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.

This book examines science fiction's theoretical and ontological backgrounds and how science fiction applies to the future of tourism. It recreates and invents the future of tourism in a creative and disruptive manner, reconceptualising tourism through alternative and quantum leap thinking that go beyond the normative or accepted view of tourism. The chapters, focusing on areas such as disruption, sustainability and technology, draw readers into the unknown future of tourism - a future that may be disruptive, dystopian or utopian. The book brings a new theoretical paradigm to the study of tourism in a post COVID-19 world and can be used to explore, frame and even form the future of tourism. It will capture the imagination and inspire readers to address tourism's challenges of tomorrow.

This book examines science fiction's theoretical and ontological backgrounds and how science fiction applies to the future of tourism. It recreates and invents the future of tourism in a creative and disruptive manner, reconceptualising tourism through alternative and quantum leap thinking that go beyond the normative or accepted view of tourism. The chapters, focusing on areas such as disruption, sustainability and technology, draw readers into the unknown future of tourism - a future that may be disruptive, dystopian or utopian. The book brings a new theoretical paradigm to the study of tourism in a post COVID-19 world and can be used to explore, frame and even form the future of tourism. It will capture the imagination and inspire readers to address tourism's challenges of tomorrow.

The first edition of All Tomorrow's Cultures explored the legacy of futures-thinking in anthropology and marked the beginning of a resurgence of interest in anthropological futures. The new edition has been updated to reflect some of the outpouring of work since then, particularly in science and technology studies and in anthropological analyses of indigenous futures. In addition, Collins has updated the final chapter to expand the field of anthropological possibility in an age of both despair and hope.

The first edition of All Tomorrow's Cultures explored the legacy of futures-thinking in anthropology and marked the beginning of a resurgence of interest in anthropological futures. The new edition has been updated to reflect some of the outpouring of work since then, particularly in science and technology studies and in anthropological analyses of indigenous futures. In addition, Collins has updated the final chapter to expand the field of anthropological possibility in an age of both despair and hope.

Mark Stevenson has been to the future a few years ahead of the rest of us - and reckons it has a lot going for it. His voyage of discovery takes him to Oxford to meet Transhumanists (they intend to live forever), to Boston where he confronts a robot with mood swings, to an underwater cabinet meeting in the Indian Ocean, and Australia to question the Outback's smartest farmer. He clambers around space planes in the Mojave desert, gets to grips with the potential of nanotechnology, delves deep into the possibilities of biotech, sees an energy renaissance on a printer, a revolution in communications, has his genome profiled, and glimpses the next stage of human evolution ... and tries to make sense of what's in store. Insightful and often very funny, An Optimist's Tour of the Future is a book that tracks one curious man's journey to find out what's in store.

This book presents a series of possible future scenarios in wildlife and animal tourism by combining critical thinking and imagination to stimulate reflection and ways forward. The future of wildlife tourism faces uncertainties that revolve around many factors, including climate change, mass wildlife extinction, human population growth, deforestation, sustainability and ethical assumptions. For wildlife tourism to meet these challenges, new ways of thinking are necessary. The chapters in this volume focus on future wildlife tourism development and management; the experiential value, educational components and ethical relevance of tourism-animal encounters; and the technology applied to wildlife tourism. They offer critically-imagined futures in order to encourage readers to reflect on the possibility of shaping a better future. The book will appeal to researchers, students and practitioners in wildlife tourism, environmental studies, sustainability and conservation.

This book presents a series of possible future scenarios in wildlife and animal tourism by combining critical thinking and imagination to stimulate reflection and ways forward. The future of wildlife tourism faces uncertainties that revolve around many factors, including climate change, mass wildlife extinction, human population growth, deforestation, sustainability and ethical assumptions. For wildlife tourism to meet these challenges, new ways of thinking are necessary. The chapters in this volume focus on future wildlife tourism development and management; the experiential value, educational components and ethical relevance of tourism-animal encounters; and the technology applied to wildlife tourism. They offer critically-imagined futures in order to encourage readers to reflect on the possibility of shaping a better future. The book will appeal to researchers, students and practitioners in wildlife tourism, environmental studies, sustainability and conservation.

