Review of Al Gore's Book "The Future"
Al Gore's Take On The Future
Umair Khan
What does future hold for humanity is a question that has been haunting us since the dawn of the conscious beings. It has given rise to the divination in ancient times to the prophecies of the middle ages. It has kindled the imagination of sci-fi writers predicting both Utopian and Dystopian future societies. Recently, systematic studies of understanding future have given rise to professional futurists like Ray Kurzweil, and James Miller, etc. But the answer to the question is still as elusive as ever. Now, Al Gore - former US Vice President turned venture capitalist and media executive - has approached the subject through a different angle. He has identified the factors which, in his opinion, are the prime causes of the changes that will shape our future.
"The Future" is an ambitious book as suggested by the title that Al Gore has chosen for this extensive harangue. He has identified six drivers that are changing our world, i.e. economic globalization resulting in financial integration, digital revolution resulting in information integration, realities of climate change, fast depleting natural resources, ever changing global balance of power, and miraculous advances in life sciences. He discusses both opportunities and threats presented by these drivers of global change and in light of this analysis he recommends a way forward capitalizing on the opportunities and avoiding the threats through systematic handling of these challenges.
Al Gore makes a worryingly convincing case. He argues frankly, and quite successfully, that the world we live in today is going through a period of hyper-change by the technological explosions exploited by the ferocious market forces. However, the governance and monitoring institutions of the state are fast becoming irrelevant as they are a product of relatively slow progress of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His essential argument is that it is difficult for our Ice Age brains to
Umair Khan
What does future hold for humanity is a question that has been haunting us since the dawn of the conscious beings. It has given rise to the divination in ancient times to the prophecies of the middle ages. It has kindled the imagination of sci-fi writers predicting both Utopian and Dystopian future societies. Recently, systematic studies of understanding future have given rise to professional futurists like Ray Kurzweil, and James Miller, etc. But the answer to the question is still as elusive as ever. Now, Al Gore - former US Vice President turned venture capitalist and media executive - has approached the subject through a different angle. He has identified the factors which, in his opinion, are the prime causes of the changes that will shape our future.
"The Future" is an ambitious book as suggested by the title that Al Gore has chosen for this extensive harangue. He has identified six drivers that are changing our world, i.e. economic globalization resulting in financial integration, digital revolution resulting in information integration, realities of climate change, fast depleting natural resources, ever changing global balance of power, and miraculous advances in life sciences. He discusses both opportunities and threats presented by these drivers of global change and in light of this analysis he recommends a way forward capitalizing on the opportunities and avoiding the threats through systematic handling of these challenges.
Al Gore makes a worryingly convincing case. He argues frankly, and quite successfully, that the world we live in today is going through a period of hyper-change by the technological explosions exploited by the ferocious market forces. However, the governance and monitoring institutions of the state are fast becoming irrelevant as they are a product of relatively slow progress of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His essential argument is that it is difficult for our Ice Age brains to