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Business. Politics. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the former vice president and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes An Inconvenient Truth for everything�a frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come. Ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore surveys our planet�s beclouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and ultimately hopeful forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler�s Future Shock and John Naisbitt�s Megatrends. In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our world: � Ever-increasing economic globalization has led to the emergence of what he labels �Earth Inc.��an integrated holistic entity with a new and different relationship to capital, labor, consumer markets, and national governments than in the past. � The worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions have led to the emergence of �the Global Mind,� which links the thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases. � The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting more profoundly than at any time in the last five hundred years�from a U.S.-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets. � A deeply flawed economic compass is leading us to unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet�s strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species. � Genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions are radically transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture, and molecular science�and are putting control of evolution in human hands. � There has been a radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth�s ecosystems, along with the beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide. From his earliest days in public life, Al Gore has been warning us of the promise and peril of emergent truths�no matter how �inconvenient� they may seem to be. As absorbing as it is visionary, The Future is a map of the world to come, from a man who has looked ahead before and been proven all too right. Praise for The Future �Magisterial . . . The passion is unmistakable. So is the knowledge. Practically every page offers an illumination.��Bloomberg �In The Future . . . Gore takes on a subject whose scale matches that of his achievements and ambition.��The New York Times Book Review �Historically grounded . . . Gore�s strengths lie in his passion for the subject and in his ability to take the long view by putting current events and trends in historical context.��Publishers Weekly �Provocative, smart, densely argued . . . a tour de force of Big Picture thinking.��Kirkus Reviews (starred review) �A luminously intelligent analysis that is packed with arresting ideas and facts.��The Guardian.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
This is the broadest of future predictions. Instead of six drivers of global change, Mr. Gore has included some dozens of new rapidly changing factors, neatly categorized in spidery charts. They file under the broad topics of economic globalization, the interconnectivity of modern communications
The far-right's criticism of Mr. Gore is as loud as it is baseless. It is some feeble attempt to distract from the hideous alternative of 2000 and their own catastrophes. Perhaps the one thing that is closest to having a bit of truth is that of his being a pedantic bore. As stiff as his speech may have been, he has an agile and quick mind to make up for it. This is not the case here. He seems almost overexcited with his discussion on everything from Goethe to 3-D printing to genetic modification to coal production. His best moments, owing from his experience, are more concrete policy suggestions. He is almost vicious in attacking the excessive corporate influence in modern democracy, its overwhelming corruption, and emphasis on short-term profit over long-term benefit.
Predicting the future is by definition a hazardous trade. No doubt not all of the many predictions Mr. Gore makes will come true. But he has enough facts on his side to understand the bigger picture, and no doubt will continue to fight the eternal fight for the world of our children.
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technology, a re-examination of the traditional balance of power in the American world-system, technological innovation, and Mr. Gore's favorite: climate change.The far-right's criticism of Mr. Gore is as loud as it is baseless. It is some feeble attempt to distract from the hideous alternative of 2000 and their own catastrophes. Perhaps the one thing that is closest to having a bit of truth is that of his being a pedantic bore. As stiff as his speech may have been, he has an agile and quick mind to make up for it. This is not the case here. He seems almost overexcited with his discussion on everything from Goethe to 3-D printing to genetic modification to coal production. His best moments, owing from his experience, are more concrete policy suggestions. He is almost vicious in attacking the excessive corporate influence in modern democracy, its overwhelming corruption, and emphasis on short-term profit over long-term benefit.
Predicting the future is by definition a hazardous trade. No doubt not all of the many predictions Mr. Gore makes will come true. But he has enough facts on his side to understand the bigger picture, and no doubt will continue to fight the eternal fight for the world of our children.
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LibraryThing member vsnunez
I have a friend (Jude) who ruefully wishes for a meteor strike with each successive item of really bad news.
As it happens, we don't need any stinking "meteor" as we are the architects of our own downfall. Pretty disheartening.
Big Al, Mr. Gore, that is, explains why all of this is happening, with
There is precious little we can do. Renewable energy could help. A constitutional amendment to get money out of elections and deny corportations "personhood" would probably be another thing we can actually do, and might actually happen. But no matter what, we will still have to deal with climate change, now it's just "how bad."
Hopefully, the global mind will come to its senses, end this dangerous form of capitalism that refuses to account for the real costs of business (to the environment, the human race, etc.).
