Social forecasting, future studies Books

Book SynopsisA Fortune magazine journalist draws on his expertise and extensive contacts among the companies and scientists at the forefront of artificial intelligence to offer dramatic predictions of AI’s impact over the next decade, from reshaping our economy and the way we work, learn, and create to unknitting our social fabric, jeopardizing our democracy, and fundamentally altering the way we think.Within the next five years, Jeremy Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise, with vastly increased efficiency and productivity. It will restructure the workforce, making AI copilots a must for every knowledge worker. It will revamp education, meaning children around the world can have personal, portable tutors. It will revolutionize health care, making individualized, targeted pharmaceuticals more affordable. It will compel us to reimagine how we make art, compose music, and write and publish books. The potential of generative AI to extend our skills, talents, and creativity as humans is undeniably exciting and promising. But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow. AI will provoke pervasive, disruptive, potentially devastating knock-on effects. Leveraging his unrivaled access to the leaders, scientists, futurists, and others who are making AI a reality, Kahn will argue that if not carefully designed and vigilantly regulated AI will deepen income inequality, depressing wages while imposing winner-take-all markets across much of the economy. AI risks undermining democracy, as truth is overtaken by misinformation, racial bias, and harmful stereotypes. Continuing a process begun by the internet, AI will rewire our brains, likely inhibiting our ability to think critically, to remember, and even to get along with one another—unless we all take decisive action to prevent this from happening. Much as Michael Lewis’s classic The New New Thing offered a prescient, insightful, and eminently readable account of life inside the dot-com bubble, Mastering AI delivers much-needed guidance for anyone eager to understand the AI boom—and what comes next.

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Book SynopsisLarge-scale social changes are taking place in American society, often even without technological change. America's Future examines these transformations. An introduction lays the groundwork for five of the most significant areas where social changes are occurring: population, politics, education, economics, and media. An underlying theme emphasizes what is specifically driving these changes. There are reasons why what is transpiring today is very different than before and what such portends for the future. Our lives are notably changing, though most are unaware how.

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Book SynopsisSeymour W. Itzkoff is one of the world’s leading intelligence researchers. His exciting new book Our Unfinished Biological Revolution offers a bold and highly original new study on the evolution of human intelligence from the origin of life to our times. With the help of evolutionary theory, Itzkoff explains the nature of human intelligence as we know it today. Most importantly, it demonstrates that evolution led to the rise of what intelligence researchers call the general intelligence factor: the human ability to plan ahead and solve problems for which natural selection did not prepare us. The book also argues that humans vary in intelligence (as with all traits shaped by Darwinian evolution), and hence in their propensity to think abstractly and anticipate long-term consequences of their actions. Our Unfinished Biological Revolution explores the social implications of these two factors as they unfold in modern technological societies, in which intelligence plays an increasingly important role. Finally, the book argues that human intelligence may offer our best hope in solving the daunting problems of the present era?including population growth, the exhaustion of natural resources, and the rise of simplistic and devastating ideologies.

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Book SynopsisIn our world of conflict, environmental destruction, cruelty and misery for many, is a new direction needed more than ever? Edwin Jay Sparkes asks 'Where do we go from here?'

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Book SynopsisAn examination to discover a solution for the troubles of our modern age: technical regression.To most people paying attention to the collision between industrial society and the hard limits of a finite planet, it's clear that things are going very, very wrong. We no longer have unlimited time and resources to deal with the crises that define our future, and the options are limited to the tools we have on hand right now.This book is about one very powerful option: deliberate technological regression.Technological regression isn't about going backit's about using the past as a resource to meet the needs of the present. It starts from the recognition that older technologies generally use fewer resources and cost less than modern equivalents, and it embraces the heresy of technological choiceour ability to choose or refuse the technologies pushed by corporate interests.People are already ditching smartphones and going back to dumb phones and land lines and e-book sales are declining while printed books rebound. Clear signs among many that blind faith in progress is faltering and opening up the possibility that the best way forward may well involve going back.A must-read for anyone willing to think the unthinkable and embrace the possibilities of a retro future.

