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The Future (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) Paperback – Illustrated, December 8, 2017
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The future is like an unwritten book. It is not something we see in a crystal ball, or can only hope to predict, like the weather. In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montfort's approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning; instead, he reports on the work of making the future—the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book. Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and Ted Nelson didn't predict the future of computing, for instance. They were three of the people who made it.
Montfort focuses on how the development of technologies—with an emphasis on digital technologies—has been bound up with ideas about the future. Readers learn about kitchens of the future and the vision behind them; literary utopias, from Plato's Republic to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland; the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair; and what led up to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web. Montfort describes the notebook computer as a human-centered alterative to the idea of the computer as a room-sized “giant brain”; speculative practice in design and science fiction; and, throughout, the best ways to imagine and build the future.
- Print length188 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe MIT Press
- Publication dateDecember 8, 2017
- Dimensions5.13 x 0.55 x 7 inches
- ISBN-109780262534819
- ISBN-13978-0262534819
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Product details
- ASIN : 0262534819
- Publisher : The MIT Press; Illustrated edition (December 8, 2017)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 188 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780262534819
- ISBN-13 : 978-0262534819
- Item Weight : 6.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.13 x 0.55 x 7 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,749,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #57 in Memory Management Algorithms
- #5,627 in Communication & Media Studies
- #8,470 in Behavioral Sciences (Books)
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About the author

Nick Montfort develops computational art and poetry, often collaboratively, and studies creative computing of all sorts. He is professor of digital media at MIT, also teaches at the School for Poetic Computation, and lives in New York and Boston.
In addition to his books, Montfort has done digital media writing projects including the ppg256 series of 256-character poetry generators; Sea and Spar Between (with Stephanie Strickland); the interactive fiction system Curveship; Ream, a 500-page poem written on one day; the group blog Grand Text Auto; Implementation, a novel on stickers (with Scott Rettberg); The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 (co-edited with three others); and several works of interactive fiction: Book and Volume, Ad Verbum, and Winchester's Nightmare. He directs the lab/studio The Trope Tank.
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