Customer Reviews

A Brief History of the Future: How Visionary Thinkers Changed the World and Tomorrow's Trends are 'Made' and Marketed

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One of the more alarming mistakes in foresight work is that forecasters don't see themselves as operating within their own world view, and the preconceptions and priorities of their own time. In fact the very idea of foresight - why do it and how to do it - has changed quite markedly through human history. Knowledge of this historiography is of course important in assessing current forecasts. This is why Oona Strathern's A Brief History of the Future is an important book.
The book is hardly brief (at 300 pages) so there's no sense that it's a potted history. And it's not compromised by what one - alas - expects of this kind of setup: pandering to all characters in positive or equal terms. In fact a key value of the book is its clear-headed and plucky judgment of who the key figures are (and who are not) and what their contributions have each been (vs what they might have thought they were). It is also unusually even-handed in balancing US and European inputs. Full review at The Future Savvy Journal blog. - Adam Gordon, Author [Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, and Profit from Change.

From the Oracle of Delphi to Science Fiction fantasies to chilling Cold War to Hot War scenarios, Oona Strathern captures the long history of soothsaying and visualization of the future in this eminently readable book.

This book is almost completely about the history of getting people to accept new ideas and technologies (now old). The author explains little about the past discoveries, but focuses on the process whereby the inventor or discoverer (or their advocate) was finally heard. There is almost no information on the future, only history. Nor was there any focus on future discoveries needed, nor future successful methods of mass change. It should have been titled more along the lines of the history of gaining acceptance of discoveries, nothing of the future.