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Book SynopsisThe challenges we face today are growing conspicuously broad in scale and complex in nature. Human Survivability Studies is a new transdisciplinary field born from the growing awareness of the urgent need to tackle the large-scale environmental and social issues at crisis point in the world today. Based at Kyoto University, the recently established Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability is seeking to develop leaders able to challenge global problems on a number of fronts. Each of the twenty chapters in this volume, written by academics from the Graduate School, looks at critical issues facing humanity from a different perspective, discussing new ideas and scientific methods that will form the basis of human survivability. The aim here is to outline the framework behind the ideas, methodology, and practice of this new scientific paradigm that incorporates knowledge from both the social and natural sciences.Table of Contents Figures Tables Photographs Contributors Explanation of the Network Analysis Introduction (Shuichi Kawai and Koichiro Oshima) Part I: The Foundations of Human Survivability Studies Part III: Contemporary Problems and Human Survivability Studies Part IV: Human Survivability Studies in Practice Part V: Human Survivability Studies and Exploring the Future Epilogue (Masakatsu Fujita) Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Ray Kurzweil's New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near, the futurist and entrepreneur describes the Singularity, a likely future utterly different than anything we can imagine. The Singularity is triggered by the tremendous growth of human and computing intelligence that is an almost inevitable outcome of Moore's Law. Since the book's publication, the coming of the Singularity is now eagerly anticipated by many of the leading thinkers in Silicon Valley, from PayPal mastermind Peter Thiel to Google co-founder Larry Page. The formation of the Singularity University, and the huge popularity of the Singularity website kurzweilai.com, speak to the importance of this intellectual movement. But what about the average person? How will the Singularity affect our daily lives-our jobs, our families, and our wealth? Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World focuses on the implications of a future society faced with an abundance of human and artificial intelligence. James D. Miller, an economics professor and popular speaker on the Singularity, reveals how natural selection has been increasing human intelligence over the past few thousand years and speculates on how intelligence enhancements will shape civilization over the next forty years. Miller considers several possible scenarios in this coming singularity: * A merger of man and machine making society fantastically wealthy and nearly immortal * Competition with billions of cheap AIs drive human wages to almost nothing while making investors rich * Businesses rethink investment decisions to take into account an expected future period of intense creative destruction * Inequality drops worldwide as technologies mitigate the cognitive cost of living in impoverished environments * Drugs designed to fight Alzheimer's disease and keep soldiers alert on battlefields have the fortunate side effect of increasing all of their users' IQs, which, in turn, adds a percentage points to worldwide economic growth Singularity Rising offers predictions about the economic implications for a future of widely expanding intelligence and practical career and investment advice on flourishing on the way to the Singularity.Trade Review"Many books are fun and interesting, but Singularity Rising is fun and interesting while focusing on some of the most important pieces of humanity's most important problem." --Luke Muehlhauser, Executive Director, Singularity Institute "The arrow of progress may kick upwards into a booming curve or it may terminate in an existential zero. What it will not do is carry on as before. With great insight and forethought, Miller's Singularity Rising prepares us for the forking paths ahead by teasing out the consequences of an artificial intelligence explosion and by staking red flags on the important technological problems of the next three decades." --Peter Thiel, self-made technology billionaire and co-founder of the Singularity Summit "We've waited too long for a thorough, articulate, general-audience account of modern thinking on exponentially increasing machine intelligence and its risks and rewards for humanity. Miller provides exactly that, and I hope and expect that his book will greatly raise the quality of debate and research in this critical area." --Aubrey de Grey, leading biomedical gerontologist and former AI researcher "How can we be intelligent about superintelligence? Its finessed agility steers its course through the terrain of analytics and into the salty basin of awareness. It is wise. It is a nonpartisan player. It flirts freely with friendliness. Miller understands this, even if his approach is at times jolting. Singularity Rising, by default, turns the reader to question the true value of intelligence and hopefully realize that it must be found in the bosom of its wisdom." --Natasha Vita-More, Chairman, Humanity+; editor, The Transhumanist Reader "There are things in this book that could mess with your head." --Vernor Vinge, computer scientist, Hugo Award-winning author of A Fire Upon the Deep, essayist of "The Coming Technological Singularity"

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Book SynopsisThe book will raise awareness about the dramatic changes we are facing and help the reader to make sense of the future and of the importance to use future scenarios as a tool to make better decisions today. It will also be useful to understand new emerging technologies such as blockchain, AI, robotics, biotechnologies and their possible impacts on society and on our everyday life. Therefore this book can be considered as a complete guide to 2050, able to give the readers the opportunity to immerse themselves in this destination and discover all the most fascinating secrets.

