in which these forces, when combined, will spur a fresh era of growth and prosperity, define a new geography of progress, and create surprising opportunities for all of us.

This book was originally published in 1976. Two years before publication, the European Community decided it was suffering from a lack of long-term planning and forecasting, and its Council of Ministers called for a study of how to put this right. The project, known as Europe Plus Thirty, involved forty people from almost as many professions and from all the Community countries. It was directed by Wayland Kennet, who wrote this book based on material produced by members of the project team and specially designed to appeal to a general audience. He combined the specialized knowledge of his colleagues with his own experience as an author, politician, and government minister to answer various questions. In the course of this study, almost all aspects of the perceived future in Western Europe are reviewed - demographic as well economic, political as well as technological, climatic as well as agricultural.

Environmentalism and social sciences appear to be in a period of disorientation and perhaps transition. In this innovative collection, leading international thinkers explore the notion that one explanation for the current malaise of the "politics of ecology" is that we increasingly find ourselves negotiating "technonatural" space/times. International contributors map the political ecologies of our technonatural present and indicate possible paths for technonatural futures.

The term "technonatures" is in debt to a long line of environmental cultural theory from Raymond Williams onwards, problematizing the idea that a politics of the environment can be usefully grounded in terms of the rhetoric of defending the pure, the authentic, or an idealized past solely in terms of the ecological or the natural. In using the term "technonatures" as an organizing myth and metaphor for thinking about the politics of nature in contemporary times, this collection seeks to explore one increasingly pronounced dimension of the social natures discussion. Technonatures highlights a growing range of voices considering the claim that we are not only inhabiting diverse social natures but that within such natures our knowledge of our worlds is ever more technologically mediated, produced, enacted, and contested.

Part I of "Mind Set!" lays out the Mindsets Naisbitt uses to help you see the future - to process information and experience and put those insights to use in decision making. Among these Mindsets are: Beware of the trap of the hype of change; The future is embedded in the present; Sequence is the enemy of making connections; Don't get so far ahead of the parade that they don't know you are in it; Change comes from a confluence of changing values and economic necessity; and, Don't add unless you subtract.In Part II of the book, Naisbitt lays out five Pictures of the Future that outline major global shifts that must inform anyone's thinking. The reader applies the precepts of the Attitude Mindsets to mine the insights from these portraits that include: Economics - From Nation State to Economic Domain; Europe - Metamorphosis to Theme Park; The Next Big Thing - there is no next big thing; Culture - a visual culture is taking over the world; and, China - Sports will dominate long before its economy is dominant.

By most estimates, global consumption of natural gas - a cleaner-burning alternative to coal and oil - will double by 2030. However, in North America, Europe, China, and South and East Asia, which are the areas of highest-expected demand, the projected consumption of gas is expected to far outstrip indigenous supplies. Delivering gas from the world's major reserves to the future demand centres will require a major expansion of inter-regional, cross-border gas transport infrastructures. This book investigates the implications of this shift, utilizing historical case studies as well as advanced economic modelling to examine the interplay between economic and political factors in the development of natural gas resources. The contributors aim to shed light on the political challenges which may accompany a shift to a gas-fed world.

This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there's nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure - until, of course, they don't. But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or - weirder still - widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we 'overrate' democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers - George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Diaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others - interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once 'now' has become 'then'.

By most estimates, global consumption of natural gas - a cleaner-burning alternative to coal and oil - will double by 2030. However, in North America, Europe, China, and South and East Asia, which are the areas of highest-expected demand, the projected consumption of gas is expected to far outstrip indigenous supplies. Delivering gas from the world's major reserves to the future demand centres will require a major expansion of inter-regional, cross-border gas transport infrastructures. This book investigates the implications of this shift, utilizing historical case studies as well as advanced economic modelling to examine the interplay between economic and political factors in the development of natural gas resources. The contributors aim to shed light on the political challenges which may accompany a shift to a gas-fed world.

Auguries, oracles, omens ... and software simulation. From antiquity to the electronic age, Predicting the Future examines humankind's obsessive urge to look beyond the present in the hope of controlling events in the days to come. Opening with Stephen Hawking's predictions about the billion year future of the universe, closing with Don Cupitt's insights into the Last Judgement, the book examines both the history of prediction and the ways we set about foretelling the future today. In the past soothsayers, diviners, holy men and astrologers made prophecies on the basis of religious ideology and traditional authority. Today accredited experts predict the future, of the economy, of medicine's place in society, of the entire universe, on the basis of empirical observation and scientific theory. Yet as all the contributors admit, prediction remains an uncertain business even in the computer age, steering a hazardous course between scaremongering and complacency, liable always to be thrown dramatically off course by human unpredictability, catastrophic change, or faulty initial data. The book originates in the sixth annual series of Darwin College Lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1991 under the title 'Predictions'.

