Times' Harvest - ISP 3360 and ISP 3340
Winter, 2005

Third Books

Last updated: 1/23/05

Both ISP 3360 and the Attached Directed Study ISP 3340 will have one more book, for a total of three. One question is: should everyone have an individual choice, or should everyone read the same book? While in Creativity last semester, everyone had an individual choice of the third book, I am leaning towards everyone reading the same book here, but voice your opinion in the Forum on the third book. Here are brief description of the books I am considering. If we settle on individual choice, the choices would probably also come from this list.

  1. Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish (2004). I am waiting for my copy to come from Amazon, but if it is as good as it seems, this will probably be my choice. Here is Amazon's description: "Futuring is the art and science of exploring the future. It offers methods and techniques that can help you understand trends, identify opportunities and avoid dangers. Futuring can help you understand possible future developments, make better decisions, develop worthwhile goals, and find the means to achieve them. Futuring is a powerful way to help you and your organization to create a better future. You will learn how far-sighted military planners, trend-watchers in business, and scholars in think tanks developed ways to think scientifically about the future so that leaders in government and business could prepare for the opportunities and risks ahead. Now you, too, can benefit from their discoveries."
  2. 2025: Scenarios of Us and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology by Joseph F. Coates, John B. Mahaffie, Andy Hines (1996). same situation as above, except this would not be my first choice, and I am not quite sure why - perhaps because it is almost ten years old, a long time for a book on the future. Amazon's review: "Coates is a regular feature at World Future Society conferences. Last year I heard him give an 8-part lecture series last year on scenarios of life and business in 2025, and later bought the cassette series. Now he and his colleagues have brought out the book on the subject. It taps the worlds of science, technology, and engineering to look at the thirty year period of 1995 to 2025. Written in the form of a history book in 2025, Coates gives fifteen scenarios which reflect what life will be like in the United States as well as other societies (both affluent and less prosperous). One added feature to *2025* is that at the end of each chapter, Coates lists the "Critical Developments, 1990-2025," plus the "Unrealized Hopes and Fears" of each field he covers."
  3. Release 2.1 by Esther Dyson (1998 but may be a new edition out since this has had several editions). Dyson is well known in Internet technical circles. This book is about what it will be like to live in an online world, personally. She addresses several issues sure to be important for the future: online communities (such as I would like this course to be), intellectual property, online privacy, anonymity, online security, and a design for living. Dyson generally favors individual choice over regulation, on the basis that we will all want different things. While she has a definite point of view, Dyson discusses a wide range of possibilities.
  4. The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman (1999). This is the best book on globalization that I have used, and globalization will most likely be a continuing and evolving aspect of our future. Friedman is the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times, and in that role he has traveled widely and talked to many people. He writes for an audience of non-experts, explaining complex topics and interactions in everyday language. The first half of the book explains the factors driving globalization, while the second half presents that factors that could stall it. Friedman quotes a variety of people, from diplomats and government officials, to cab drivers and fishermen.
  5. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, by Donela Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows ( 2004). The original Limits to Growth was a ground-breaking computer-based study of "the world system" - the interaction of population, prosperity and poverty, development of the third world, natural resources, pollution and the world economy. It was extremely controversial at the time, having both strong supporters, and a variety of attacks, primarily on the grounds that its assumptions were too naive. The present volume is an update, and points out (correctly) that events have shown that the original was more right than wrong. In this course, I will raise this topic as the problem of "the human footprint." The basic idea is that our present lifestyle in the West, if extended to the rest of the world, would lead to disasters one of many possible ways.
  6. Global Futures; Shaping Globalization, edited by Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2000). I have not read this book, which is a series of short contributions on various relatively narrow aspects of globalization, such as governance, development, taxes, marketization, local reform, feminist futures and cities. The contributors are government officials, officers of global corporations and academics. I haven't read this, but the back cover says: "This is the first book to go beyond globalization. Its eminent contributors reject a fatalistic stance in the face of the problems engendered by globalization. They argue that, instead, humanity must seek to shape globalization. In a sequence of tightly argued essays, they suggest a variety of innovative perspectives, changes, policies and institutional reforms that we should strive for in our increasingly inter-connected world. The exciting rage of topics discussed includes global governance and democratization; international finance and reform of the world economy; Third World development; poverty and social exclusion; technology and culture; and the future shape of urban growth. Optimistic and inventionist in tone, this book provides a one-stop overview of thinking about global reform. Bristling with ideas, its new angle on globalization brings together different domains of transformation and different disciplines, looking to a future in which humanity consciously influences, improves and humanizes what may otherwise be seen as an impersonal and destructive juggernaut.
  7. The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making, by Federico Mayor and Jérôme Bindé (2001). This is a book with international credentials, researched and published by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). I have not read this book either, but quoting from the back cover is seems to be on the problem of the human footprint: "Will humanity survive the coming century? Are we threatened by a demographic time-bomb? Will there be food for all? Can we eliminate poverty? Are we, in our cities, heading for a kind of apartheid between the affluent and the socially excluded? Will new information technologies increase the gap between rich and poor - or, on the contrary, open up opportunities for lifelong distance education for all? Are women going to win their legitimate place in society> Is it true that many languages are in danger of extinction? How can we forestall global warming and the onward march of the world's deserts? Will there be wars over access to shrinking supplies of  of water? What are the psopsects of running out of affordable oil and gas, and can we harness solar energy?
  8. The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economy, by Robert Reich (2002). Reich is a well-known professor at Brandeis University and the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. I always thought that he was concerned with how policy could support the great variety of people in the US. The book is about working in the new economy. I have not read it yet, but quoting from the back cover: "'A valuable work... Reich has a talent for mastering economic and social complexities and making them easy for the layperson to graph.' The Wall Street Journal. If you think it's getting harder to make a living and make a life, economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich agrees with you. Americans may be earning more than ever before, but we're paying a steep price: we're working longer and seeing our families less, and our communities are fragmenting. With the clarity and insight that are his hallmarks, Reich delineates what success has come to mean in our time. He demonstrates that although we have more choices as consumers and investors, the choices themselves are undermining the rest of our lives. It is getting harder for people to be confident of what they will be earning next year, or even next month. At the same time, our society is splitting into socially stratified enclaves - the wealthier walled off and gated, the poorer isolated and ignored. Although the trends he discusses are powerful, they are not irreversible, and Reich makes provocative suggestions for how we might create a more balanced society and more satisfying lives. Some of his ideas may surprise you; all should spark a healthy - and essential - national debate. 'Reich writes in ways unusual for an economist; he is self-effacing, witty and more interested in exploring the world's complexities that in uncovering unvarying laws.' The New York Times Book Review." Chapter and Section headings include: The Age of the Terrific Deal, The Spirit of Innovation, The Obsolescence of Loyalty, The End of Employment As We Knew It, Choices, Personal Choice and Public Choice.

There are a few more possibilities that I may add later. Here, at least, are the titles: