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

Jacques Attali (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 2009

Never has the world offered more promise for the future and been more fraught with dangers. In this powerful and sometimes terrifying work, Attali analyzes the past and pinpoints nine distinct periods of human history, each with its world center of power and prestige, and predicts what the tenth will bring by the end of this century. Attali foresees the disappearance of individual countries and the dominance of a world government, with democracy prevailing. However, the ultimate, burning question is: Will we leave our children and grandchildren a world that is not only viable but better, or in this nuclear world bequeath to them a planet that will be a living hell? Either way, he warns, the time to act is now.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Attali (Millennium), cofounder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, offers his predictions for the 21st century in this clunky futurist fantasy. Positing that history flows in a single, stubborn, and very particular direction toward man's progressive liberation, the author projects that course with surprising results. He predicts that the mercantile order that prevails today will exhaust itself within a generation or so and be replaced by a unified and stateless global market—a super-empire controlled by an innovative class of selfish hypernomads. This super-empire will lead to extreme imbalances of wealth and poverty that will cause its collapse by 2050—perhaps accompanied by a round of planetary warfare. Humanity will emerge chastened from the wreckage and erect a utopia of hyperdemocracy led by a class of transhumans —a new breed of altruistic citizens of the world. Attali's utopia relies on illusory historical laws, and his thesis proves more entertaining than plausible. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Acclaimed for his Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order (1991), Attali here boldly extends—and revises—his global predictions for the decades ahead. But before mapping out the future, Attali grounds his chronology in patterns he perceives in the past. At the center of these patterns stand impulses that have persistently fostered democratic governance and marketplace economics—in thirteenth-century Bruges, in sixteenth-century Genoa, in nineteenth-century London. In Attali’s analysis (lucidly translated from the original French), Los Angeles emerges as the nexus of capitalist democracy today. However, Attali anticipates an unraveling of American hegemony as transnational corporations perilously sever the ties linking free enterprise to democracy by creating a polycentric empire of commerce that dissolves traditional nation-states. If this process plays out as scripted, nomadic enterprises will enrich a few while immiserating many. World tensions will then be primed for the horrific warfare of armies, mercenary and religious, fighting for resources and dominance. Implacable jihadists have already deployed for such a struggle. Yet Attali remains astonishingly optimistic about long-term prospects for an enlightened world democracy that will safeguard the rights and well-being of all. A readership anxious about the trajectory of world events will find much here to ponder—and debate. --Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1st English-language Ed edition (March 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559708794
• ISBN-13: 978-1559708791
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #726,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The triangle is a stable figure: Attali, Kurzweil, Fukuyama, March 11, 2009

By 

GUSTAVO PRADO RGUEZ "gaprado" (Mexico City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

Almost 30 years ago Alvin Toffler published 'The third wave' there he says history was a tide with three waves: an agrarian age, and industrial age, and then a third, 'post-industrial' for which he coined the word 'information age' and he said for example 'through telex and long distance communication people will work, buy, have social relations from home..'. He was absolutely right, even when he can't really name the new technologies, he get quite well which would be the tides and changes, opening wide the eyes in order to catch the actual zeitgeist of his time he then be able to make an honest and logical prediction about the times to come.

At this particular moment we have the brightest of this kind of prediction in the form of the scientist-futurist Ray Kurzweil -'The Singularity is near', 'The age of spiritual machines- where he foreseen not only the next 50 years, but the entire history of human race through technology. To answer this we have Francis Fukuyama, whom through a philosophical 'must' he tries to embrace technology into a humanistic frame.

In this case Jacques Attali, a former adviser to president Miterrand and also President of the European Bank of Development in the 90's, bring another side to the figure: political and sociological forces. He mainly divide human history 'a la Toffler' in three main stages: a theological one, a militaristic one, and then the one we are: an economic driven one. In it, capitalism unbounded has grown from the vitality of 9 main 'hearts' -as he called them- Brugess, Venice, Antwerp, Geneva, Amsterdam, London, Boston, New York and finally Los Angeles.

Each was a pole of development and creativity, becoming the world's motor in their own age. Eventually, now Los Angeles he identifies with Silicon Valley activity and even Hollywood's as the main entertainment-cultural producer. Then he identifies a moment between 2030 where United States stop being the main power in the planet -The end of United States Empire-. After that he says capitalism develops into the main government and force through the ascension of the enterprise and particularly insurance companies with the same level of power of the old time governments. This eventually leeds into three new eras: hyperempire that is 'solved' into hyperconflicts until we reach the hyperdemocracie -economic power controlling all; awakening war, terrorism; and then we get into an era of total happiness, peace and opportunities thanxs -to what he dares to imply he coined the term- to the transhumanists.

