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Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years
 
 
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Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years [Kindle Edition]

Richard Watson (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
Print List Price: £10.99
Kindle Price: £6.72 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Product Description

Review

Cheaper than a crystal ball and twice as fun...Part Jules Verne, part Malcolm Gladwell, Watson has a puckish sense of humor and his book is a thought-provoking, laughter-inducing delight. --Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week 13 October 2008

Woven together brilliantly. --Richard Hytner, Vice Chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide

Provocative, entertaining, full of surprising facts a book to help you decide whether the world is going mad or possibly becoming more intelligent. --Theodore Zeldin author of An Intimate History of Humanity

Review

A detailed investigation into what author Richard Watson believes are the five key trends that will shape our future. There is an amusing "extinction timeline" for the next 50 years, where he nails his colours to the mast in predicting the ideas destined for the scrap-heap

Inspirational read. Take a peek 50 years into the future with this fascinating map of the trends that will change our lives. Mind-blowing predictions are interlaced with fictional letters from the future to better illustrate the effect of these scientific advances on people's lives.
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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1033 KB
  • Print Length: 337 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1857885341
  • Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing (16 Nov 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B004CRSN2E
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #115,123 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Richard Watson
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspired and thought provoking 20 Oct 2008
By Dr. A. S. Martin
Format:Paperback
This is definitely one of my favourite books. The future is more difficult to forecast than ever before, yet quite a lot of people (myself included) have jobs that involve some degree of positioning for the long term. I found Richard Watson's fresh, fun and mischievous approach to future forecasting very compelling and useful in my work.

It's no so much the actual predictions, but the "joined up thinking" that I most enjoyed. Watson has taken observations of the present, used logical extrapolation and then (the bit I like) combined two or more of these threads together to arrive at initially surprising, yet on further contemplation quite reasonable future predictions.

This is certainly a book for people interested in the future, but perhaps also for people who experience concern about the future. I felt as though reading the book allowed me to glimpse a wide range of possible futures and comprehend some of the factors that determine which fork(s) we will chose along the path. In doing so, the future feels less unknown.

Richard Watson runs a web site http://www.nowandnext.com/ where you can experience his way of thinking with a lot of free content and also download Chapter one of the book.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining and insightful read 23 Oct 2008
By Matt Doyle
Format:Paperback
I found this book entertaining, amusing, and also thought-provoking. It's a fast-paced "stream of consciousness" ride through a whole spectrum of facts, trends, quotations, ideas and forecasts, from society and government through to science, technology, food, retail and travel (and more besides).

Future Files provides a snapshot of where we are as a planet today coupled with extrapolations, thoughts and insights to get the creative juices flowing. I found that the book sparked a lot of fresh ideas on both a business and a personal level, and engendered a certain amount of perspective and clarity on many topics and trends.

The book contains hundreds of facts, ideas and connections, yet its style is engaging and easy to follow, making it hard to put down. Well worth reading if you're at all involved in business decision-making, or if you simply fancy an entertaining, eye-opening look at both our present and our possible future!
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Bloated and slapdash 16 Oct 2008
By Andy Carlisle
Format:Paperback
Alarm bells started to ring on page two of the introduction, when the author explains that this book is based on an 8,000 word article which a commissioning editor at a publishing company asked if he could "stretch out" to 90,000 words. After that guileless admission, it was hardly a surprise that the book felt so waffly and padded.

What did surprise me is that there appears to have been no attempt to impose retrospective order on ideas chucked down in whatever sequence they popped into the author's head ("Actually, mentioning religion brings me to another thought: perhaps science will be the new religion"). It reads like a stream-of-consciousness first draft.

So we have the author contradicting himself in the space of a single paragraph: he notes that working longer hours is not making us happier, then argues that we introspect more about happiness because we have more time on our hands. And we have sloppy non-sequiturs: "if a generation has fewer offspring, its genetic legacy is reduced. This means that the beliefs to which a generation adheres weaken over time." Beliefs are transmitted genetically?

If you want a scattergun collection of ideas about the future and don't mind an inane and shallow writing style, this is fine. If you're hoping for a level of analysis that rises above "personally I think that AI in any meaningful sense is a long way off. Having said that, can you imagine the implications if an internet of the future did actually become aware of its own existence? Ohmygawd", don't waste your money.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars satisfied
The product was adjusted to my spectations.
I rated 4 stairs because the containt is good but very dynanic and should be improved, and there is no information of future... Read more
Published 4 months ago by iñaki
2.0 out of 5 stars Just a lot of ideas
This book is a good collection of ideas that have been gathered from various newspaper articles, blogs or similar content sources. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Frequent Buyer
1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing
claims not to provide specific future models and then does just that. bitterly disappointing and dull don't know if I will finish it pity after I had begun to enjoy future thinking
Published 17 months ago by Buzzy
3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad.
Plenty of creative ideas. Not many hard facts and stats.

Could be interesting for someone that likes to day dream about what the future will bring. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Gal S Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars Future is bright, the future is...
I am not in the habit of writing reviews (who has the time?!) but this book really deserves to be applauded and to get wider coverage. Like many people who wonder, 'What next?! Read more
Published on 28 Jan 2011 by Dilraj Sidhu
4.0 out of 5 stars Future Files
An overview of current trends or tendencies in different societal areas and their projection towards the future. Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2010 by Marc DE CAT
5.0 out of 5 stars Accessible manual of near-future trends
In this bold, entertaining book, futurist Richard Watson reports the results of decades of thought about the future. Read more
Published on 26 July 2010 by Rolf Dobelli
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Book!
BEST BOOK I HAVE READ SO FAR, gives a broad overview of life in 2050 from various persepectives (society, government, health, etc.). Read more
Published on 7 Jun 2010 by W. Farmer
5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth reading
Since the moment it arrived, not only did I have difficulty putting it down, I had difficulty not discussing a number of the points raised in the book with pretty much anyone I... Read more
Published on 20 May 2010 by B. A. Howard
2.0 out of 5 stars Summary, incomplete and unsubstantiated analysis
I was quite dissappointed with the book because it specifically does not peer into the next 50 years rather into the next 10 at most. Read more
Published on 1 May 2010 by YB
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Information is no longer power — getting and keeping someone’s attention is. &quote;
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40% of all British households are forecast to be under single occupancy by the year 2020. &quote;
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