Thirty Tomorrows


Book Description

"This book is a forecast." Over the next three decades, the aging populations in America, Europe, and Japan will begin to threaten our way of life. The ever-increasing pool of retirees will burden relatively diminished workforces, slowing the pace of growth and straining public and private finances. In stark contrast, the emerging economies---India, Brazil, and China prominent among them---enjoy the benefits of large, youthful, and eager workforces, and will do so for years to come. As seasoned economist Milton Ezrati argues, these demographic differences will set the economic and financial tone for the next three decades or more. But the author argues the future is nonetheless brighter than the media forecasting will have you believe. We can survive---and even thrive---in the face of challenges that force radical change on our workforce. America has the capacity to lead the globe in making needed reforms, including increasing the participation of women in the workplace, creating generally longer working lives, changing what and how economies produce, and much more. Ezrati's book will be a game changer for investors, owners of businesses both big and small, and for anyone else interested in prediction of what the future holds.




21 Tomorrows


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Probable Tomorrows


Book Description

A fascinating look at near-future advances, inventions, products, services, and everyday conveniences that will change how we live and work. Marvin Cetron and Owen Davies explore these changes and the impact they will have on everyday life. For example, by the year 2010: -Personal computers will offer the power of today's supermachines and artificial intelligence. -A telecommunications network will supply the world with services from the contents of the Library of Congress to pornographic videos in Cantonese. -The United States-reversing a decades-old trend-will link its major cities with hig-speed railroads. -Airplanes will be capable of leaping halfway around the world in just two hours. -Consumer goods will be produced at prices so low the poor of tomorrow could live as well as the rich of today. -Scientists will have learned to purge the air of pollution, closing up the Antarctic ozone hole and ending the threat of global warming. -Heavy industries can move into space, so that Earth can recover from our past environmental follies. -Dramatic advances in gene mapping and organ transplants will extend the healthy human life span well beyond the century mark. Science and technology have dominated life in developed countries since the Industrial Revolution. In the twenty-first century, the will change it almost beyond recognition. Probable Tomorrows tells us how.




Scotland's 10 Tomorrows


Book Description

What has happened to Scotland since devolution? Despite record public spending, there are still huge problems in health, education, economic policy and arts. This collection of essays written by prominent writers and commentators lays out the problems and follows these up with possible ways in which to fix them




Technological Unemployment, Basic Income, and Well-being


Book Description

The main novelty of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the entry of robots and Artificial Intelligence into the production process. This phenomenon could potentially generate high levels of unemployment, or even full unemployment, and therefore calls for innovative public policies. This book adopts an agnostic position on the size of the future impact of technological progress on employment but proposes a thought experiment built on a full unemployment scenario, which focuses on the consequences that these policies might have for people’s well-being, with particular reference to the provision of a universal Basic Income (UBI). Relying on some of the principles and models of Behavioral and Happiness Economics, it is argued that implementing a UBI that does not change over time may increase well-being inequality. A policy mix that combines a rising basic income with other measures is therefore recommended. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on economic policy, labor economics, the economics of well-being and happiness, and behavioral economics.




Tomorrow's Manpower Needs


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American Families in Tomorrow's Economy


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Yesterday's Tomorrows


Book Description

2012 was a year of financial crises and ecological disasters, of endings and forebodings. The world did not end on December 21st as the Mayan calendar predicted, but became the stage for new beginnings, utopian communities, protest groups and solidarity movements. The essays in this book form an intertextual space for negotiating meaningful facts and fictions with an aim to understanding the present. Discussions focus on utopia and dystopia from literature and film, not only within the framework of science fiction but also critical theory, gender politics and social sciences. The authors of these essays are international academics whose interest lies in utopian studies and who attended the 13th International Conference of Utopian Studies, “The Shape of Things to Come”, held in Tarragona, Spain, in 2012.




Vintage Tomorrows


Book Description

What would today's technology look like with Victorian-era design and materials? That's the world steampunk envisions: a mad-inventor collection of 21st century-inspired contraptions powered by steam and driven by gears. In this book, futurist Brian David Johnson and cultural historian James Carrott explore steampunk, a cultural movement that's captivated thousands of artists, designers, makers, hackers, and writers throughout the world. Just like today, the late 19th century was an age of rapid technological change, and writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells commented on their time with fantastic stories that jumpstarted science fiction. Through interviews with experts such as William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, James Gleick, and Margaret Atwood, this book looks into steampunk's vision of old-world craftsmen making beautiful hand-tooled gadgets, and what it says about our age of disposable technology. Steampunk is everywhere--as gadget prototypes at Maker Faire, novels, and comic books, paintings and photography, sculptures, fashion design, and music. Discover how this elaborate view of a history that never existed can help us reimagine our future.