This study interprets and interrelates the major political, economic and security developments in Europe - including transatlantic relations - from the end of World War II up until the present time, and looks ahead to how the continent may evolve politically in the future. studies cover only specific aspects, such as the European Union. Destination Europe by contrast weaves all the different strands of European events together into a single overall and up-to-date picture which gives the reader a deeper understanding of the continent and its current and future challenges. security developments - both in the East and in the West - leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Later chapters examine the European Union's reform efforts, enlargement, movement to a single currency and emerging security role; the political and economic changes in central and Eastern Europe, including Russia; the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars that ensued; and NATO's enlargement and search for a new mission. Final chapters deal with forces affecting Europe's future such as terrorism, nationalism, religion, demographic trends and globalization. introductory text for undergraduate students of European politics and European history.

In normal times we go about our lives oblivious to the structures, institutions, processes, and shared values that shape our behaviours. In powerful times like ours, deep structures of love, power, and justice are brought to light. International Futures Forum has been tracking three emergencies: a real emergency (the challenges we face in the world), a conceptual emergency (making sense of the world to take on those challenges), and an existential emergency (how all of this leaves us feeling). It is the existential emergency, the human consequences of living in powerful times, that dominates the scene. Together we need to support individuals, groups, organisations, communities, institutions, human beings in all formations to expand, to develop, and to grow, to rise to the occasion. This booklet proposes 3 steps: Section 1 explores the context of our times and how we can read the landscape more effectively, coming to feel more at home in it. Second 2 focuses on transformative growth, both what we need to develop in ourselves and how we can do so. Section 3 moves to transformative action that will shift our systems and patterns of activity towards our aspirations for the future.

Ravi Menon is the Institute of Policy Studies' 9th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book is an edited collection of his four IPS-Nathan Lectures, delivered in July 2021, and includes highlights of his question-and-answer segments with our virtual audience.Mr Menon examines how Singapore will come under pressure from four tectonic shifts altering the global landscape. Although still relevant, Singapore's guiding ethos of adaptation, meritocracy, and pragmatism may no longer be sufficient. To secure our future, we will need more innovation, inclusion, and inspiration. What does an innovative economy look like? What does it take to create a more inclusive society? What does it mean to be an inspiring nation? How does it all hold together in a refreshed Singapore Synthesis?The IPS-Nathan Lecture series was launched in 2014 as part of the S R Nathan Fellowship for the Study of Singapore. It seeks to advance public understanding and discussion of issues of critical national interest for Singapore.

*The classic New York Times Bestseller* 'Hugely enjoyable...it reads like a novel, a fantasy tale of rags and riches that happens to be true' Sunday Times 'A superb book... Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker' Time 'A fascinating journey into the Wild West of American capitalism' Daily Telegraph __________ In the last years of the millennium, Michael Lewis sets out to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, the billionaire who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics and who now aims to turn the healthcare industry on its head with his latest billion-dollar project. Lewis accompanies Clark on the maiden voyage of his vast yacht and, on the sometimes hazardous journey, takes the reader on the ride of a lifetime through a landscape of geeks and billionaires. Through every brilliant anecdote and funny character sketch, Michael Lewis allows us an inside look at the world of the super-rich, whilst drawing a map of free enterprise in the twenty-first century. __________ From the author of the #1 bestseller THE BIG SHORT and the original business classic LIAR'S POKER comes the definitive 21st-century business story. 'A superb book. . . . Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker.' Time

The received conventional wisdom within the global futurist community is that the future is unknowable. 'Knowing Our Future' outlines a full theory of how knowable the future really is. Using several case studies Lee argues that there are sound theoretical grounds for establishing a science of the future.

Much has been written about millennialism in the U.S. and its European roots. But although it is widely recognized that millennialism is also endemic to Latin America, until now there has been no systematic study of this phenomenon as it has flourished in that part of the world. Frank Graziano here offers the first such study, examining Latin American millennialism from the pre-Columbian period to the present. Organizing his work thematically, he introduces a fascinating array of movements, ideas, and figures from the legendary Aztec culture hero Quetzalcoatl to the contemporary Peruvian rebels of the Shining Path and their messianic leader Abimael Guzman.

In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world's first laboratory-created hamburger. Since then, the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread like wildfire through the media. Meanwhile, cultured meat researchers race against population growth and climate change in an effort to make sustainable protein. Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab-a substance sometimes called "cultured meat"-and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world. Benjamin Wurgaft tells a story that could utterly transform the way we think of animals, the way we relate to farmland, the way we use water, and the way we think about population and our fragile ecosystem's capacity to sustain life. He argues that even if cultured meat does not "succeed," it functions-much like science fiction-as a crucial mirror that we can hold up to our contemporary fleshy dysfunctions.

The Canadian Prairie Ecozone (CPE) is spatially defined by the foothills of Alberta on the west and the boreal forest/parkland interface on the north and the east. As members of the multidisciplinary SCAPE (Study of Cultural Adaptations in the Canadian Prairie Ecozone) Project, the authors have synthesized a comprehensive account of the successive cultural lifeways and social practices of precontact groups that have succeeded one another over time and space in this region over the past 11,000 years.