What the Future Holds : Insights from Social Science

by Richard N. Cooper and Richard Layard (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262532044
• ISBN10: 0262532042
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. But systematic analysis leads to clearer understanding and wiser decisions. Thinking about the future also makes social scientists focus their research into the past and present more fruitfully, with more attention to key predictors of change. This book considers how we might think intelligently about the future. Taking different methodological approaches, well-known specialists forecast likely future developments and trends in human life. The questions they address include: How many humans will there be? Will there be enough energy? How will climate change affect our lives? What patterns of work will exist? How will government work at the local, national, and world level? Will inflation remain under control? Why have past forecasts been so bad? The book concludes with a discussion of the intellectual and historical context of futurology and a look at the accuracy of predictions that were made for the year 2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(16)
Richard N. Cooper
Richard Layard
The River and the Billiard Ball: History, Innovation, and the Future	17	(12)
Peter Schwartz
The Future of Population	29	(48)
Joel E. Cohen
The Future of Energy from the Perspective of the Social Sciences	77	(46)
Clark C. Abt
Modeling Climate Change Impacts and Their Related Uncertainties	123	(34)
Stephen H. Schneider
The World of Work in the New Millennium	157	(22)
Richard B. Freeman
Threats to Future Effectiveness of Monetary Policy	179	(30)
Benjamin M. Friedman
The Architecture of Government in the Twenty-First Century	209	(24)
Timothy Besley
The Cybernetic Society: Western Future Studies of the 1960s and 1970s and Their Predictions for the Year 2000	233	(28)
Alexander Schmidt-Gernig
Contributors	261	(2)
Index	263