It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine: pandemics and predicting the future.
Many books have been published on forecasting the future, and this selection focuses on scientific and social forecasting.
“As a genre, social prophecy assumes a pact between author and reader. The author agrees to let his or her imagination loose in the jungle of trends, developments and crises of the moment. The reader agrees to suspend questions and judgements until the end, picking up insights along the way” - Mark Lilla, New York Times Book Review.
Pandemics
How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness, and Community in Times of Global Crises. PaoloGiordano
The Covid-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time. Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world: why it matters, how it impacts us, how we must react. By expanding his focus to include other forms of contagion - from the environmental crisis to fake news and xenophobia - Giordano shows us not just how the coronavirus crisis got so bad so quickly, but also how we can work together to create change.
The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers. Ali Khan MD
Throughout history, humankind's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million deaths. We ignore this reality most of the time, but when a new threat - Ebola, SARS, Zika - seems imminent, we send our best and bravest doctors to contain it. People like Dr. Ali S. Khan. In his long career as a public health first responder - protected by a thin mask from infected patients, napping under nets to keep out scorpions, making life-and-death decisions on limited, suspect information - Khan has found that rogue microbes will always be a problem, but outbreaks are often caused by people. We make mistakes, politicize emergencies, and, too often, fail to imagine the consequences of our actions. The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others - and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. SoniaShah
Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today.
More than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or re-emerged in new territory during the past fifty years, and ninety percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a disruptive, deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. Shah reports on the pathogens following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers emerging from China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, the slums of Port-au-Prince, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. A deep-dive into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next epidemic might look like - and what we can do to prevent it.
Predicting the future
21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Yuval N Harari
How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children?
Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a thrilling journey through today's most urgent issues. The golden thread running through his exhilarating book is the challenge of maintaining our collective and individual focus in the face of constant and disorienting change. Are we still capable of understanding the world we have created?
Apocalypse How?: Technology and the Threat of Disaster. Oliver Letwin
An urgent and eye-opening examination of how technology is leaving society open to myriad catastrophic threats. As the world becomes better connected and we grow ever more dependent on technology, the risks to our infrastructure are multiplying. Whether it's a hostile state striking the national grid (like Russia did with Ukraine in 2016) or a freak solar storm, our systems have become so interlinked that if one part goes down the rest topple like dominoes. In this groundbreaking book, former government minister Oliver Letwin looks ten years into the future and imagines a UK in which the national grid has collapsed. Reliant on the internet, automated electric cars, voice-over IP, GPS, and the internet of things, law and order would disintegrate. Taking us from high-level government meetings to elderly citizens waiting in vain for their carers, this book is a wake up call for why we should question our unshakeable faith in technology. But it's much more than that: Letwin uses his vast experience in government to outline how businesses and government should respond to catastrophic black swan events that seem distant and implausible - until they occur.
The Big Questions: What is New Zealand's future?
New Zealand is at a crossroads. People are increasingly concerned about where we are headed. Can we improve our appalling statistics on poverty and violence? What about work - will we all be replaced by robots? Will our children (let alone our grandchildren) be able to afford to buy a house? Can we clean up our rivers?
This book looks at many aspects of our lives and our nation. Experts in their fields write about the challenges that face us and the opportunities we have to make changes for the better.
The Day it Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans - And Other Possible Phenomena. MikePearl
If you live on planet Earth, you're probably scared about the future. Terrorism, complicated international relations, global warming, and a raft of other issues make it hard not to be. But how close are we to the end? And what can we expect when we finally reach it? In this hilarious, enlightening and often terrifying book, Pearl gives us a glimpse of the potential end of the world scenarios that could happen sooner than we think - from nuclear war to the end of antibiotics, discovering distant life to the realisation that all cemeteries are full. Weaving together his own research, alongside interviews with scientists and political thinkers, and visiting 'preppers', Pearl investigates how close we really are to the end of the world - and what we can expect when it finally happens.
End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World: Asteroids, Supervolcanoes, Rogue Robots, and More. BryanWalsh
Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race, both those that emerge from nature and those of our own making. He details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves. Guided by Walsh, we follow the asteroid hunters at NASA, and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.
Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It. Marc Goodman
Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flipside. Criminals are often the earliest, and most innovative, adopters of technology and modern times have led to modern crimes. Today's criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank-accounts and wiping out computer servers. It's disturbingly easy to activate baby cam monitors to spy on families, pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt, and thieves are analysing your social media in order to determine the best time for a home invasion. Meanwhile, 3D printers produce AK-47s, terrorists can download the recipe for the Ebola virus, and drug cartels are building drones. This is just the beginning of the tsunami of technological threats coming our way. In Future Crimes, Marc Goodman rips open his database of hundreds of real cases to give us front-row access to these impending perils. Reading like a sci-fi thriller, but based in startling fact, Goodman raises tough questions about the expanding role of technology in our lives. Future Crimes is a call to action for better security measures worldwide, but most importantly, will empower readers to protect themselves against these looming technological threats - before it's too late.
Jobs, Robots & Us: Why the Future of Work in New Zealand is in Our Hands. Kinley Salmon
Could millions of jobs soon be eliminated by artificial intelligence and robots? From driverless cars to digital assistants, it seems the world of work is on the cusp of a technological revolution that is generating hopes and fears alike. But are the robots really knocking at the door? And what does all this mean for New Zealanders? In this far-sighted and lucid book, Kinley Salmon explores the future of work in New Zealand. He interrogates common predictions about a jobless future and explores what might happen to workers in New Zealand as automation becomes more widespread. This book also asks big questions about the power we have to shape technological progress and to influence how robots and artificial intelligence are adopted. It sketches out two bold alternative futures for New Zealand and suggests what it might take, and what we might risk, to pursue each of them. It is time, Salmon argues, to start debating and choosing the future we want for New Zealand.
On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Martin J Rees
Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes - good and bad - are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity's prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow. The future of humanity is bound to the future of science and hinges on how successfully we harness technological advances to address our challenges. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long term. Advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence - if pursued and applied wisely - could empower us to boost the developing and developed world and overcome the threats humanity faces on Earth, from climate change to nuclear war. At the same time, further advances in space science will allow humans to explore the solar system and beyond with robots and AI. But there is no "Plan B" for Earth - no viable alternative within reach if we do not care for our home planet.
The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-first Century. AdamDavidson
Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying, and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson-one of our leading public voices on economic issues - the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfilment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this - an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop-owner's daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers - as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding.
The Universe Next Door: A Journey Through 55 Alternative Realities, Parallel Worlds and Possible Futures. (ed) FrankSwain
It's lucky you're here. But for a series of choices, accidents and coincidences - any of which could have gone otherwise - your life would have been very different. The same goes for reality. We live in just one of many possible worlds - but we can imagine parallel universes in which dinosaurs still rule the Earth, the Russians got to the moon first, everyone's a vegetarian or time itself flows backwards. And that's just for starters. What if the laws of physics were different? What if robots become smarter than us? Or, if every human on the planet simply vanished tomorrow? The answers to these questions aren't just fun to consider, but reveal deep truths about our own universe. Join New Scientist on a thrilling journey through dozens of incredible but perfectly possible alternative realities, thought experiments and counterfactual histories - each shining a surprising and unexpected spotlight on life as we know it.
Unquiet Time: Aotearoa/New Zealand in a Fast-changing World. Colin James
Colin James describes a world in disorder as it rebalances politically, economically and demographically; a technology that is changing the way we live and 'work' and globalising us in new ways; looming environmental limits, climate change and biosecurity and pandemic threats; a need for new thinking; and likely major shocks. This is the habitat tiny Aotearoa/New Zealand must navigate as it goes into the 2020s. Much has changed since the last big social and policy upheaval in the 1980s, in the way this country conducts itself internationally, in its bicultural makeup turning multicultural, in its management and mismanagement of a unique but threatened natural environment, in its economy and in its now unequal society. There are many challenges but also many opportunities in this highly attractive place. Who will we be?
Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes. Richard A Clarke
Warnings is the story of the future of national security, threatening technologies, the U.S. economy, and possibly the fate of civilization.
In Greek mythology Cassandra foresaw calamities but was cursed by the gods to be ignored. Modern-day Cassandras clearly predicted the disasters of Katrina, Fukushima, the Great Recession, the rise of ISIS, the spread of viruses and many more. Like the mythological Cassandra, they were ignored. There are others right now warning of impending disasters, but how do we know which warnings are likely to be right?
Through riveting explorations in a variety of fields, the authors discover a method to separate the accurate Cassandras from the crazy doomsayers. They then investigate the experts who today are warning of future disasters: the threats from artificial intelligence, bio-hacking, pandemics, and more, and whose calls are not being heeded. Clarke's and Eddy's penetrating insights are essential for any person, any business, or any government that doesn't want to be a blind victim of tomorrow's catastrophe.