OUT NOW: the new book from the bestselling authors and hosts of the wildy popular 'The Skeptics Guide to the Universe' __________ Our predictions of the future are a wild fantasy, inextricably linked to our present hopes and fears, biases and ignorance. Whether they be the outlandish leaps predicted in the 1920s, like multi-purpose utility belts with climate control capabilities and planes the size of luxury cruise ships, or the forecasts of the '60s, which didn't anticipate the sexual revolution or women's liberation, the path to the present is littered with failed predictions and incorrect estimations. The best we can do is try to absorb from futurism's checkered past, perhaps learning to do a little better. In The Skeptics' Guide To The Future, Steven Novella and his co-authors build upon the work of futurists of the past by examining what they got right, what they got wrong, and how they came to those conclusions. By exploring the pitfalls of each era, they give their own speculations about the distant future, transformed by unbelievable technology ranging from genetic manipulation to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Applying their trademark skepticism, they carefully extrapolate upon each scientific development, leaving no stone unturned as they lay out a vision for the future of tomorrow. __________

A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth.We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future--to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise--today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository "Safety Case" experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands--or even hundreds of thousands or millions--of years. They are not pop culture "futurists" but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

'David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future' - Bill Gates A user's guide to the future: from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black hole... Every second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future by telling stories about what will happen next. Where is the future, the place where we set those stories? Can we trust our future stories? And what sort of futures do they show us? David Christian, historian and bestselling author of Origin Story, is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. But with Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now. Drawing together science, history and philosophy from a huge range of places and times, Christian explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more. By linking the study of the past much more closely to the study of the future, we can begin to imagine what the world will look like in the next hundred years and consider solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all.

This book features a selection of the published writings and public presentations of Jim Dator. Most of the chapters are directly concerned with futures studies and ideas about the futures. The topic covers many disciplines and subjects. It is also concerned with many different parts of the world, even Mars. In addition, a few of the earlier papers contained here are about more conventional topics in politics and religion. The collection spans a more than 50 year period of thought, reflection, and instruction. In particular, the papers examine six main topics. These include meditations on the very nature of future studies, visions of preferred futures, ideas about alternative futures, and details on future theories and methods. Coverage also considers such specific topics as AI and robots, the environment, food, culture, energy, families, future generations, and more. Overall, these papers help readers gain insight into what it takes to weave together alternative images of the future in useful ways. They also reveal cross-disciplinary patterns in key fields of human endeavor that will help readers better understand trends and emerging issues.

In a world plagued by wicked problems, escaping the win-lose dynamics of zero-sum game approaches is crucial for finding integrated, inclusive solutions to complex issues. In this book, the reader will uncover real-life examples of inclusive leaders that have broken the zero-sum game. From Ivy League colleges to African villages, from the very top of the Catholic Church to anarchist conferences and meetings, inclusive leadership can be applied - and the protagonists will tell you how. As the examples in the book demonstrate, inclusive leadership is not the privilege of a few gifted individuals with extraordinary human qualities. Inclusive leaders are not necessarily charismatic (like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr). The vast majority of inclusive leaders are just regular everyday people. They only differ - and what a difference it makes! - in being able to turn what seem to be zero-sum problems into opportunities for inclusiveness. Including a foreword from Edwin Hollander, a pioneering visionary of inclusive leadership, you will find concrete examples and tools in this book that you can start using from day one (and in your own way) as an inclusive leader.

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** How do we talk to our children about racism? How do we teach children to be antiracist? How are kids at different ages experiencing race? How are racist structures impacting children? How can we inspire our children to avoid our mistakes, to be better, to make the world better? These are the questions Ibram X. Kendi found himself avoiding as he anticipated the birth of his first child. Like most parents or parents-to-be, he felt the reflex to not talk to his child about racism, which he feared would stain her innocence and steal away her joy. But research into the scientific literature, his experiences as a father and reflections on his own difficult experiences as a student ultimately changed his mind. In How to Raise an Antiracist he shows that we must all participate in the effort to raise young people as antiracists. Praise for Ibram X. Kendi: 'One of the pre-eminent intellectuals on race' Owen Jones 'One of the US's most respected scholars of race and history' Guardian Praise for How to Be an Antiracist: 'Transformative and revolutionary' Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility 'The most courageous book to date on the problem of race' New York Times

"An ambitious, intelligent, and very readable guide to understanding our present and our future." —Harry Beckwith, Principal, Beckwith Advertising and Marketing and author of Selling the Invisible

No one can foretell the future. Or can they? There are many who purport to —and they are making a fortune. From meteorologists who give us our daily weather forecasts to investment advisers who project tomorrow's hottest stock, these and numerous other prognosticating professionals are part of a multibillion-dollar industry that's growing every day. No longer merely fortunetellers, they are fortune sellers, offering us a commodity we're more than eager to buy: the future.

