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Aftershocks and Opportunities 2 - Navigating the Next Horizon

£6.00 including shipping to UK addresses, £6.00 / US$7.00 / €6.50 plus shipping to non-UK addresses

Aftershocks and Opportunities 2 is a provocative, challenging, and inspiring book in which 37 world-class futurists, analysts, subject matter experts, and strategists explore the issues and opportunities that could arise in our post-pandemic world in a range of fiction and non-fiction chapters.

Authors from as far and wide as the UK, USA, Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Greenland, Kenya, and the UAE explore critical future defining themes including exponential advances in science and technology, societal change, medical breakthroughs, economic volatility, and shifts in geopolitical power. How might these play out, and what impact could they have on our lives?

A wide variety of ideas, scenarios, and possible future paths are covered in a broad mix of topics that range from food sovereignty, retirement, the rise of the crypto economy, China-US relations, and leadership skills, through to physical wellbeing, education, insurance, and urban mobility. Essential reading for anyone shaping political, economic, or business decisions, this book will help individuals plan for a sustainable future and increase their resilience against future risks.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributing author and co-editor

Aftershocks and Opportunities – Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future

£6.00 including shipping to UK addresses, £6.00 / US$7.00 / €6.50 plus shipping to non-UK addresses

This book addresses the question, what are the possibilities for the future in a post-pandemic world? While the world grapples with the Covid-19 crisis, as futurists we know how important it is to also be thinking about the next horizon and beyond. This can help ensure that the decisions we make today do not simply lay the foundation for a new set of problems over the horizon. Equally, understanding the types of future that might emerge post-crisis can help us plan and prepare for those possibilities as we reshape our strategies today. Finally, such future insights might help us spot, train for, and adapt to the new opportunities, risks, and challenges that could arise as a post-pandemic world unfolds.

In response to the need for future perspectives, this book draws on the expertise, insight, ambition, and vision of twenty five future thinkers from around the world. The goal is to provide individuals, leaders, and organizations with foresight, insight, challenge, visionary thinking, and navigational guidance on what lies ahead. The common goal of this group of writers is to provide provocations that will take the public discourse beyond the current debate. The aim is to acknowledge their importance and think about how we can create a safer and more sustainable world beyond reproduction numbers, testing strategies, personal protective equipment, lockdown policies, vaccination, and economic support. As many have said, a crisis is an ideal time to reset our thinking, refocus our strategies and policies, and try new ideas designed to lay the foundation for the next the future and what comes after that. A future that the authors believe can be fairer, more inclusive, more transparent, and more sustainable for all.

The contributions are built around four core themes: Critical shifts – exploring the developments taking place across every aspect of our collective thinking as a result of the pandemic experience; Society and Social Policy – examining the implications and opportunities for the fabric and infrastructure of society  as we look to tackle both the existing persistent challenges and the new ones that have arisen through the crisis; Government and Economy – assessing how governments are and should be grappling with the challenges and consequences of balancing health and economic protection and recovery during and post-pandemic; and Business and Technology – outlining the possible implications, opportunities, and choices for business and our use of technology and exploring how we might solve critical social and organisational questions posed by the pandemic and lay the foundation for the future.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributing author and co-editor

A Very Human Future – Enriching Humanity in a Digitized World

£6.00 including shipping to UK addresses, £6.00 / US$7.00 / €6.50 plus shipping to non-UK addresses

A Very Human Future asks, as society enters the fourth industrial revolution, a major question arises—can we harness intense technological bursts of possibility to bring about a better world? The book illustrates how the evolution of society, cities, people, businesses, industries, nations, and governments are being unexpectedly entangled by exponential technological disruption. This is not a book about technology but an exploration of how we make it serve humanity’s highest needs and ambitions. Each chapter looks at how new ideas enabled by emerging technologies are straining the old social fabric, and proposes radical future scenarios, strategies, and actions to safeguard humanity from harm and enhance opportunity for all. This book is a manifesto for a future that is better than the past.

