Futurewise (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

IntroductionLife in the third millenniumYou cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.W. E. Gladstone 1809-98Either we take hold of the future or the future will take hold of us.The third millennium began with a big party, which rapidly became a huge hangover with the crash in dot-com stocks, the American economic slowdown, corporate scandals, attacks of September 11, Afghan and Iraq wars - and all that followed. It was a vivid example of why we urgently need the big picture, to plot the longer term sweep of future history, or lose focus and direction.We need to be futurewise. That means planning to change tomorrow, future-thinking at every level, taking a broad view to out-plot the opposition. Being futurewise is about more than mere predictions, it's about shaping the future, making history, having contingencies, staying one step ahead. This is an extraordinary time to be alive, at the start of a new millennium. The world is being transformed before our eyes from an emerging industrial revolution and a technological post-war society into something altogether new and different. This millennium will witness the greatest challenges to human survival in human history, and many of them will face us in the early years of its first century. It will also provide us with science and technology beyond our greatest imaginings, and the greatest shift in values for over fifty years.This third edition of Futurewise has been altered very little from the vision of the future first set out in 1998. Many of the things that I expected are already history, such as: the threat of tribalism; the growing protests against globalisation; the progressive impact