In this piercing and provocative exposé, William Sherden, a seasoned consultant and expert on business forecasting, casts an unblinking eye on the booming business of predicting the future, from its major players to the ultimate validity and value of the information they proffer. Debunking false prophecy and analyzing assertions of forecasting skill, Sherden separates fact from fallacy to show us not only how best to use the forecasts we're given, but how to "select the nuggets of valuable future advice from amongst the $200 billion worth of mostly erroneous future predictions put forth each year."

The Fortune Sellers contains in-depth explorations of the seven most prevalent forecasting professions today —meteorology, economics, investments, technology assessment, demography, futurology, and organizational planning. As Sherden uncovers their historical roots and traces their track records, he deftly reveals just how accurate —or inaccurate —their predictions really are. Fascinating historical facts, scores of actual examples, and a wealth of eye-opening statistics illuminate the difference between reliable real-world information and spurious guesswork. In The Fortune Sellers, you'll discover how:

• Anyone who is counting on a weather forecast more than a day or two in advance might just as well flip a coin
• Economics earned its nickname —the "dismal science" —and why it sticks
• Profits from prediction work on Wall Street
• Academia, business, and the media feed our fascination with science fact and fiction and future technology
• Futurists —predictors of societal change —use the infirm foundations of social science to predict everything from utopia to techno-totalitarianism
• Prognosticators failed to predict many milestone events, including the stock market crash of 1929, the recession of the 1980s, and the fall of East Berlin.

An intriguing and utterly fascinating exploration of the methods and the madness of today's growing number of future "experts," The Fortune Sellers is not to be missed —and that's no speculation.

Lean Logic is David Fleming's masterpiece, the product of more than thirty years' work and a testament to the creative brilliance of one of Britain's most important intellectuals. A dictionary unlike any other, it leads readers through Fleming's stimulating exploration of fields as diverse as culture, history, science, art, logic, ethics, myth, economics, and anthropology, being made up of four hundred and four engaging essay-entries covering topics such as Boredom, Community, Debt, Growth, Harmless Lunatics, Land, Lean Thinking, Nanotechnology, Play, Religion, Spirit, Trust, and Utopia. The threads running through every entry are Fleming's deft and original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations-ecological, economic, and cultural- on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences. A society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to. The beauty of the dictionary format is that it allows Fleming to draw connections without detracting from his in-depth exploration of each topic. Each entry carries intriguing links to other entries, inviting the enchanted reader to break free of the imposed order of a conventional book, starting where she will and following the links in the order of her choosing. In combination with Fleming's refreshing writing style and good-natured humor, it also creates a book perfectly suited to dipping in and out. The decades Fleming spent honing his life's work are evident in the lightness and mastery with which Lean Logic draws on an incredible wealth of cultural and historical learning-from Whitman to Whitefield, Dickens to Daly, Kropotkin to Kafka, Keats to Kuhn, Oakeshott to Ostrom, Jung to Jensen, Machiavelli to Mumford, Mauss to Mandelbrot, Leopold to Lakatos, Polanyi to Putnam, Nietzsche to Naess, Keynes to Kumar, Scruton to Shiva, Thoreau to Toynbee, Rabelais to Rogers, Shakespeare to Schumacher, Locke to Lovelock, Homer to Homer-Dixon-in demonstrating that many of the principles it commends have a track-record of success long pre-dating our current society. Fleming acknowledges, with honesty, the challenges ahead, but rather than inducing despair, Lean Logic is rare in its ability to inspire optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our ecology back to health; to rediscover the importance of place and play, of reciprocity and resilience, and of community and culture. ------ Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure could be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has also selected and edited one of the potential pathways through the dictionary to create a second, stand-alone volume, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but presented at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.

Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. His 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur was critical in helping advance the conversation around the Internet, which has now morphed from a tool providing efficiencies and opportunities for consumers and business to a force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world. In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Keen focuses on what we can do about this seemingly intractable situation. Looking to the past to learn how we might change our future, he describes how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which, like its digital counterpart, demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments and altered the business world beyond recognition. Travelling across the globe, from India to Estonia, Germany to Singapore, he investigates the best (and worst) practices in five key areas - regulation, innovation, social responsibility, consumer choice and education - and concludes by examining whether we are seeing the beginning of the end of the America-centric digital world. Powerful, urgent and deeply engaging, How to Fix the Future vividly depicts what we must do if we are to try to preserve human values in an increasingly digital world and what steps we might take as societies and individuals to make the future something we can again look forward to.

• How may we recapture the passion of past human wonders?
• What will be the implications of new, "free agent" working patterns?
• Why will emerging "metamedia" replace the multimedia of the Present Age?
• Can nation states survive in the face of increasing globalization?
• And what will be the characteristics of successful Future Organizations?

In an accessible and droll style, best-selling author Joel Best shines a light on how we navigate these anxious, insecure social times. While most of us still strive for the American Dream-to graduate from college, own a home, work toward early retirement-recent generations have been told that the next generation will not be able to achieve these goals, that things are getting-or are on the verge of getting-worse. In American Nightmares, Best addresses the apprehension that we face every day as we are bombarded with threats that the social institutions we count on are imperiled. Our schools are failing to teach our kids. Healthcare may soon be harder to obtain. We can't bank on our retirement plans. And our homes-still the largest chunk of most people's net worth-may lose much of their value. Our very way of life is being threatened! Or is it? With a steady voice and keen focus, Best examines how a culture develops fears and fantasies and how these visions are created and recreated in every generation. By dismantling current ideas about the future, collective memory, and sociology's marginalization in the public square, Best sheds light on how social problems-and our anxiety about them-are socially constructed.

The international best-selling phenomenon loved by BARACK OBAMA and BILL GATES in a new and updated illustrated edition 'A hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.' BARACK OBAMA 'One of the most important books I've ever read - an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.' BILL GATES *#1 Sunday Times bestseller * instant New York Times bestseller * Observer 'best brainy book of the decade' * #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller * Irish Times bestseller * Audio bestseller * Guardian bestseller * FACTFULNESS: the stress-reducing habit of only having opinions for which there are strong supporting facts. Things aren't as bad as we think. Fact. When asked simple questions about global trends - why the world's population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty - we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, legendary statisticians Hans, Anna and Ola Rosling offer a radical new explanation of why this happens, and reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. But when we let the bad news take on outsize proportions instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world.

The things we do today may make life worse for future generations. But why should we care what happens to people who won't be born until after all of us are gone? Some philosophers have treated this as a question about our moral responsibilities, and have argued that we have duties of beneficence to promote the well-being of our descendants. Rather than focusing exclusively on issues of moral responsibility, Samuel Scheffler considers the broader question of why and how future generations matter to us. Although we lack a developed set of ideas about the value of human continuity, we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our existing values and attachments are a variety of powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This has implications for the way we think about problems like climate change. And it means that some of our strongest reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.

A compelling argument that the Internet of things threatens human rights and security "Sobering and important."-Financial Times, "Best Books of 2020: Technology" The Internet has leapt from human-facing display screens into the material objects all around us. In this so-called Internet of things-connecting everything from cars to cardiac monitors to home appliances-there is no longer a meaningful distinction between physical and virtual worlds. Everything is connected. The social and economic benefits are tremendous, but there is a downside: an outage in cyberspace can result not only in loss of communication but also potentially in loss of life. Control of this infrastructure has become a proxy for political power, since countries can easily reach across borders to disrupt real-world systems. Laura DeNardis argues that the diffusion of the Internet into the physical world radically escalates governance concerns around privacy, discrimination, human safety, democracy, and national security, and she offers new cyber-policy solutions. In her discussion, she makes visible the sinews of power already embedded in our technology and explores how hidden technical governance arrangements will become the constitution of our future.

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.

International Futures: Building and Using Global Models extensively covers one of the most advanced systems for integrated, long-term, global and large-scale forecasting analysis available today, the International Futures (IFs) system. Key elements of a strong, long-term global forecasting system are described, i.e. the formulations for the driving variables in separate major models and the manner in which these separate models are integrated. The heavy use of algorithmic and rule-based elements and the use of elements of control theory is also explained. Furthermore, the IFs system is compared and contrasted with all other major modeling efforts, also outlining the major benefits of the IFs system. Finally, the book provides suggestions on how the development of forecasting systems might most productively proceed in the coming years.