Then he says Transhumanist are: Mother Theresa and Melissa Gates!!!!!! since he identifies, totally mistaken, that this so called trans, goes further than humanism, and are people without ambition, full of helping other people needs. So, transhumanist= trans-hippie????, he only gets the point of H+ as the best part of humanity...

But I do not believe someone in this kind of studies could ignore what, we, transhumanist are: people involved in technology at such grade, that eventually through nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence, robotics, and biological sciences, are called to change the world as we know it.

The thing is his vision is not deeply root in the techonological side. And precisely because of that is a very good lecture side to the authors mentioned before.

Cons: he says he invented the term 'nomadic objets', about all this technlogies like laptops, cellphones, that make our live movil. I'm ok with it. But his pretention about redefining 'transhumanist' is not acceptable

As an european, french particularly, sometimes his book is too much anti USA, and even when that can be something good in terms of objectivity -he always tries to see the whole worldwide scenario-, his claims can became quite extravagant, like the many times he mentioned the wars of the 'raising Mexico' against the 'falling empire'. (I can accept the possibility of machines becoming intelligent, but that my country -yes I live in Mexico city- could be able to get just organized to do anything against the greatest economy in the world is nonsense. Even when he carefully avoids to put France as the power to see in the future, at most he mentioned Europe and Euro as an example to future world governments...

When Fukuyama talks about philosophy in order to stop the future challenges of technology becoming intelligent, he lacks of realism: all three recognizes 2050 as the year were human population reach the top in 10 billions, with a total ecological collapse; to say then to the mobs: do not turn into nanotechnological solution to poverty and hunger, because Heidegger and Kant says that is against human spirit... would be the recipe to get linched. Here is where Attali works: the forces then would be political, and sociological, society articulation principles would be and extraordinary force to put into equation. (In the same way Kurzweil is based more into the optimistic american side, at into techno solution, sometimes forgetting a little, but just a little, some other fronts and scenarios)

At the end of the Attali book -I have the Spanish edition-, there are three little pages about an apologetic future in Spain. I wonder if in the american edition he is going to do that or would stick to his pages describing the fall of american civilization.

So, go read it, but just as an annotated companion to Kurzweil.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars LOUSY BOOK WITH AN AWFUL VISION OF PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, March 29, 2010

By 

G. Charles Steiner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

This book is an outrageous and awful book and on so many levels, it's difficult really to know where to start. Just to say at the top, it may be that more than half of what's wrong with this book has to do with the translator, Jeremy Leggatt.

To begin, the book as a whole is not coherent in construction. The author starts off telling the reader that history has laws and he, with his knowledge, is going to show those laws to you by illustrating them in providing a brief history of capitalism which just happens to be the content of Chapter 2 and consists, in general, of a description of the nine "cores" or major cities that developed a mercantile class, starting off with, after introducing the Greeks and the Mediterranean continent, Bruges, Venice, Antwerp, Genoa and ending up with Amsterdam, Boston, London, New York, and finally Los Angeles.

By the end of Chapter 2, you know nothing about the laws of history nor about any laws in history whatsoever. You only know what the author asserts: there have always been a military class, a religious class, and a mercantile class (as if you needed the author to teach you this!) - and always will be--, though the author's history here serves to show only that the mercantile class was, is, and will be always the very top class.

Secondly, the book then swiftly launches into discussions about the end of the American Empire, planetary war, and then the so-called (by him) planetary democracy for no historical or logical reasoning laid down by any foundation he created, throwing the reader into the future willy-nilly with all sorts of false, wild, outrageous, and quite horrific assertions as if he were himself were engaged in playing a nasty game with the reader. Are these results the consequences of a poor translation from the French, or is the author on a self-created and self-lacerating sado-masochistic drug trip?

How can the author be trusted with any accurate description of the future when he cannot even describe the present accurately? He writes on page 124 "Google recently made available to the citizens of Mountain View . . . and to those of San Francisco free and universal access to wireless and high-performance Internet." This is not a true nor an accurate statement. Speaking as a San Franciscan myself, San Francisco, in particular, has no free WiFi, except in certain coffee houses, which is a fact no different from many other cities in the United States. Elsewhere, the author asserts: "There is today no war between two countries for the first time in more than six decades." This, too, is an assertion that goes against contemporary evidence. Relying upon certain highly partisan and highly politicized and non-scientific information, the author falsely asserts ": "The last decade has been the hottest in history. And doubtless this phenomenon is only beginning." And finally, on page 227, while discussing Islamic conversion and ignoring the whole Islamic concept of Sharia, the author incorrectly states, "In principle, conversion is individual and without political connotations." What kind of knowledge, integrity and authority does this author truly possess when such assertions are made?

