Showing titles in Future Studies

Gigatrends offers a roadmap for navigating six of the most disruptive trends shaping the future. Humanity stands at the precipice of a remarkable new era in global history filled with both immense opportunities and daunting challenges. Gigatrends examines how six disruptive trends can be harnessed to create new social, economic, and organizational solutions that will usher in the promise of a human-centered future for billions of people.

John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today but the unimaginable machines of the future. Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed and endlessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous.

We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity's clumsy signature. The old distinctions - between natural and artificial, dystopia and utopia, science fiction and science fact - have blurred, losing all meaning. We inhabit an uncanny landscape of our own creation.

After smartphones, smart TVs, smart windows, and other smart products on the horizon, smart cities were the next logical step in trying to create a better, brighter, more sustainable, and economically sound future. A relatively new term, smart cities conjures images of a cooperative, wired, prosperous utopia where citizens of all classes achieve a high quality of life. In this audiobook, we look at the qualities needed for future cities to survive and thrive.

Our ability to think about the future is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. In The Invention of Tomorrow, cognitive scientists Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley argue that its emergence transformed humans from unremarkable primates to creatures that hold the destiny of the planet in their hands. Drawing on their own cutting-edge research, the authors break down the science of foresight, showing us where it comes from, how it works, and how it made our world.

Künstliche Intelligenz ist die Coming Wave, der nächste technologische Sprung, der sich nicht aufhalten lässt. Wir nähern uns einem kritischen Punkt in der Menschheitsgeschichte. Die Künstliche Intelligenz steht noch am Anfang, doch die Welle baut sich auf, und wir sind darauf nicht vorbereitet. Mustafa Suleyman ist Mitbegründer von DeepMind, dem KI-Pionier, der nun Teil von Alphabet ist, dem Google-Mutterkonzern. Er ist der ultimative KI-Insider. Sein Buch zeigt, was auf dem Spiel steht, und fragt, wie wir von den neuen Technologien profitieren können, ohne die Kontrolle zu verlieren.

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.

In Building Tomorrow, Paddy Le Flufy brings together six organizational technologies being developed and implemented by pioneering experts. Each of them fundamentally redesigns a key element of our economic system. Together, they form a holistic vision of a new system–one that can help us avoid the catastrophe looming on the horizon.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard breaks new ground again by bringing together mankind’s urge to upgrade and automate everything - down to human biology itself - with our timeless quest for freedom and happiness.

Today, Elon Musk's SpaceX is building one human-rated reusable spacecraft every week designed to send 100 colonists to Mars on each voyage. With this brilliant plan, SpaceX aims to colonize the Red Planet. This is not science fiction. These ships are in construction every day at a startling pace in order to make humanity a multiplanetary species, beginning this decade. Departing Earth Forever is the first manual written to and for Martian colonists—and for humankind back on the home planet witnessing this single most historic and momentous event in human history.

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.

The 15 years from 2020 to 2035 could be the most turbulent of human history. Revolutions are gathering pace in four overlapping fields of technology: nano, bio, info, and cogno, or NBIC for short. In combination, these NBIC revolutions offer enormous new possibilities - enormous opportunities and enormous risks. Rapid technological change tends to provoke a turbulent social reaction. Old certainties fade. New winners arrive on the scene, flaunting their power and upturning previous networks of relationships.

We seem to be stuck, staring at insurmountable challenges. The pandemic is the opening act for climate change, and we need to get much better at anticipating and preparing for these types of challenges. Simply rebuilding bridges once they fall, or houses once they are swept away, is both expensive and risks human lives. Anticipation and preparation costs more now, but is much less costly over time.

Over the past decade, a small number of companies have changed every aspect of how we live, work and play. These Outpacers have become enormous global businesses, with companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, Meta, Tesla and Apple all totally redefining what a successful organisation looks and feels like. Each chapter in Outpacer focusses on an Outpacer characteristic required for organisational greatness and features examples of what it is and how to achieve it.

AI is a present reality: we live at the threshold of an AI-dominated era. AI is more than a Technology wave. In the 21st century and beyond it is the very core source of power that fuels politics, business, and society: our minds, our work, and our homes. AI also rewrites the rules and forces us to lose no time in rethinking fundamental questions of our humanity. Our human brains will soon be required to adapt at hyper speed to a new paradigm of omnipresent machine intelligence. We all have to deal with both its opportunities and threats in a conscious manner.

Australia's leading social psychologist examines our society today and asks timely and urgent questions about its future. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. Yet, none of our differences—whether based on ethnicity, politics, religion, cultural tastes and preferences, or gender—are nearly as significant as the humanity we share. Amidst our epidemics of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and the impacts of entrenched poverty and ubiquitous technology, The Way We Are examines the major trends that are shaking the foundations of the Australian way of life.

The most contemporary thinkers in the country unite in Imagine to inspire individuals to take positive action right now to impact their future. Each of these gifted minds offers an original essay on what America could and should be like as the new century unfolds.

For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered. When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great.

Wir sind inmitten einer historischen Zeitenwende - weltweit! Wirtschaft, Politik, Gesellschaft. Nichts wird so bleiben, wie es war. Wir stehen vor großen Verwerfungen und dem größten Vermögenstransfer in der Geschichte der Menschheit. Krisen sind aber auch Chancen: Jetzt werden Vermögen auf Generationen gemacht oder vernichtet. Der fünffache Spiegel-Bestsellerautor Marc Friedrich zeigt mit seinem Hörbuch, wie jeder für sich und wir als Menschheit die Krise als einmalige Chance nutzen können.

Since cities emerged 10,000 years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear - cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions.