Future Politics

Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live. Yet it isn't every day you hear from the scientists themselves! Now, award-winning author Jim Al-Khalili and his team of top-notch experts explain how today's earthshaking discoveries will shape our world tomorrow - and beyond. Pull back the curtain on genomics, robotics, AI, the Internet of Things, synthetic biology, transhumanism, interstellar travel, colonization of the solar system, teleportation, and much more.

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.

This Could Be Our Future is about how we got here, and how we change course. While the pursuit of wealth has produced innovation and prosperity, it also established an implicit belief that the right choice in every decision is whichever option makes the most money. The answer isn't to get rid of money; it's to expand our concept of value. By assigning rational value to other values besides money - things like community, purpose, and sustainability - we can refocus our energies to build a society that's generous, fair, and ready for the future.

Our world order is under pressure as never before. From new authoritarian regimes in the US, Turkey and Russia to the imminent breakup of the European Union and a social media awash with intolerance, things look set to fall apart just as abruptly as the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago. How did we get here, and what do we do now? In this searching new exploration of our crisis, Paul Mason argues that at its heart lies an attack on the idea of humanity itself.

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work - essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more - to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The audiobook presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Listeners will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to insightful infographics.

Dickson D. Despommier proposes a visionary yet achievable plan for creating a new, self-sustaining urban landscape. He argues that we can find solutions through the concept of biomimicry: emulating successful strategies found in nature. A better city is possible if we heed the lessons that forests and trees teach about how to store carbon, grow food, collect rainwater, and convert sunlight into energy.

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.

On the brink of a critical moment in human history, this audiobook presents a vision of "planetary stewardship"—a rethinking of our relationship with our planet—and plots a new course for our future. In 2009, scientists identified nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth stable, ranging from biodiversity to ozone. Beyond these boundaries lurk tipping points. In order to stop short of these tipping points, the 2020s must see the fastest economic transition in history. This audiobook demonstrates how societies are reaching positive tipping points that make this transition possible.

An international group of experts confronts challenges to peace and conflict diplomacy—defined as the effort to manage others' conflicts, cope with great power competition, and deal with threats to the state system itself. They consider three potential scenarios for world order where key states decide to go it alone, return to a liberal order, or collaborate on a case-by-case basis to address common problems. These three scenarios are then evaluated through the prism of regional perspectives from around the world and for their potential ramifications for major security threats.

By turns illuminating, infuriating, bewildering, and amusing, Nietzsche's masterwork covers a lot of ground. He rejects most strands of Western thought, especially on the subject of morality, and develops his own theme demanding that individuals embrace their own "will to power" to give life intention and direction. First published in German in 1887, this translation was produced in 1907 by Helen Zimmern, a long-standing acquaintance of Nietzsche.

The near-meltdown of Fukushima, the upheavals in the Middle East, the BP oil rig explosion, and the looming reality of global warming have reminded the president and all U.S. citizens that nothing has more impact on our lives than the supply of and demand for energy. Its procurement dominates our economy and foreign policy more than any other factor. But the "energy question" is more confusing, contentious, and complicated than ever before.

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. But what could you achieve with $1 trillion? You could solve the problem of the pandemic, for one, and eradicate malaria, and maybe cure all disease. You could end global poverty.

Naomi Klein gilt weltweit als eine Führungsfigur des Green New Deal, des Plans zur Rettung unserer Gesellschaft vor den Verwerfungen des Klimawandels. "How to change everything" erklärt einer jungen Leserschaft die Hintergründe des Kampfes gegen die Umweltzerstörung und für eine bessere Gesellschaft. Naomi Klein zeigt, wie die Lage so dramatisch werden konnte, vor welchen Herausforderungen wir jetzt stehen und wo Regierungen jetzt handeln müssen. Anhand vieler Mut machender Beispiele wird dabei deutlich, wie viel gerade junge Menschen bewegen können, wenn sie sich zusammenschließen und engagieren.

Yes, the world faces substantial environmental challenges - climate change, pollution, and extinction. But the surprisingly good news is that we have solutions to these problems. In the past 50 years, a remarkable number of environmental problems have been solved while substantial progress is ongoing on others. The Optimistic Environmentalist chronicles these remarkable success stories. Endangered species - from bald eagles to gray whales - pulled back from the precipice of extinction.

Since the death of bin Laden in 2011, ISIS has risen, al-Qaeda has expanded its reach, and right-wing extremists have surged in the US for the same simple reason: terrorism works. It’s not caused by psychosis or irrationality, as the media often suggests. Instead, it’s terrifyingly logical. Violent acts produce political results. To show why, Walter Laqueur and Christopher Wall explore the history, rationales, and precepts of terrorism, from the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, through the terror campaigns by Irish and Indian nationalists, and to the Nazis and Italian Fascists.

In Analogia, technology historian George Dyson presents a startling look back at the analog age and life before the digital revolution - and an unsettling vision of what comes next.

Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about - innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your wrist. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and journalist Susan Salter Reynolds explore how to bring into being systems that transform human experience and make the world more livable and sustainable.

How would you like to be the center of a massive outpouring of wealth, innovation, success, and prosperity... the force behind a wave of abundance that rolls over your friends, family, and associates? Now you can be! Despite what the pessimists say, we live in an era of exponential growth and abundance. Astonishing new technologies are driving a new world where the unimaginable is being imagined and turned into reality.

Build a more equitable world for your daughter. Today’s generation of feminist dads are raising confident, empowered daughters who believe they can achieve anything. But the world is still profoundly unequal for women and girls, with workplaces built by men for men, massive gender pay gaps, and deeply ingrained gender stereotypes. Dads for Daughters: How Fathers Can Give Their Daughters a Better, Brighter, Fairer Future offers fathers guidance for building a world where their daughters can thrive.

We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how - rather than what - we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity.