Futureproof your business, career and family with these invaluable insights. This is an essential compendium of trends for anyone who is anxious or excited about thriving in the uncertain decade ahead. Along with accompanying actionable insights to pre-empt and solve the challenges and problems they represent to the serious South African with business, career and family interests to look after, it's a must-have.

Look around you – is anything real or normal any more? News, images and videos created by AI are everywhere. The world we live in is changing daily, and it’s no exaggeration to say that everything you thought you knew is undergoing apocalyptic levels of change. Our new normal includes AI CEOs, AI partners, AI versions of our dead relatives to keep us company, and customers deploying their own adversarial agent ‘armies’ to hostile-negotiate on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the expensive skills you have accumulated, the jobs you’ve fought for, the relationships you’ve invested in, the organisations you’ve worked for and the economies we depend on for survival are shrinking even as our choices expand.

Discernment and understanding of context are now critical to your survival. So, let’s stare the future down and, instead of fearing AI, become solutionists. In order to survive in this hypercompetitive, globalised and automated world, where the strongest and smartest winners are set to take all, we need to change our mindsets and our skill sets to become fit for the ‘post-AI, apocalyptic’ world that is here to stay. This means embracing progress and turning AI and technology into an asset with which we can co-exist, while continuing to create new possibilities far into the future.

This book is a call to action to live on the flipside of fear.

South Africa stands at the edge of a precipice. Almost thirty years after its first democratic election, poor policy and rampant corruption have left the country standing on the brink of becoming a failed state. In this thought-provoking book, Bronwyn Williams interviews a diverse group of public intellectuals, business leaders, and political mavericks to discuss tangible ways South Africa can rescue itself from itself. Through a series of illuminating conversations, a group of independent thinkers explore the root causes of South Africa’s problems and offer insightful – and radical – ways of how to solve them.

From addressing land reform and economic development to rooting out corruption and overhauling political institutions, the conversations in this book come together as a roadmap towards a better South Africa that leaves no one behind. While the challenges facing the young democracy are immense, these experts provide hope and inspiration towards productive actions we can take together to build a brighter future.

For anyone interested in understanding the complex issues facing South Africa today and how they can be addressed, Rescuing Our Republic is essential reading. It is a powerful reminder that the fate of a nation is not predetermined; that individuals, citizens and corporations still have powerful agency and that when that agency is directed towards the right ideas and actions, South Africa can still realise its full potential.

LIST OF INTERVIEWEES:

• Why nations succeed with Dr Adrian Saville
• Measuring what matters with Malcolm Ray
• The promise of Africa beyond borders with Dr Débísí Àràbà
• An antidote to the tragedy of the commons with Wandile Sihlobo
• Property is a big deal with Lars Doucet
• Democratisation of ownership with Charles Savage
• The economic importance of optimism with Bruce Whitfield
• Good neighbours with Giulietta Talevi
• The perpetual struggle for democracy with Justice Malala
• A new vision for South Africa with Songezo Zibi
• Beyond the Constitution with TK Pooe

Movies are filled with scenes of people of all ages, sexes, races, and social classes reading and writing in widely varied contexts and purposes. Yet these scenes go largely unnoticed, despite the fact that these images recreate and reinforce pervasive concepts and perceptions of literacy. This book addresses how everyday literacy practices are represented in popular culture, specifically in mainstream, widely-distributed contemporary movies. If we watch films carefully for who reads and writes, in what settings, and for what social goals, we can see a reflection of the dominant functions and perceptions that shape our conceptions of literacy in our culture. Such perceptions influence public and political debates about literacy instruction, teachers' expectations of what will happen in their classrooms, and student's ideas about what reading and writing should be.

How do students' online literacy practices intersect with online popular culture? In this book scholars from a range of countries including Australia, Lebanon, Nepal, Qatar, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States illustrate and analyze how literacy practices that are mediated through and influenced by popular culture create both opportunities and tensions for secondary and university students. The authors examine issues of theory, identity, and pedagogy as they address participatory popular culture sites such as fan forums, video, blogs, social networking sites, anime, memes, and comics and graphic novels. Uniquely bringing together scholarship about online literacy practices and the growing body of work on participatory popular culture, New Media Literacies and Participatory Popular Culture across Borders makes distinctive contributions to an emerging field of study, pushing forward scholarship about literacy and identity in cross-cultural situations and advancing important conversations about issues of global flows and local responses to popular culture.

Movies are filled with scenes of people of all ages, sexes, races, and social classes reading and writing in widely varied contexts and purposes. Yet these scenes go largely unnoticed, despite the fact that these images recreate and reinforce pervasive concepts and perceptions of literacy. This book addresses how everyday literacy practices are represented in popular culture, specifically in mainstream, widely-distributed contemporary movies. If we watch films carefully for who reads and writes, in what settings, and for what social goals, we can see a reflection of the dominant functions and perceptions that shape our conceptions of literacy in our culture. Such perceptions influence public and political debates about literacy instruction, teachers' expectations of what will happen in their classrooms, and student's ideas about what reading and writing should be.

How do students' online literacy practices intersect with online popular culture? In this book scholars from a range of countries including Australia, Lebanon, Nepal, Qatar, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States illustrate and analyze how literacy practices that are mediated through and influenced by popular culture create both opportunities and tensions for secondary and university students. The authors examine issues of theory, identity, and pedagogy as they address participatory popular culture sites such as fan forums, video, blogs, social networking sites, anime, memes, and comics and graphic novels. Uniquely bringing together scholarship about online literacy practices and the growing body of work on participatory popular culture, New Media Literacies and Participatory Popular Culture across Borders makes distinctive contributions to an emerging field of study, pushing forward scholarship about literacy and identity in cross-cultural situations and advancing important conversations about issues of global flows and local responses to popular culture.

The future is an uncertain, uncomfortable prospect for employees, employers and society at large. A flurry of unprecedented events have proven that, despite what some politicians and economists may tell us, the future is not set in stone. Instead, it is constantly being shaped and redefined by the everyday decisions of individuals and organizations.

In light of this uncertainty, The Future Starts Now looks toward the various innovations and technologies that may shape our future. Authors Theo Priestley and Bronwyn Williams have brought together the world's leading futurists to articulate and clarify the current trajectories in technology, economics, politics and business.

This is a comprehensive history of tomorrow, exploring groundbreaking topics such as AI, privacy, education and the future of work. While the guidance, insight and predictions are fascinating for anyone curious about what the future may hold, the book also functions as an invaluable guide for business professionals looking to steer their career or their organization with foresight and confidence.