The Future Starts Now

Bronwyn Williams – futurist, economist and trend analyst – and Theo Priestley – anti-futurist – agree that futurists don’t predict the future, they change it. The pair insist that no one inevitable future exists. Instead, there are many possible futures that you have the power to shape. To promote and codify that activism, Williams and Priestley offer a diverse collection of essays that provides myriad visions of the future and connects those visions to decisions you must make today. The essayists share the editors’ activist perspective, which makes for compelling and, at times, radical opinions. Readers interested in forming the future – rather than having the future run them over – will embrace many of the ideas herein.

Information Technology

Chris Yiu, executive director of the Technology and Public Policy Team at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, believes new technologies will change the economy as profoundly as the Industrial Revolution changed the 19th-century economy – but faster. Today’s skills, he points out, become obsolete in roughly five years.