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Book SynopsisYoung People and the Politics of Outrage and Hope brings together contributions from international youth studies experts who ask how young people and institutions are responding to high levels of unemployment, student debt, housing costs that lock many out of home ownership, and the challenge to find meaningful modes of participation in neo-liberal social contexts. Contributors including Henry Giroux, Anita Harris and Judith Bessant, draw on a range of theoretical, methodological and empirical work to identify and debate some of the challenges and opportunities of the politics of outrage and hope that should accompany academic, community and political discussions about the futures that young people will inherit and make. Young People and the Politics of Outrage and Hope is now available in paperback for individual customers.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction Part 1:Neo-Liberal Capitalism and the Politics of Outrage 1 Neoliberal Violence Against Youth in the Age of Orwellian Nightmares  Henry A. Giroux 2 Channelling Hope through Peer to Peer Technology: Education and Participatory Practice  Judith Bessant 3 Performing Dispossession: Young People and the Politics of the Guerrilla Self  Perri Campbell and Luke Howie 4 New Politics: The Anonymous Politics of 4chan, Outrage and the New Public Sphere  Rob Watts 5 Hacking the Future: Youth, Digital Disruption and the Promise of the New  Shane B. Duggan 6 Neo-Liberal Capitalism and the War on Young People: Growing Up with the Illusion of Choice and the Ambivalence of Freedom  Peter Kelly Part 2: Education, Work and the Promise of Hope 7 Making the Hopeful Citizen in Precarious Times  Rosalyn Black 8 Indigenous Young Australians and Pathways to Hope in the Struggle to‘get real’  Chris Hickey and Lyn Harrison 9 Dreams of Ordinariness: The “missing middle” of Youth Aspirations in Sardinia  Giuliana Mandich 10 Beyond Hope and Outrage: Conceptualizing and Harnessing Adversity Capital in Young People  Lucas Walsh 11 The Youth Bulge: Remaking Precarity in Times of Illegitimacy  Emma E. Rowe Part 3: Cultures of Democracy and the Politics of Belonging 12 The Moral Emotions of Youthful Politics and Anti-Politics  Kerry Montero and Judith Bessant 13 Young Muslims and Everyday Political Practice: A DIY Citizenship Approach  Anita Harris and Joshua Roose 14 Young Indonesians and WikiDPR: Between Apathy and Engagement  Michael Hatherell 15 Strategic Space for Progressive Alternatives: Syriza and Democracy in Greece  John Bourdouvalis 16 The Socio-Demographic and Political Contexts and Legacies of the Arab Spring  Ken Roberts 17 Outrageous Disparities: Young Peoples’ Perspectives on Wealth Inequality, Collectivity, and Hope in New York City  Madeline Fox and Brett Stoudt 18 2011 and World Revolutionary Moments: Mapping New Strategies and Alliances in Australian Youth Activism  Freg J Stokes Index

