Trees on Mars
Subtitle: our obsession with the future
By: Hal Niedzviecki
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
ISBN-13: 9781609806378
Subjects: Disruptive technologies; Forecasts; Social prediction; Twenty-first century; Civilization; The Future; Psychological aspects; Social conditions; High technology industries; Technological innovations; Information technology
Other titles: Our obsession with the future
Description: A roller-coaster tour through our obsession with the future - and what's at stake when we neglect our present. Tech bloggers livecast the launch of the latest Kindle, crowds form serpentine lines outside of Apple stores on the eve of new iPhone releases, stock markets surge and recede on rumours of what Intel and Microsoft have in the pipeline, and, on college campuses across the country, universities offer master's degrees in Future Studies. Meet futurist consultants who preach the need for constant change, to a fourth-generation New Jersey dairy farmer grappling with the increasing complexities of a once-bucolic industry, to a group of Stanford undergraduates pulling all-nighters in an effort to produce the next must-have app. Through these characters and others, Niedzviecki shows how future-obsession and future-anxiety are affecting real people. Print run 20,000.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Our lives in the age of tomorrow; title: Chasing tomorrow: dispatches from our obsession with the future; title: Teaching future: why schools are teaching change and preaching tech; title: The group just slows us down: future vs. institution; title: Data harvest: owning the future and everyone in it; title: Our minds in the future; title: After: why our minds are vulnerable to the pull of future; title: Put a spell on me: when the magic became the information; title: The case against the future; title: Consumption, innovation, and the truth of change; title: The human robot: homo economicus in decline; title: Future shock and awe: anxiety factory; title: The end; title: Escape from the permanent future: the problem of hope.