We are now experiencing one of the most significant - but not yet fully understood - revolutions in human life: the dramatic rise in life expectancy. This revolution does not imply, as most people usually think, that we've simply got more years of old age. Rather, it implies the formation of a new period in human life: the Age of Wisdom. When Dr Zvi Lanir reached retirement age, he was ready to admit that he was no longer young, but he did not feel old at all. The Wisdom Years is the product of Lanir investigating this 'hidden age' and finding out how to make the most of it. People who are able to prepare themselves for this new age will be able to enjoy an active, wise and satisfying stage of life, which will enable them to delay their 'old age' to the very end of their life. The Wisdom Years provides a practical, thought-provoking and life-changing read for both people embarking on retirement and younger people who would like to mindfully prepare themselves in advance. Derived from Dr Lanir's lifetime of work experience in identifying mindsets that are no longer helpful, it reveals how to reframe our thought processes so that we can live life based on our 'functional age' rather than our 'chronological age'. The result is a book that carries a unique and inspiring message: life after retirement is to be enjoyed as a new, exciting and uplifting journey of personal evolution.

Everyday Utopia presents an uplifting tour of better ways to live together, own property, have families and raise children, as pioneered by experimental communities throughout the world and across history. The traditional 'nuclear' family home can be a challenging place, but the problem is bigger than that: as a way of organising daily life, it places unfair and unnecessary burdens on women (and men too); it entrenches inequalities, entraps us financially, hinders certain kinds of child development and is in some ways the most fundamental obstacle we face to a fairer society. Also, it doesn't seem to make us very happy. And yet throughout history, and in numerous forward-thinking communities around the world today, great minds and pioneering spirits have sought and often succeeded at alternative ways of living - from the all-female 'beguinages' of medieval Belgium to the matriarchal ecovillages of contemporary Colombia; from the ancient Greek commune founded by Pythagoras, where men and women lived as equals and shared property, to present-day Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra 'alloparents' to help raise children not their own. Some of these experiments burned brightly and briefly; others are living proof of what is possible. One of those startlingly rare books that upends our assumptions and raises our sights, Everyday Utopia gathers these and many more inspiring examples into a radically hopeful vision of how to build more contented and connected societies, as well as a practical guide to what we all can do to live the good life every day.

As his health begins to fail, a historian in the year 2084 sets out to document the irreparable damage climate change has wrought on the planet over the course of his life. He interviews scientists, political leaders and ordinary people all around the world who have suffered its catastrophic effects, from devastating floods and mass droughts to war and famine. In a series of short chapters, we learn that much of New York has been abandoned, 50 million Bangladeshis are refugees and half of the Netherlands is under water. This is all fiction. But it is rooted in scientific fact. Written by a professor of geochemistry, James Lawrence Powell, The 2084 Report accurately chronicles the future we will face if nothing is done to address the climate crisis. A vivid portrait of climate change and its tangible impact on our lives, The 2084 Report is a powerful prophecy and urgent call to action.

Should we welcome the end of humanity? In this blistering book about the history of an idea, one of our leading critics draws on his dazzling range and calls our attention to a seemingly inconceivable topic that is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity's reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Kirsch journeys through literature, philosophy, science, and popular culture, to identify two strands of thinking: Anthropocene antihumanism says that our climate destruction has doomed humanity and we should welcome our extinction, while Transhumanism believes that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will lead to new forms of life superior to humans. Kirsch's introduction of thinkers and writers from Roger Hallam to Jane Bennett, David Benatar to Nick Bostrom, Patricia MacCormack to Ray Kurzweil, Ian McEwan to Richard Powers, will make you see the current moment in a new light. The revolt against humanity has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and it can transform politics and society in profound ways-if it hasn't already.

"A beautiful interweaving of memoir and history, of driving narrative and insightful reflection." - Ken McGoogan, author of Dead Reckoning and Kerouac's Ghost Accessible and entertaining, Road Through Time begins with the story of how anatomically modern humans left Africa to populate the world. She then carries us along the Silk Road in Central Asia, and tells of roads built for war in Persia, the Andes, and the Roman Empire. She sails across the seas, and introduces the first railways, all before plunking us down in the middle of a massive, modern freeway. The book closes with a view from the end of the road, literally and figuratively, asking, can we meet the challenges presented by a mode of travel dependent on hydrocarbons, or will we decline, like so many civilizations that have come before us?