In the category of the outrageous, the author wholly disparages the idea of freedom and liberty, making the following statements which are scattered here or there within the book. On page 14, in discussing empires, the author declares, as if himself only a friend of totalitarian regimes and dictatorships, "The enslavement of the majority is the condition of freedom for the few." As he discusses the future in later chapters, the author asserts that "Some will then find that freedom itself - humanity's target since the beginnings of the mercantile order - is in fact only the illusory manifestation of a caprice within time's prison." When, according to his vision of the future, man and woman are totally solitary and totally selfish creatures completely filled with narcissistic desires, the author says on page 179 that " individual freedom will have reached the mountain top, at least in the imagination, by the new use of nomadic objects."

On the level of the incoherent and confusing, the author, in one instance, writing about John Harrison, the inventor of the chronometer for ships, states that the invention "was willed into being by political powers." It was? How? No explanation. In another instance, the author writes that the authoritarian state creates the market, which, in turn, creates democracy. It does? How? No explanation. Here is another of the author's assertions for which there is no support or explanation at all when he is writing about New York from 1920 to 1980 in Chapter 2: ""Throughout the West, service activities (whether private or public) cannot yet be automated, and therefore demand an increasing share in the surplus. In the absence of automation of the services, provided by the white-collar workers in industry, the productivity both of work and of capital stagnates - as military and social spending rises." What surplus is he talking about? No explanation. Besides these flaws and confusions, the author needlessly invents new words, words like "hyperdemocracy" when he really means planetary totalitarianism, "hyperconflict" when he means planetary conflict, and "transhuman" when he means people with human, loving values (although I wouldn't myself have chosen, as the author does, people as duty-bound as Mother Theresa or as outrageously wealthy (by marriage) as Melissa Gates as exemplars of the human species).

But let's skip any further academic discussion of why this book is riddled with flaws and just jump into Jacques Attali's brief history of the future. What does he say the future has in store for us? . The tenth core or major mercantile city for the immediate future is and for the distant indefinite future will be, Los Angeles, although it could be San Diego or LaJolla. In 2030 California will cease to attract the lion's share of the world's innovators and the United States could become a Scandanavian-styled social democracy or a dictatorship. In 2040, "the Watchers" will be watching everyone since "surveillance objects" will be the norm in this era of Big Brother. (Aren't we already in the era of Big Brother?) Everyone will be monitored and everyone will agree to be monitored, the author says. In 2050, the "world order" will coalesce around a market that has become planetary. (Isn't that already here?) By 2050, we will have an "informal world government." (Isn't that, too, already here?) On page 181, the author says, "The market will breach the laws of democracy," - as if they haven't already been breached with this private/public manipulation of government services? He adds, "Financial insecurity will become the rule for everyone." Hello?

In 2090, the author says the moon will be colonized (yawn), and a little later, the interior of the solar system will be colonized (yadda, yadda), and, on page 209, the human being will have become a commercial object through cloning and self-repair. Bet you never heard this before, eh?

There's your brief review of the brief history of the future for you! Skip this book! It's either a joke or the author's written masturbatory fantasies about himself as an historian and thinker. Or, it simply could be, as I stated at the beginning, a very bad translation. I read Jacques Attali's earlier book, "Millenium," which is also about the future, and while wild in many senses, it wasn't incoherent as this book is.

P.S. The author does state that in the 22nd century, everything will get much better with the United Nations as our sole world government where everybody on the planet pays his or her green taxes.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars the worst a book could ever be, October 22, 2011

By 

jjolla - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century (Paperback)

I have found books normally have some value, even the bad ones. I have always kept every book I have bought in a bookshelf somewhere at home ... except this one. I felt so embarrassed to have this book in sight that I had to put in in the garbage bin.

When I bought this book I was always expecting controversy. One cannot predict the future, but I was hoping so see some reasoning presented, in the hope of making me think about the issues. Unfortunately, this author just fills his pages with a torrent of sweeping statement about what "WILL" be .. without any discussion about his thinking behind it.

I could have forgiven it if the statements, even without justification, had some merit. Not so! Everything this author states is almost laughable (some I can see happening ... but that's my view formulated from other observations, and certainly not because of Attali's writing).

In reading other reviews of this book, I was captivated by the allure that the author spends a good deal of time looking at our past. Unbelievably, Attali commits the same crime with the past as he does with the future. It is full of sweeping statements about what "DID" happen ... how he could describe with such resolve what happened in pre-historic times is beyond belief. I knew I was reading rubbish early on when he becomes fixated with "cannibalism", focusing on it on four different age spans.

This book represents everything that is bad in writing. The cover also has a blatant lie written on it ... Henry Kissinger states that it is "brilliant". Lies by politicians and a con-job by the author, also a politician. I am now convinced the positive reviews on this site are disingenuous remarks made by the connections, and should be disregarded by reviewers thinking about buying this trash.