This book explores the relationship between space tourism and the discourse in sustainability and futures research. It offers comprehensive information on the current understanding of the space tourism industry and assesses the possible impacts of space tourism on the environment, economics, legislation and society. The volume aims to encourage more dialogue and critical examinations of aspects of space tourism related to future sustainability. From data gathered from empirical research, it provides a vision for the future of sustainable space tourism. It will be of interest to students and researchers in tourism, sustainability and futures studies, as well as individual space tourist 'hopefuls', space tourism industry operators and tourism policy regulators.

This book explores the relationship between space tourism and the discourse in sustainability and futures research. It offers comprehensive information on the current understanding of the space tourism industry and assesses the possible impacts of space tourism on the environment, economics, legislation and society. The volume aims to encourage more dialogue and critical examinations of aspects of space tourism related to future sustainability. From data gathered from empirical research, it provides a vision for the future of sustainable space tourism. It will be of interest to students and researchers in tourism, sustainability and futures studies, as well as individual space tourist 'hopefuls', space tourism industry operators and tourism policy regulators.

Decision-makers at all levels are being confronted with novel complexities and uncertainties and face long-term challenges which require foresight about long-term future prospects, assumptions, and strategies. This book explores how foresight studies can be systematically undertaken and used in this context. It explicates why and how methods like horizon scanning, scenario planning, and roadmapping should be applied when dealing with high levels of uncertainty. The scope of the book moves beyond "narrow" technology foresight, towards addressing systemic interrelations between social, technological, economic, environmental, and political systems. Applications of foresight tools to such fields as energy, cities, health, transportation, education, and sustainability are considered as well as enabling technologies including nano-, bio-, and information technologies and cognitive sciences. The approaches will be illustrated with specific actual cases.

A prospective future of ecological and economic crises poses a challenge to the utopian imaginary, to conceive a better world, and alternative future. Utopia as Method does not construe utopia as a goal or blueprint, but as a holistic, reflexive method for developing what those possible futures might be. It begins by treating utopia as the quest for grace, through a hermeneutics that recovers the utopian meaning in our culture, explored through colour and music. Moving from the existential to the social, it draws on H. G. Wells's claim that the creation of utopias is the distinctive and proper method of sociology, and on the tentative reappearance of utopia in contemporary social theory. It proposes a constructive method, the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. This fusion of explicitly normative social theory and analytic critique rehabilitates utopia as an integral part of sociology, and offers a means of collective engagement in shaping a better tomorrow.

Born in the first year of the 20th century, it is fitting that Margaret Mead should have been one of the first anthropologists to use anthropological analysis to study the future course of human civilization. This volume collects, for the first time, her writings on the future of humanity and how humans can shape that future through purposeful action. For Mead, the study of the future was born out of her lifelong interest in processes of change. Many of these papers were originally published as conference proceedings or in limited-circulation journals, testimony before government bodies and chapters in works edited by others. They show Mead's wisdom, prescience and concern for the future of humanity.

In April 2010 Europe was shocked by the Greek financial turmoil. At that time, the global financial crisis, which started in the summer of 2007 and reached systemic dimensions in September 2008 with the Lehman Brothers' crash, took a new course. An adverse feedback loop between sovereign and bank risks reflected into bubble-like spreads, as if financial markets had received a wake-up call concerning the disregarded structural vulnerability of economies at risk. These events inspired the SYRTO project to "think and rethink" the economic and financial system and to conceive it as an "ensemble" of Sovereigns and Banks with other Financial Intermediaries and Corporations. Systemic Risk Tomography: Signals, Measurement and Transmission Channels proposes a novel way to explore the financial system by sectioning each part of it and analyzing all relevant inter-relationships. The financial system is inspected as a biological entity to identify the main risk signals and to provide the correct measures of prevention and intervention.

