Watson, R: The Future: 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know

Introduction. POLITICS & POWER: Ubiquitous surveillance; Digital democracy; Cyber and drone warfare; Water wars; Wane of the West. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT: Resource depletion; Beyond fossil fuels; Precision agriculture; Population change; Geo-engineering. THE URGAN LANDSCAPE: Megacities; Local energy networks; Smart cities; Next-generation transport; Extra-legal and feral slums. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE: An internet of things; Quantum and DNA computing; Nanotechnology; Gamification; Artificial Intelligence. HEALTH & WELL BEING: Personalized genomics; Regenerative medicine; Remote monitoring; User-generated medicine; Medical data mining. SOCIAL & ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS: Living alone; Dematerialization; Income polarization; What (and where) is work?; The pursuit of happiness. TOWARDS A POST-HUMAN SOCIETY: Human beings version 2.0; Brain-machine interfaces; Avatar assistants; Uncanny Valley; Transhumanism. SPACE - THE FINAL FRONTIER: Alt.Space & space tourism; Solar energy from space; Moon mining; Space elevators; Alien intelligence. DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS: Mobile radiation; Biohazards & plagues; Nuclear terrorism; Volcanoes & quakes; The sixth mass extinction. UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: The Singularity; Me or we?; Mind modification; Is God back?; Future shock. Glossary. Index.

Richard Watson is an internationally renowned author, speaker, futurist and scenario planner who is best known for his book Future Files and for his graphic representations of future trends. Richard is the founder of www.nowandnext.com a website that publishes the quarterly 'What's Next' report, a monthly newsletter and a daily blog. He is a regular on the conference circuit worldwide and recent speaking clients have included London Business School, Shell and IBM.