A Very Human Future rejects an outlook where human beings live a mundane existence while technologies burst with possibility. Rather, we use this book to endorse a proactive approach to the future where technology is designed to benefit humanity purposefully and intentionally. To advocate for a very human future we ask, for example, how do we use technology to overcome gender bias or to impart a meaningful education to new generations? Can artificial intelligence tools make government more trustworthy and help us deal with the impacts of automation replacing humans? What rights should people have when residing in smart cities? The scale of the new technologies requires a protective logic for moving forward, keeping humanity at the centre so that we avoid dehumanizing ourselves and future generations. This book explains that protecting what’s human is the key to retaining our dominance over future technological progress.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributing author

The Future Reinvented - Reimagining Life, Society, and Business

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This book explores the future transformations that could arise from the disruptive technological, scientific, social, and economic developments shaping the decade ahead. The authors offer a range of unique visions of different aspects of a future in which the very tenets of reality are undergoing deep and vital transformations. Through a series of chapters organized into three sections (transformations in life, industries, and business), they present holistic future scenarios that encourage strategic thinking about what lies beyond the hype.

Using a long-term futurist perspective, The Future Reinvented offers glimpses of the future in different business sectors such as legal, automotive, and sales as well as in different areas of everyday life like retirement, education, and health. Audiences will appreciate the vivid imagery which brings to life a number of different “futures,” including workplace scenarios where people work side by side with artificial intelligence or robotic colleagues, can obtain physical enhancements to become smarter, stronger, or more psychologically resilient, or reside in a post-jobs world. The book provides a solid foundation for scenario thinking and planning, identifying signals of change, and interpreting signposts that serve as early warning signs for emerging futures.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributing author

Beyond Genuine Stupidity - Ensuring AI Serves Humanity

£6.00 including shipping to UK addresses, £6.00 / US$7.00 / €6.50 plus shipping to non-UK addresses

Beyond Genuine Stupidity explores critical emerging issues arising from the rapid pace of development in artificial intelligence (AI). The authors argue for a forward-looking and conscious approach to the development and deployment of AI to ensure that it genuinely serves humanity’s best interest. Through a series of articles, they present a compelling case to get beyond the genuine stupidity of narrow, short-term, and alarmist thinking and look at AI from a long-term holistic perspective. The reality is that AI will impact current sectors and jobs—and hopefully enable new ones.

A smart approach requires us to think about and experiment with strategies for adopting and absorbing the impacts of AI—encompassing education systems, reskilling the workforce, unemployment and guaranteed basic incomes, robot taxes, job creation, encouraging new ventures, research and development to enable tomorrow’s industries, and dealing with the mental health impacts. The book explores the potential impacts on sectors ranging from healthcare and automotive, to legal and education. The implications for business itself are also examined from leadership and HR, to sales and business ethics.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributing author

The Future of Business

£6.00 including shipping to UK addresses, £6.00 / US$7.00 / €6.50 plus shipping to non-UK addresses

The Future of Business is aimed at the leaders of today and the pioneers of tomorrow. Our intention is to provide a broad perspective on the key forces, trends, developments, and ideas that could redefine our world over the next two decades. The goal is to highlight how these future factors are shaping the opportunities, challenges, implications, and resulting choices for those driving the future of business. The book draws on the ideas of 62 futurists, future thinkers, and experts in a range of domains from 22 countries on four continents. The Future of Business highlights how—in a world of constant and ever-more fundamental change—those charged with leadership, management, and stewardship of large and small organizations alike are faced with a set of questions many of us never thought we would have to confront.

This book is designed to provide wide-ranging visions of future possibilities and take us on a tour of the forces shaping the political, economic, and social environment. We explore the advances in science and technology that could have the greatest impact on society and drive business disruption. We examine the implications of these for how business will need to evolve and the new industries that could emerge over the next two decades. We highlight key tools, approaches, and ways of thinking about the future that can help organizations embed foresight at the heart of the management model. We conclude with a framework that highlights key choices we face in shaping The Future of Business.

Published by Fast Future Publishing Ltd.

Steve Wells is a contributor and co-editor.