While students and general readers typically cannot relate to esoteric definitions of science fiction, they readily understand the genre as a literature that characteristically deals with subjects such as new inventions, space, robot and aliens. This book looks at science fiction in precisely this manner, with twenty-one chapters that each deal with a subject that is repeatedly addressed in science fiction of recent centuries. Based on a packet of original essays that the author assembled for his classes, the book could serve as a supplemental textbook in science fiction classes, but also contains material of interest to science fiction scholars and others devoted to the genre. In some cases, chapters offer thorough surveys of numerous works involving certain subjects, such as imagined vehicles, journeys beneath the Earth and undersea adventures, discovering intriguing patterns in the ways that various writers developed their ideas. When comprehensive coverage of ubiquitous topics such as robots, aliens and the planet Mars is impossible, chapters focus on major themes referencing selected texts. A conclusion discusses other science fiction subjects that were omitted for various reasons, and a bibliography lists additional resources for the study of science fiction in general and the topics of each chapter.

This is the candid and often colourful account of the personal experiences of a resource analyst; experiences that led to major contributions in the modelling and forecasting of petroleum discovery rates and of potential oil and gas supply. The author's approach is largely nontechnical. He relates the difficulties encountered in integrating geoscience, economics, and statistics, and stresses the value of critically examining data before formulating theories or building formal models.

This book offers a critical account of the historical evolution of tourism through the identification and discussion of key turning points. Based on these considerations, future turning points are identified and evaluated. The volume provides a continuum between the past and future of tourism. Its central themes are the globalisation of tourism; the development of destinations; the importance of mobility and transport; the development of the modern hotel; the diversification of niche tourism and the conceptualisation of the past and future of tourism using the evolutionary paradigm in future studies. The core findings of the book provide the first perspective on how the history of tourism will shape its future.

__________ If you live on planet Earth, you're probably scared about the future. Terrorism, complicated international relations, global warming, killer viruses and a raft of other issues make it hard not to be. Watching the news you have to wonder: is it safe to go out there or not? In The Day It Finally Happens, Mike Pearl games out many of the 'could it really happen?' scenarios we've all speculated about, assigning a probability rating, and taking us through how it would unfold. He explores what would likely occur in dozens of possible scenarios - the final failure of antibiotics, the loss of the world's marine life, the abolition of the British monarchy, and even the arrival of aliens - and reports back from the future, providing a clear picture on how the world would look, feel, and even smell in each of these instances. Hilarious, enlightening, and terrifying, this book makes science accessible and is a unique form of existential therapy, offering practical answers to some of our most worrisome questions. Thankfully, the odds of humanity pulling through look pretty good. __________ For fans of such bestsellers as What If?,The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Uninhabitable Earth, as well as Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell, this is a book about future events that we don't really understand and getting to know them in close detail. Entertaining speculation featuring both authoritative research and a bit of mischief: a look at how humanity is likely to weather such happenings as the day nuclear war occurs, the day the global internet goes down, the day we run out of effective antibiotics, and the day immortality is achieved.

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.

Futures studies is a new field of inquiry involving systematic and explicit thinking about alternative futures. It aims to demystify the future, make possibilities for the future more known to us, and increase human control over the future. This book summarizes and expands contributions of futurists to the envisioning power and well-being of humanity. Bell brings together futurist intellectual tools, describing and explaining not only the methods, but also the nature, concepts, theories, and exemplars of the field.

"Foundations of Futures Studies "fulfills Bell's five main purposes for writing this two-volume effort: (1) to show that futures studies, like other fields from anthropology to zoology, exists as an identifiable sphere of intellectual activity; (2) to create a teaching instrument that can be used as a basic text for core courses in futures studies; (3) to futurize the thinking of specialists in other disciplines; (4) to contribute to the further development and improvement of futures studies; and (5) to provide tools to empower both ordinary people and leaders to act in ways that create better futures for themselves and their societies. Bell maintains that despite its sometimes doomsday rhetorical style and widespread use by special interests, futures studies offers hope for the future of humanity and concrete ways of realizing that hope in the real world of our everyday lives. It will appeal to all interested in futures studies, as well as sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians.

