Future Stories

Resumen del libro

'I have long been a fan of David Christian' - Bill GatesA user's guide to the future from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black holeEvery second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future. How do we do this? And how do we, like most living organisms, manage this impossible challenge quite well... at least most of the time?David Christian, historian and bestselling author of Origin Story, is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past.

But with Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now. Drawing together science and history, philosophy and theology from a huge range of places and times, Christian explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more. By linking the study of the past much more closely to the study of the future, we can begin to imagine what the world will look like in the next hundred years and consider solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all.

Biografía del autor

David Christian es profesor del Departamento de Historia en la San Diego State University. Es autor de Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (1990); Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (1997); y A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: Volume I: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire (1998). Por Mapas del tiempo (Crítica, 2005) fue galardonado con el World History Association Annual Book Price en 2005.