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Book Synopsis“What might the futures of practice be like?” is far from a straightforward question. Emphasising "the" before the word future, implies one future. But futures thinkers have identified a range of futures that people think about. In this book we reflect on possible, probable, and preferable futures in relation to practice and work. Readers are invited to consider how their own engagement in shaping possible futures will support ways of working that they deem preferable, even those they can hardly imagine. Challenging Future Practice Possibilities also examines influences that are maintaining the status quo and others that are pushing interest-driven change. Authors consider the major challenges that practice and practitioners face today such as wicked problems, fears for the future and complex demands and opportunities posed by the digital revolution. A number of examples of future-oriented work directions such as protean careers and artificial intelligence enhancing or even replacing human workforces, are considered along with concerns like the vulnerability of many work situations and workers. In some cases workers and employers alike are unprepared for these challenges, while others see adapting to these situations as yet another pathway of practice futures evolution.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Part 1: Grappling with Practice Futures 1 Exploring Practice in Context  Joy Higgs 2 Thinking the Unthinkable: Challenges of Imagining and Engaging with Unimaginable Practice Futures  Steven Cork and Debbie Horsfall 3 Plausible Practice Futures  Steven Cork and Kristin Alford 4 The Impact of Practice on Wicked Problems and Unpredictable Futures  Peter Goodyear and Lina Markauskaite 5 The Changing Face of Work: Considering Business Models and the Employment Market  Paul Whybrow and Asheley Jones Part 2: Practice and the Common Good 6 Re-claiming Social Purpose and Adding Values to the World around Us  Debbie Horsfall and Joy Higgs 7 Our Place in Society and the Environment: Opportunities and Responsibilities for Professional Practice Futures  Steven Cork 8 Practice Futures for Indigenous Agency: Our Gaps, Our Leaps  Sandy O’Sullivan 9 Changing Work Realities: Creating Socially and Environmentally Responsible Workplaces  Rosemary Leonard and Margot Cairnes 10 Towards Future Practice in Socio-political Contexts  Megan Conway and Joy Higgs Part 3: Pursuing Practice Futures 11 The Place of Agency and Related Capacities in Future Practices  Franziska Trede and Joy Higgs 12 Employability and Career Development Learning through Social Media: Exploring the Potential of LinkedIn  Ruth Bridgstock 13 Re-imagining Practice Structures and Pathways: Starting to Realise Tomorrow’s Practices Today  Joy Higgs and Daniel Radovich 14 Freelancing, Entrepreneurship and Inherent Career Risk: An Exploration in the Creative Industries  Noel Maloney 15 Young People’s Hopes and Fears for the Future  Steven Cork and Jennifer Malbon 16 Facing Recruitment Challenges: Entering Workplace Practices  James Cloutman and Graham Jenkins 17 PhDs and Future Practice  Bernadine Van Gramberg 18 Educational Innovations: Preparing for Future Work  Asheley Jones 19 Otherness in Practice (in the Health Professions)  Janice Orrell and Julie Ash 20 Workplace Innovations and Practice Futures  Thomas Carey, Farhad Dastur and Iryna Karaush Part 4: Reflections 21 Reflections about Work: What Might Be My Future Practice Roles?  Joy Higgs Notes on Contributors

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Book Synopsis“What might the futures of practice be like?” is far from a straightforward question. Emphasising "the" before the word future, implies one future. But futures thinkers have identified a range of futures that people think about. In this book we reflect on possible, probable, and preferable futures in relation to practice and work. Readers are invited to consider how their own engagement in shaping possible futures will support ways of working that they deem preferable, even those they can hardly imagine. Challenging Future Practice Possibilities also examines influences that are maintaining the status quo and others that are pushing interest-driven change. Authors consider the major challenges that practice and practitioners face today such as wicked problems, fears for the future and complex demands and opportunities posed by the digital revolution. A number of examples of future-oriented work directions such as protean careers and artificial intelligence enhancing or even replacing human workforces, are considered along with concerns like the vulnerability of many work situations and workers. In some cases workers and employers alike are unprepared for these challenges, while others see adapting to these situations as yet another pathway of practice futures evolution.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Part 1: Grappling with Practice Futures 1 Exploring Practice in Context  Joy Higgs 2 Thinking the Unthinkable: Challenges of Imagining and Engaging with Unimaginable Practice Futures  Steven Cork and Debbie Horsfall 3 Plausible Practice Futures  Steven Cork and Kristin Alford 4 The Impact of Practice on Wicked Problems and Unpredictable Futures  Peter Goodyear and Lina Markauskaite 5 The Changing Face of Work: Considering Business Models and the Employment Market  Paul Whybrow and Asheley Jones Part 2: Practice and the Common Good 6 Re-claiming Social Purpose and Adding Values to the World around Us  Debbie Horsfall and Joy Higgs 7 Our Place in Society and the Environment: Opportunities and Responsibilities for Professional Practice Futures  Steven Cork 8 Practice Futures for Indigenous Agency: Our Gaps, Our Leaps  Sandy O’Sullivan 9 Changing Work Realities: Creating Socially and Environmentally Responsible Workplaces  Rosemary Leonard and Margot Cairnes 10 Towards Future Practice in Socio-political Contexts  Megan Conway and Joy Higgs Part 3: Pursuing Practice Futures 11 The Place of Agency and Related Capacities in Future Practices  Franziska Trede and Joy Higgs 12 Employability and Career Development Learning through Social Media: Exploring the Potential of LinkedIn  Ruth Bridgstock 13 Re-imagining Practice Structures and Pathways: Starting to Realise Tomorrow’s Practices Today  Joy Higgs and Daniel Radovich 14 Freelancing, Entrepreneurship and Inherent Career Risk: An Exploration in the Creative Industries  Noel Maloney 15 Young People’s Hopes and Fears for the Future  Steven Cork and Jennifer Malbon 16 Facing Recruitment Challenges: Entering Workplace Practices  James Cloutman and Graham Jenkins 17 PhDs and Future Practice  Bernadine Van Gramberg 18 Educational Innovations: Preparing for Future Work  Asheley Jones 19 Otherness in Practice (in the Health Professions)  Janice Orrell and Julie Ash 20 Workplace Innovations and Practice Futures  Thomas Carey, Farhad Dastur and Iryna Karaush Part 4: Reflections 21 Reflections about Work: What Might Be My Future Practice Roles?  Joy Higgs Notes on Contributors