Europe has to come to terms with its increasing cultural diversity. In current debate migration is typically presented merely as a social burden. This book envisions a future in which 'native' Europeans and those with a migrant background - together the New Europeans - come to the conclusion that they should build a new society jointly. An inclusive European society can be generated by launching a common project as an alternative to neoliberalism, developing an economy that is at the service of society. For this, democratic ownership should be the lever. In that process, migrants will be important and resilient catalysts. The book sets out a roadmap for what the future could look like, presenting a vision of Europe at the end of the 21st century as a 'real Utopia'. This book bucks the trend of depressing accounts on migration from outside Europe. It offers a promissory narrative for the continent's long-term future. Drawing on political, sociological, economic and philosophical insights, the author sticks his neck out, provokes perhaps, but always with the invitation for a constructive dialogue.

Featuring chapters from an international range of leading and emerging scholars, this Handbook provides a collection of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research that sheds new light on contemporary futures studies. Engaging with key defining questions of the early twenty-first century such as climate change, big data, AI, the future of economics, education, mental health, cities and more, the Handbook provides a review and synthesis of futures scholarship, highlighting the role that societies can and should play in their making. While the various chapters demonstrate how futures emerge and take shape in particular places at particular times, the distinctive insight provided by the volume overall is that futures thinking today must be social and contextual. By presenting a range of futures work from contexts around the globe, the Handbook contextualizes techniques - forecasting, backcasting, scenario planning, collaboration and co-production- to ask how different dimensions of the social are created and circulated in the process. Through its thirty chapters, the volume explores and interrogates narratives, anticipations, enactments, ecologies, collaborations, prospections and so on to highlight which versions of the social are legitimized and which are encouraged and foreclosed. This Handbook opens an important conversation about the centrality of the social in futures thinking. By bringing arts, humanities and social sciences scholars and practitioners into conversation with biologists, environmental, climate and computer scientists, this volume seeks to encourage new pathways across, between and within multiple disciplines to interrogate the futures we need and want. The social must be our starting point if we are to steer our planet in a direction that supports good lives for the many, everywhere.

This book considers the philosophical underpinnings, policy foundations, institutional innovations, and deep cultural changes needed to ensure that humanity has the best chance of surviving and flourishing into the very distant future. Anticipation of threats to the sustainability of human civilization needs to encompass time periods that span not just decades but millennia. All existential risks need to be jointly assessed, as opposed to addressing risks such as climate change and pandemics separately. Exploring the potential events that are likely to cause the biggest risks as well as asking why we should even desire to thrive into the distant future, this work looks at the 'biggest picture possible' in order to argue that futures-oriented decision-making ought to be a permanent aspect of human society and futures-oriented policy making must take precedent over the day-to-day policy making of current generations in times of great peril. The book concludes with a discourse on the truly fundamental bottom-up changes needed in our personal psychologies and culture to support these top-down recommendations. This book is of great interest to philosophers, policy analysts, political scientists, economists, psychologists, planners, and theologians.

Speculative modernists-that is, British and American writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-successfully grappled with the same forces that would drive their better-known literary counterparts to existential despair. Building on the ideas of the 19th-century Gothic and utopian movements, these speculative writers anticipated literary Modernism and blazed alternative literary trails in science, religion, ecology and sociology. Such authors as H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft gained widespread recognition-budding from them, other speculative authors published fascinating tales of individuals trapped in dystopias, of anti-society attitudes, post-apocalyptic worlds and the rapidly expanding knowledge of the limitless universe. This book documents the Gothic and utopian roots of speculative fiction and explores how these authors played a crucial role in shaping the culture of the new century with their darker, more evolved themes.

In a time of great gloom and doom internationally and of major global problems, this book offers an invaluable contribution to our understanding of alternative societies that could be better for humans and the environment. Bringing together a wide range of approaches and new strands of economic and social thinking from across the US, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Luke Martell critically assesses contemporary alternatives and shows the ways forward with a convincing argument of pluralist socialism. Presenting a much-needed introduction to the debate on alternatives to capitalism, this ambitious book is not about how things are, but how they can be!