A Brief History of the Future
A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
What will planet Earth be like in twenty years? At mid-century? In the year 2100? Prescient and convincing, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future. Never has the world offered more promise for the future and been more fraught with dangers. Attali anticipates an unraveling of American hegemony as transnational corporations sever the ties linking free enterprise to democracy. World tensions will be primed for horrific warfare for resources and dominance. The ultimate question is: Will we leave our children and grandchildren a world that is not only viable but better, or in this nuclear world bequeath to them a planet that will be a living hell? Either way, he warns, the time to act is now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Attali (Millennium), cofounder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, offers his predictions for the 21st century in this clunky futurist fantasy. Positing that "history flows in a single, stubborn, and very particular direction" toward "man's progressive liberation," the author projects that course with surprising results. He predicts that the mercantile order that prevails today will exhaust itself within a generation or so and be replaced by a unified and stateless global market a "super-empire" controlled by an innovative class of selfish "hypernomads." This "super-empire" will lead to extreme imbalances of wealth and poverty that will cause its collapse by 2050 perhaps accompanied by a round of planetary warfare. Humanity will emerge chastened from the wreckage and erect a utopia of "hyperdemocracy" led by a class of "transhumans" a new breed of altruistic "citizens of the world." Attali's utopia relies on illusory historical laws, and his thesis proves more entertaining than plausible.
