What will planet Earth be like in 20 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. In this powerful and sometimes terrifying work, Attali analyzes the past and pinpoints nine distinct periods of human history, each with its world center of power and prestige, and predicts what the tenth will bring by the end of this century.
Brief History Of The Future Attali Pdf 12
His work reveals a distinct vision of history and its successive stages, which are simultaneously ideological, technological and geopolitical. Furthermore, his work entails depicting the slow transformation of humanity into an artifact in which man becomes an object to escape death, and the geopolitical evolution toward chaos that accompanies such transformation; meanwhile, man is also waiting for an awakening leading to a new global governance, a sanctification of the essential makeup of mankind, taking into account the interest of future generations, and not letting prostheses invade it.
Since his earliest books, Attali foresaw and announced signals of the future, albeit weak at the time, that later came true: In La parole et l'outil (1976), he announced and described the shift from an energy-based society to an information-based society. In Bruits, in 1977, he announced what would later be the internet, YouTube, and the importance of musical practice; in La nouvelle économie française, in 1978, he discussed the coming emergence of the personal computer, hyper-surveillance and self-surveillance. In Les trois mondes, in 1980, he announced the shift of the centre of power around the Pacific. In L'ordre Cannibale, in 1980, he announced the advent of a prosthetic society, now known as transhumanism. In Histoires du temps, he announced the rapid pace of history and the growing immediacy of relationships. In Amours, he announced the emergence of poly-romantic relationships. In Au propre et au figuré, he announced the break-up of property and its use, and subsequently he invented the concept of the "nomadic object." In Lignes d'horizons, in 1990, he predicted the relative decline of US power. In Brève histoire de l'avenir, he announced a corporate power grab by health data and insurance companies. In L'homme nomade, he described the great movement of populations whose sedentary life was only a temporary stage.
In this section we will briefly sketch some aspects of the epistemological, ontological and political justification of images advancing desired remote possibilities of the future. The notion of plausibility is crucial in this endeavor as it allows us to establish the actual merits and the rightful place of alternative images of tomorrow in the political navigation of social change. Stepping on that, in the next sections we will introduce counterfactual analysis and its practical utility as a tool to elaborate images of desired remote possibilities of the future in a reasonable, coherent and consistent way.
In a second step of arguing the adequacy of counterfactual analysis as a tool for building desired images of remote possibilities we need to establish the compatibility between counterfactuality and anticipatory thinking. We will hereby engage in a brief philosophical discussion as to the potential of counterfactual analysis as a means of prospective sense-making. The process of the realization of a desired remote possibility needs to begin with a consideration of the normative underpinnings of such an image of the future. Then the issue we debate is whether a synthesis between counterfactuality and normative anticipation is possible. Finding a conceptual common ground would provide ample opportunities for exchange of ideas, approaches and results between them.
Delving into the past to conjure what comes next is the focus of a major exhibition at the venerable Paris museum. A broad mix of ancient and contemporary art is promised, with specially commissioned pieces covering pioneers in engineering, science, architecture and the arts. The exhibition's overarching theme originated in a 2006 book of the same name by writer and civil servant Jacques Attali. That volume chronicles the trajectory of humankind from prehistory, ranging over innovations from printing in Belgium to the piston engine in Massachusetts, and extrapolating a technology-dominated future of shifting empires and nomadism.
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