Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #756392 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-24
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.24 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Schwartz uses the techniques of scenario planning he presented in The Art of the Long View (1991) to create a new version of what tomorrow's world might look like. Unsurprisingly, it's a mixed picture, where the "potential for progress is enormous, but the potential for disruption is equally great." The futurist and chairman of Global Business Network thinks the long-awaited population bomb will actually be an explosion of the elderly. He sees a "continuing, ongoing flood" of people migrating to better lives in the richer nations, the return of a decades-long economic boom he predicted in a previous book written before the bubble burst, the U.S.'s continued flirtation with unilateral action as the world's only superpower, and major scientific and technological breakthroughs. More ominously, Schwartz claims there will be "no plausible future in which terrorism has been permanently neutralized," no end to the chaos and religious wars among the have-not nations and dire results from the AIDS epidemic. On the plus side, "the biosphere is becoming healthier every year" and the energy we use will be cleaner and more efficient. On the minus, environmental crises and as-yet-unknown diseases are coming. To top it off, there's the eventual collision with a killer asteroid. How accurate are these predictions? "All of them are inevitable," declares Schwartz. He admits, however, that the effects of these major events, especially as they interact and influence each other, are largely unknowable. So ready or not, the future will bring a "world of maximum surprise." Schwartz's predictions are interesting in a speculative way, but, naturally, have limited practical utility.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Info
Text shows how our future is taking shape around us now; and by taking a closer look at the innovations and dynamic forces at work today, we can discern the changes already in motion that will soon define the twenty-first century. Discusses inevitable surprises such as the end of retirement, energy proliferation, the new geopolitics, and the return of the long boom.