The Future in Plain Sight - Softcover

Linden, Eugene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452282993 ISBN 13: 9780452282995

Publisher: Plume, 2002

Synopsis

For more than half a century, our planet has enjoyed a prolonged period of privilege and stability. Recent decades have seen some of the most extraordinary prosperity in all of human history, and we have come to view this as the norm.

But what if instability returned?

And what can we do to prevent that from happening?

In The Future in Plain Sight, author Eugene Linden lays out the nine factors that are symptomatic of instability in today's world. They include overpopulation, the widening gap between rich and poor, the resurgence of infectious disease, and the effects of a changing global climate. Linden explores these and other destabilizing forces and tells us what we can do to plan and prepare for life in an unsettled and unsettling universe.

From crises in the world's financial markets to the breakdown of natural systems that support human life, The Future in Plain Sight is a powerful look at what lies in store for us in the coming decades.

About this title

Review:

"A very important book...provocative...A lucidly written guide to the near future."
--Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Consilience

"May be the most important book of the decade."
--Denver Rocky Mountain News

"A highly interesting look at things, not so much as they will be, but as they might become."
--The Orlando Sentinel

"A novel and interesting way of looking at world events."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Linden brings wide learning, acute judgement, and great imagination to his evaluation of destabilizing forces. His close-grained, evocative descriptions of possible futures in specific places suggest more about where we may actually be headed than any other book I know."
--William Finnegan, author of Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country

From the Author:

In this book I offer a way of thinking about the future
I'm as aware as anyone of the perils of predicting the future. Instead I offer a way of thinking about the future. If some genie popped out of a bottle and offered to answer one question about the future, I would want to know whether it was likely to be more or less stable than the present. Stability is fundamental -- in stable times, societies innovate and prosper; in unstable times people turn inward, innovation and investment contracts and people suffer. Thus if we could know whether the future was likely to be more or less stable than the present, we would know a lot about the future. With that in mind I offer nine clues, all of which connect to deep forces that affect stability. In choosing these clues I eliminated problems or trends that might be addressed through technological innovation or other easy fixes. Then, after trying to show how these clues presage a return to instability, I offer a series of scenarios, thought experiments set in the year 2050, that try to imagine how instability might rework the fabric of life in the coming decades. Finally, I address alternative visions of the future, and offer some humanity might moderate the effects of the coming instability.

About this edition

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0452282993
• ISBN 13: 9780452282995
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304