Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance - Hardcover

Ian Goldin And Chris Kutarna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 147293637X ISBN 13: 9781472936370

Publisher: Bloomsbury Information, 2016

Synopsis

The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery. To avoid being torn apart by its stresses, we need to recognize the fact and gain courage and wisdom from the past. Age of Discovery shows how.

Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided. Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing. Scientific discovery is racing forward. But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others and make us all more vulnerable to one another.

Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace. That's why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we re headed.

To make sense of present shocks, we need to step back and recognize: we've been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratized communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement. But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery.

Now is the second Renaissance. We can still flourish if we learn from the first.

About this title

About the Author

Ian Goldin is Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford. He was Vice President of the World Bank and prior to that the Bank's Director of Development Policy. From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and also served as an advisor to President Nelson Mandela. He has been knighted by the French government and is an acclaimed author of 20 books.

Chris Kutarna is a two-time Governor General's Medallist, a Sauvé Fellow and Commonwealth Scholar, and a Fellow of the Oxford Martin School with a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford. A former consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, then entrepreneur, Chris lived in China for several years, speaks Mandarin, and remains a regular op-ed contributor to one of China's top-ranked news magazines. He resides in Oxford, Beijing and Regina.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Information
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 147293637X
• ISBN 13: 9781472936370
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328