Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World

by David D. Friedman

• ISBN13: 9780521877329
• ISBN10: 0521877326
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Future Imperfect describes and discusses a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work, and play. We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

Author Biography

David D. Friedman is Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, California.

Table of Contents

Prolog

Introduction

Living with change

Privacy and Technology

A world of strong privacy

Information processing: threat or menace? or if information is property, who owns it?

Surveillance tech: the universal panopticon

Doing Business Online

Ecash

Contracts in cyberspace

Watermarks and barbed wire

Reactionary progress - amateur scholars and open source

Intermission: what's a meta phor?

Crime and Control

The future of computer crime

Law enforcement x 2

Biotechnologies

Human reproduction

The more you know...

As gods in the garden

Mind drugs

The Real Science Fiction

The last lethal disease

Very small Legos

Dangerous company

All in your mind

The final frontier

Interesting times

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