Showing titles in Future Studies

The author of the classic best seller shows how an exciting, new understanding of the nature of the universe has far-reaching implications for how we can better live our everyday lives, improve our communities, and meet the enormous challenges of our time.

Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

The singularity is the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the associated transformation of the human condition. Spoiler alert: That transformation will be profound. Despite the importance of the concept of the singularity, the subject receives nothing like the attention it deserves. This book seeks to dispel the confusion, to untangle the distortions, to highlight practical steps forward, and to attract much more serious attention to the singularity. The future of humanity is at stake.

The rate of change is accelerating, the future is increasingly unpredictable, and we're overwhelmed with mind-boggling complexity. We have less and less time to think, less and less time to get in sync with what's happening. We cannot trust conventional wisdom to guide us. We must resolve many long-standing paradoxes between long or short-term thinking, expedient or ethical choices, the individual or the collective. We must be prepared for whatever emerges.

We are now the largest population in human history: seven and half billion people, rising to nine billion by 2050. Our technologies are evolving exponentially, but spiritually and emotionally, we're not keeping pace. Our appetites are straining the Earth's capacity to sustain us, and our attempts to force it to do so are fuelling a holocaust of other species. Communities across the globe are still locked in ancient cultural conflicts, and while the majority of people are materially more comfortable than ever before, there are global epidemics of depression and anxiety.

Greider explains the dynamics of the global economy in terms of human struggle. As he makes clear, the actions of multinational corporations and finance capitalists are no longer guided by the national interests of their home countries, but by the imperatives of the free market. As the global economy's contradictions multiply and its instabilities deepen, are we doomed to relive the world depression and the rise of violent fascism experienced in the early 20th century?

The crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers marked the fourth systemic transformation of capitalism since the late 18th century. Capitalism was not destroyed by the crisis, but it was irrevocably changed. This provocative audiobook shows how the forces that precipitated the financial meltdown of 2007-2009 are now creating a new and stronger version of the global capitalist system. This system will continue to be led and shaped by the U.S. if its businesses and politicians play their cards well.

Love in the Age of Ecological Apolcalypse addresses an array of relationships in the Last Emergency and how one's relationship with oneself may enrich or impede interactions with all other beings. Drawing upon her deep experience as a life coach, Baker writes of the specific need to understand our key relationships in a society in collapse, and how to navigate through differing levels of acceptance of collapse, trauma, and grief.

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.

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. 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.

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our "digital age" is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialization of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support.

Each year, 10 pioneering scholars are selected as New Generation Thinkers and given the unique opportunity to bring their groundbreaking work to life on radio. New Generation Thinkers have explored the arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond and continue to share ideas, bring people into their world and expand horizons everywhere. To mark 10 years of this incredible scheme, this collection brings together the 100 winners from the past decade.

Within a few years, humans will be able to voyage to Mars. SpaceX is at the forefront of companies already building fleets of spaceships to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America – to the New World. We will settle the red planet, transforming its raw materials into resources and tackling the challenges that await us, creating a new frontier for humankind. Dr Robert Zubrin explains how populous Martian city-states will emerge, producing their own air, water, food, power and more. How they must be beautiful to attract settlers, and what that might look like.

A penetrating look at near-future disruption as truly autonomous vehicles arrive.

Cooperación o extinción es la última novedad del lingüista, filósofo, politólogo Noam Chomsky, también uno de los activistas más influyentes del mundo. En esta ocasión, se trata de una recopilación que nace de un llamado «Encuentro Chomsky» celebrado en Boston y dedicado a las amenazas a la supervivencia planetaria, cuyos tres temas fundamentales son la emergencia climática, la amenaza nuclear y el peligro que entraña el debilitamiento del sistema democrático en todo el mundo.

Man’s sophistication in the techniques of destruction seems hardly to be outdistancing his willingness to destroy himself. Numerous scientists have stated that we are fast approaching a time of such overpopulation that our planet simply won’t be able to produce enough food to feed everyone. That within a very few years — quite possibly in the present decade — millions will starve to death, or be killed in global wars as nations strive to exploit the available food supplies.

In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montfort's approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning; instead, he reports on the work of making the future - the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book.

In The Good Ancestor, leading popular philosopher and best-selling author Roman Krznaric shows just how crucial long-term thinking is, not just for ordinary people but across political, economic, environmental and business worlds. From the personal to the political, Krznaric identifies the flaws of today’s short-term mindset. Drawing on ideas from a wide range of perspectives including neuroscience, cultural history, politics, economics, art and religion, he offers eight key approaches as a road map for the future of long-term thinking and planning.

Machen, verbessern, Menschsein: Argumente gegen den Pessimismus unserer Zeit Die Angst vor dem Klimawandel, wirtschaftlichem Niedergang oder unberechenbaren Technologien beherrscht zu oft unser Denken. Statt mit dem Besten rechnen wir mit dem Schlimmsten und unterschätzen dabei die Kraft, mit der laufend gewaltige Fortschritte gemacht werden. Nicht als Verhängnis, sondern als Möglichkeit erzählt Ullrich Fichtner, einer der renommiertesten Journalisten des Landes, was uns in den kommenden Jahrzehnten erwartet.

Sensational media reports speculate about the "rise of the machines" but fail to see that there's no real intelligence in AI. It is not an all-seeing master, but rather a functional tool that must combine with the intelligence we possess to be effective. With The AI Republic, Terence Tse, Mark Esposito, and Danny Goh have not written a book for coders, but for everyone curious about a future shaped by AI. They demystify this life-changing technology and explain how we can build a shared space where humans and intelligent automation work together.