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Book SynopsisYoung People and the Politics of Outrage and Hope brings together contributions from international youth studies experts who ask how young people and institutions are responding to high levels of unemployment, student debt, housing costs that lock many out of home ownership, and the challenge to find meaningful modes of participation in neo-liberal social contexts. Contributors including Henry Giroux, Anita Harris and Judith Bessant, draw on a range of theoretical, methodological and empirical work to identify and debate some of the challenges and opportunities of the politics of outrage and hope that should accompany academic, community and political discussions about the futures that young people will inherit and make. Young People and the Politics of Outrage and Hope is now available in paperback for individual customers.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction Part 1:Neo-Liberal Capitalism and the Politics of Outrage 1 Neoliberal Violence Against Youth in the Age of Orwellian Nightmares  Henry A. Giroux 2 Channelling Hope through Peer to Peer Technology: Education and Participatory Practice  Judith Bessant 3 Performing Dispossession: Young People and the Politics of the Guerrilla Self  Perri Campbell and Luke Howie 4 New Politics: The Anonymous Politics of 4chan, Outrage and the New Public Sphere  Rob Watts 5 Hacking the Future: Youth, Digital Disruption and the Promise of the New  Shane B. Duggan 6 Neo-Liberal Capitalism and the War on Young People: Growing Up with the Illusion of Choice and the Ambivalence of Freedom  Peter Kelly Part 2: Education, Work and the Promise of Hope 7 Making the Hopeful Citizen in Precarious Times  Rosalyn Black 8 Indigenous Young Australians and Pathways to Hope in the Struggle to‘get real’  Chris Hickey and Lyn Harrison 9 Dreams of Ordinariness: The “missing middle” of Youth Aspirations in Sardinia  Giuliana Mandich 10 Beyond Hope and Outrage: Conceptualizing and Harnessing Adversity Capital in Young People  Lucas Walsh 11 The Youth Bulge: Remaking Precarity in Times of Illegitimacy  Emma E. Rowe Part 3: Cultures of Democracy and the Politics of Belonging 12 The Moral Emotions of Youthful Politics and Anti-Politics  Kerry Montero and Judith Bessant 13 Young Muslims and Everyday Political Practice: A DIY Citizenship Approach  Anita Harris and Joshua Roose 14 Young Indonesians and WikiDPR: Between Apathy and Engagement  Michael Hatherell 15 Strategic Space for Progressive Alternatives: Syriza and Democracy in Greece  John Bourdouvalis 16 The Socio-Demographic and Political Contexts and Legacies of the Arab Spring  Ken Roberts 17 Outrageous Disparities: Young Peoples’ Perspectives on Wealth Inequality, Collectivity, and Hope in New York City  Madeline Fox and Brett Stoudt 18 2011 and World Revolutionary Moments: Mapping New Strategies and Alliances in Australian Youth Activism  Freg J Stokes Index

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