A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century

It's like reading the Book of Revelation. A prediction requires two things: an unambiguous way of judging if the event happened and a time limit. By this standard the book provides a mere handful of predictions, none of which are on track. It starts of trying to analyse the history of the world and find some simple rules it follows (always a waste of time). It then proceeds to talk about how in the future we'll all be playing golf and riding horses. At no point does it explain where any of the "predictions" come from because they sure as hell don't follow the scant few trends identified in the first part.

At least it's bold and stimulating, even if it's proven more wrong with each year that passes.

Certainly a thought-provoking book; I found the first two-thirds of the book - which covers the past history of what Mr. Attali defines as the "Mercantile Order" to be quite interesting and a good overview of the major economic centers from Bruges in 1200 to the present day. The latter third of the book deals with three possible, or possibly sequential, scenarios of the future based on extrapolating from the past historical lessons the author has gleaned. It is not a future I'd particular care to live in, but it is an important insight into the worldview of Mr. Attali and his colleagues which is quite different from John Q. Public

This highly speculative tale of things to come begins with a brief overview of where we've been. I was put off by an obvious error on page 7 which states that all primates other than Homo sapiens sapiens vanished from Earth 30,000 years ago. Although some species of apes, monkeys, and lemurs are endangered, many are still with us, so obviously they did not vanish. The mistake may have been due to a translation error (from the original French) because the word 'primate' is used several times in places in which 'human' would have been a better choice. There were other questionable word choices including 'freedom', 'democracy', and 'fair' in the early pages of this book. From there it goes on to relate various paths humanity might show more take...often to extremes (actually to the point of falling off a metaphorical cliff). Some I thought fairly plausible...up to a point, but others seemed extremely unlikely to me. Still, they provide warnings of things to avoid. One that did make me pause was the prediction that public services might, in the near future, be privatized, effectively leaving nation states impotent to mitigate the excesses of profit-seeking corporations. What we think of as public services today (social security, unemployment protection, education, health care, workplace safety, food and drug standards, even law enforcement and courts) would be taken over by profit-seeking private insurance companies that would monitor everything (really EVERYTHING) people do and adjust their premiums accordingly. Possible, but I have to believe that we'll be wise enough to avoid such a dystopian future (which sounds to me something like cutthroat corporate feudalism). The final chapter is utopian, in which people suddenly and inexplicably become rational and altruistic. That would be nice, but it doesn't explain how we get there from here, especially considering the dire predictions it makes earlier.
As a cautionary tale, this book has value. As a prediction of the future, not so much. I have no doubt that humanity will face many of the challenges this book describes, and no doubt we'll handle some of them better than others, but I have to believe that we will handle them before they lead to the extreme outcomes described here. show less

The author takes an economist’s point of view of the future. He looks largely at the history of humans and economic trends over time with emphasis on capitalism. He looks at core cities of innovation and predicts where the future core will move to which may be San Diego, California. Currently, the US has predominance in innovation and is predicted to continue so for maybe another 30 years. Jacques then looks at drivers for potential future conflicts. He looks at conflicts associated with taking resources and with religious differences. He concludes with an optimistic chapter on transhumans, which will bring altruistic values to society and will rightl the wrongs of destructive human tendencies. The author is knowledgeable and provides show more logical predictions. show less

L’analyse de l’histoire passée, avec les dominations successives du religieux, du militaire et du marchand, éclaire l’histoire immédiate et donne des pistes pour le futur.

I bought this book in 2009 - and am only now writing a short review note. I can't remember when I read it. and I did not make a lot of comment in the book. This suggests to me that it wasn't all that memorable.