For those of us that like to think about the future, there is a whole group of people called The World Future Society or WFS, and in this organization there are people that call themselves Futurists and many of them are consultant to business and government and they are an eclectic and interesting group of people. A good many of them write books, research reports, and articles about the future.
Unlike science fiction authors who write about the future, The Futurists, are writing nonfiction material, and they are serious about what they are doing. Still, if you read many of their books and reports of the past you can see that they didn’t always accurately predict the future or the present period very well. So, what book would I recommend that you read that discusses the future? Well I just read a pretty good one called;
“A Brief History of Tomorrow; the future, past and present,” by Jonathan Margolis; Bloomsbury Publishing, Great Britain; 2000; ISBN: 0-7475-5087-5
The author was quite honest and he even made fun of many futurologists, and science fiction authors who got the future completely incorrect. And although he did make some predictions of the future, at least he was honest enough to say that he didn’t know and that he would probably be wrong, but that what he was suggesting is possible. This is the right way to play it, as it is the honest way to state the facts.
This entire book was packed with information, well footnoted, and a real interesting dialogue and discussion of intellectual value. So, I’d like to recommend this book to you, and I hope you enjoy it as well as I have. Please consider all this.