What does it mean to be human, to live on planet Earth, in the universe as it is now understood? In The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos best-selling author and mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme takes us on a journey through the cosmos in search of the “new story” that is developing in answer to this age-old question. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos opens up not only the exhilarating truths that science reveals of the birth of the universe, but how these truths can transform our lives.

In such a view the cosmos appears as awesome and meaningful, its dynamics revelatory, and in this revelation can be found the wisdom humanity needs to face and overcome its present crises, particularly the soul-numbing consumerism that threatens to overwhelm not only individuals, families or societies, but the Earth itself. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos helps us to grasp the larger significance of the human enterprise in this evolving university. Upon meeting that challenge rests much of the vitality of Earth community, and the future quality of life, for ourselves and our children.

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From the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, a magnificent reckoning with how and why the marriage between democracy and capitalism is coming undone, and what can be done to reverse this terrifying dynamic

Martin Wolf has long been one of the wisest voices on global economic issues. He has rarely been called an optimist, yet he has never been as worried as he is today. Liberal democracy is in recession, and authoritarianism is on the rise. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are threatened, even in democracy’s heartlands, the United States and England.

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Globalization and Technocapitalism considers the global reach of a new capitalist era, exploring the nature of ‘technocapitalism’ as grounded in new forms of accumulation, commodification, and corporate organization. As technological creativity, corporate research, and talent flows become more important than ever, this book explores the manner in which globalization acquires new contextual features that will become central to the macro-social dynamics of the twenty-first century.

It thus sheds light on the resultant growth in global inequalities and more intrusive forms of global domination that are grounded in emerging sectors, such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and its diverse fields, such as genomics, synthetic bioengineering, bioinformatics and biopharmacology, and related advances in computing and telecommunications. A rigorous examination of developments in contemporary capitalism as driven by the forces of globalization, Globalization and Technocapitalism will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social and political theory, international political economy, political philosophy, science and technology studies and globalization.

Source: Amazon

In Life Inc, award-winning writer Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. The resulting ideology, corporatism, has infiltrated all aspects of civics, commerce, and culture—from the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self, from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking, from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of Facebook. Life Inc explains why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.

Most important, Rushkoffilluminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.

Source: Amazon

The continuing post-Copenhagen debate on Climate Change and Global Warming is not the only major threat confronting the people and politicians of the world; and it may not even be the greatest threat.

The 21st Century challenges we face in the coming decades also include Super Automation, Structural Unemployment, the failure of Conventional Market Systems, Super-Urbanization and Over Population. Are we, like the dinosaurs, an endangered species threatened by mass extinction? In “MegaCrunch”, authors Joseph N. Pelton and Peter Marshall outline ten survival strategies we need to pursue to survive as a species.

“This book helped launch modern environmental computer modeling and began our current globally focused environmental debate . . . . a scientifically rigorous and credible warning.”—The Nation

In 1972, three scientists from MIT created a computer model that analyzed global resource consumption and production. Their results shocked the world and created stirring conversation about global ‘overshoot,’ or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Now, preeminent environmental scientists Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have teamed up again to update and expand their original findings in The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global Update.

Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed in this provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. 

Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century – widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world – many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives.

A moving portrait of tradition and change in Ladakh, or “Little Tibet,” Ancient Futures is also a scathing critique of the global economy and a rallying call for economic localization.

When Helena Norberg-Hodge first visited Ladakh in 1975, she found a pristine environment, a self-reliant economy and a people who exhibited a remarkable joie de vivre. But then came a tidal wave of economic growth and development. Over the last four decades, this remote Himalayan land has been transformed by outside markets and Western notions of “progress.” As a direct result, a whole range of problems―from polluted air and water to unemployment, religious conflict, eating disorders and youth suicide―have appeared for the first time.

Source: Amazon

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year

From the front lines of economics and policymaking, a compelling case that economic growth is a force for good and a blueprint for enrolling it in the fight against climate change.

Economic growth is wrecking the planet. It’s the engine driving climate change, pollution, and the shrinking of natural spaces. To save the environment, will we have to shrink the economy? Might this even lead to a better society, especially in rich nations, helping us break free from a pointless obsession with material wealth that only benefits the few? Alessio Terzi takes these legitimate questions as a starting point for a riveting journey into the socioeconomic, evolutionary, and cultural origins of our need for growth. It’s an imperative, he argues, that we abandon at our own risk.

Source: Amzon

In the next decade, humans plan to establish a permanent presence on the moon, launch several commercial space stations, and make a first trip to Mars. The global space economy is growing rapidly, and many industries will be transformed in the next ten years by space technologies…

How might we best prepare today’s students for humanity’s rapidly approaching multi-planet future?

In this book, Mark Wagner, Ph.D. explores answers to this question, based on foundations of effective teaching and learning – and effective educational technology. The book also looks even further ahead to consider how we might best educate students once civilian communities are in place on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in the rest of the solar system. The final part of the book includes a more philosophical consideration of ethics, sustainability, and governance.

The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind.

Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making―as long as they have enough money and the right technology.

In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters―master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters―Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion―QAnon, for example, or meme stocks―reinforce the same destructive order.

This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created―a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies―and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place.

Source: Amazon

Report on a three-year international study that produced three detailed scenarios, conducted 30 national workshops in 29 countries, identified hundreds of action distilled to 93 that were assessed by hundreds of futurists and related experts in over 50 countries.

Source: The Millennium Project