Book Picks

Communicating with the Future: How Re-engineering Intentions Will Alter the Master Code of Our Future

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Manufacturer: CGXPublishing
Price:

A business that wants to survive and thrive must do more than simply plan for the future, says Thomas Frey, the DaVinci Institute’s executive director and senior futurist. He advises future-wary businesses everywhere to take personal ownership stakes in creating the future.

Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki

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Author(s): Carolyn Corbin
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (2011)
Binding: Paperback, 258 pages
List Price: $15.99

As society changes, so must leadership practices, says Carolyn Corbin, president of the think tank Center for the 21st Century, in Community Leadership 4.0. She describes the skills that a twenty-first-century leader must have to navigate globalization and nonstop technological change.

Cosmic Conversations: Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality

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Author(s): Stephan Martin
Publisher: New Page Books (2009)
Binding: Paperback, 286 pages
List Price: $16.99

by Stephan Martin. New Page Books. 2010. 287 pages. Paperback. $16.99.

We humans have been trying to understand the cosmos since prehistory and we will keep inquiring well into the future, according to astronomer Stephan Martin. He presents interviews with 20 thinkers, each of whom speaks about the cosmos, but from a spiritual rather than a scientific or materialistic standpoint.

Defusing the Megacity "Bomb"

The Real Population Bomb: Megacities, Global Security & the Map of the Future
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Author(s): P. H. Liotta, James F. Miskel
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc. (2012)
Binding: Hardcover, 264 pages
List Price: $29.95

The most urban growth this century will take place in countries that are least prepared for it, warn defense experts P. H. Liotta and James F. Miskel. The authors foresee serious implications for the whole globe.

Discovering How to See the Future

Knowing our future: The startling case for futurology
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Author(s): Michael Lee
Publisher: Infinite Ideas (2012)
Binding: Paperback, 208 pages
List Price: $24.95

Futurology is about more than foreseeing the future; its goals are to advance the future’s knowability. We can learn much from both the mistakes and the successes of foresight.

Doing Right By Robots

Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series)
Image of Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series)
Author(s):
Publisher: The MIT Press (2011)
Binding: Hardcover, 400 pages
List Price: $45.00

The rise of intelligent robots is inevitable, but we must not rush it, caution this volume’s 27 authors, whose areas of expertise range from philosophy and global affairs to cybernetics and computer programming. The authors call for serious societal discussion into how to ensure that thinking robots will not harm us and that, likewise, we will not misuse them.

Energy Crisis: Solution from Space

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Author(s): Ralph Nansen
Publisher: Collector's Guide Publishing, Inc. (2009)
Binding: Paperback, 208 pages
List Price: $24.95

by Ralph Nansen. Apogee. 2009. 203 pages. $24.95.

An energy source that is nondepletable, available to everyone, environmentally clean, and in a form we can easily use—we have yet to find it on Earth, but it is there for the taking in space, argues space engineer Ralph Nansen. He presents a bold and far-reaching plan to deploy satellites that will capture solar radiation from the sun and beam it to earth for use in generating immense new quantities of electricity.

Energy Crisis: Solution from Space

An energy source that is nondepletable, available to everyone, environmentally clean, and in a form we can easily use—we have yet to find it on Earth, but it is there for the taking in space, argues space engineer Ralph Nansen in Energy Crisis: Solution from Space. He presents a bold and far-reaching plan to deploy satellites that will capture solar radiation from the sun and beam it to earth for use in generating immense new quantities of electricity. Plans for such satellites have been under way since the 1970s, he explains, relating the historical background of America’s space program and technical details of the structures that a hypothetical solar-satellite system would include.

Fight for the Bay: Why a Dark Green Environmental Awakening is Needed to Save the Chesapeake Bay

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Author(s): Howard R. Ernst
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2009)
Binding: Paperback, 164 pages
List Price: $19.95

by Howard R. Ernst. Rowman & Littlefield. 2009. 144 pages. Paperback. $19.95.

Pollution has reduced more than 400 water ecosystems around the world to “dead zones,” notes U.S. Naval Academy political science professor Howard Ernst in Fight for the Bay. For conservationists trying to save these ecosystems, the eastern United States’ Chesapeake Bay serves a cautionary tale.

Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible

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Author(s): Daniel Burrus
Publisher: HarperBusiness (2011)
Binding: Hardcover, 304 pages
List Price: $27.99

Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible by Daniel Burrus with John David Mann. Harper Business. 2011. 268 pages. $27.95.