Monthly Archives: March 2015

My New Book

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Thought I’d share with you the contents of the new book. Book is now written, but I’m entering a 2 month edit stage. Jumping on a plane tomorrow too with a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick) and Travels in Hyperreality (Umberto Eco). Image above is of my writing desk the past few months and, yes, that is wine – “write drunk, edit sober” 😉

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Preface: Taming the future

1. Society & Culture:
How we came to love our machines more than each other.

2. Media & Communications:
Why instant communication is killing our conversation.

3. Science & Technology:
Is it safe to build a parallel universe in your spare bedroom?

4. Money & Economy:
How invisible money meant we were all mugged by reality.

5. Healthcare & Medicine:
Can we ever acquire a lasting immunity toward loneliness?

6. Planes, Trains & Automobiles:
Where might our self-driving cars eventually take us?

7. Education & Knowledge
What happens to learning when your teacher is an app?

8. Work & Employment:
Why the future might look a lot like The Middle Ages

9. Time Off & Time Out:
Why holidays are happy and retail therapy doesn’t last

10. Home & Family:
Remember when we lived and loved in analogue?

11. Life, Art, War & Death:
The search for (and submission to) something much larger
than ourselves.

12. Conclusions & Suggestions
A simple question that hardly anyone is asking.

Where are you?

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Sorry readers. Become rather focused on the new book. I’m working to have the first draft done by the end of the month, so not much time for anything else. Vaguely normal service will resume in April. I have managed to escape a little. I spent 3 days in Austria where I was involved with a series of innovation workshops for Porsche. Also a breakfast for KPMG and some government work on long-term risks. This was fascinating, although a little frustrating because I can’t talk about it.

It did remind me though of a conversation I had a while ago with a Ministry of Defence guy. We were talking about whether you could tell if you were right or not. For example, if you identify something as being a future issue, but you take steps to offset the risk and it doesn’t happen, were you right or wrong?

Similarly, I think there are a few vulnerabilities (risks) but if I mention them publicaly (in a book say) I might alert someone to an opportunity and something may happen. In this case would I be responsible for making this something happen? I think in a sense yes, which is why I’m keeping quiet.

To end a quote for you, which pretty much sums up what’s being going on with the new book (tittle now agreed but not quite public).

“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.” – Picasso.