If we can't turn it around, I estimate that we will probably have an actual revolution in order to wrest control from white, rich, fat men. Probably sooner rather than later would be better.
As it happens, we don't need any stinking "meteor" as we are the architects of our own downfall. Pretty disheartening.
Big Al, Mr. Gore, that is, explains why all of this is happening, with
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plenty of research, historical observation and personal experience to illustrate that it's no longer a question of if all of these things ("Earth, Inc.," climate change, political impotence etc.) are occuring, but rather what to expect. At times, the level of detail is overwhelming and gets in the way of the story, but Mr. Gore probably felt it necessary in order to trump the specious prevarication machine (SPM) that exists to preserve the status quo.There is precious little we can do. Renewable energy could help. A constitutional amendment to get money out of elections and deny corportations "personhood" would probably be another thing we can actually do, and might actually happen. But no matter what, we will still have to deal with climate change, now it's just "how bad."
Hopefully, the global mind will come to its senses, end this dangerous form of capitalism that refuses to account for the real costs of business (to the environment, the human race, etc.).
If we can't turn it around, I estimate that we will probably have an actual revolution in order to wrest control from white, rich, fat men. Probably sooner rather than later would be better.
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LibraryThing member StephenZillwood
The Future is Al Gore’s latest foray into speculation about where he thinks the world is headed over the next several decades. In this well-written and thought-provoking book, he hasn’t found a lot of reasons to be any more optimistic than he was in An Inconvenient Truth seven years ago, at
The key to this book, as opposed to Gore’s earlier work, is that he does not focus on a single major issue that will impact humanity, but rather that he focuses on the interconnectivity of six major factors (as indicated by the book’s subtitle). These are: Earth Inc. (the rapidly growing and inter-connected global economy); The Global Mind (personal rather than economic or corporate connectivity – and his hopes for a new kind of electronic egalitarianism); Power in the Balance (the shift of global economic power, particularly from West to East); Outgrowth (our ever-greater demands on ever-dwindling resources, addressing both energy and food consumption patterns); The Reinvention of Life and Death (the additional stresses placed on society by an aging population, looking at Japan as the new paradigm that will eventually be realized in most industrial nations, as well as the costs – social and financial – of new life-extending and -improving technologies that may or may not be available to all); and The Edge (Gore’s most pessimistic look yet at just where we are as a planetary eco-system – the title of this chapter gives a pretty clear indication of exactly where he feels we are). This approach works very well, and is one of the book’s greatest strengths.
The other strength is the depth of research conducted. While the book proper weighs in at 374 pages, the bibliography and notes are an additional 154 pages. Climate change deniers tend to rely on anecdotal evidence (Fox News’s response to the blizzard (the “Snowpocalypse”) in Washington DC three years ago comes to mind – to paraphrase: “Well, that sure makes those Global Warming people look bad!”), whereas those knelling the bells have had the science solidly on their side for the last two decades at least; however, never in my reading have I come across a clearer argument, with a greater abundance of solid and varied evidence, that we as a planetary civilization are facing some very difficult times, than that made in this book. Kudos both to Gore and to his team of researchers.
This is not to say that Gore is all gloom and doom. Each chapter suggests solutions, alternate paths, or better possibilities that we can still reach if we can find the will. The greatest hope comes in his chapter on The Global Mind. He addresses the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements as two recent revolutionary actions that have ties to shared information and social networks, more so for the latter than for the former (this has more to do with the ubiquity of devices, connectivity, and reduced censorship as opposed to an active and conscience choice of differing methods of organization). He suggests that this could possibly be a harbinger of things to come, when people are able to find new centres of power within networks, and eventually move to a greater and more transparent form of democracy. High hopes indeed, somewhat tempered by his concerns over several countries that are choosing to follow in China’s footsteps – tight controls, censored sites, and limited connectivity to social networking not directly controlled by the government.
Gore ends the book with a call to action, and expresses grave concerns over our ability to come to consensus in a timely fashion. We are, according to his research, approaching a precipice (his “Edge”) which, should we not halt our forward momentum, we may pass over into thin air without realizing it until it is far too late, much like Wile E. Coyote running in place before falling to the canyon floor below.
Steve’s Grade: A
A well-written, solidly researched extrapolatory journey into a frightening and challenging future that is becoming all the more likely with each passing year.
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least with regard to such frightening prospects as massive global climate change, the continued and increasing disproportionate power in the hands of corporations and their lobbyists, and the dangerously sky-rocketing affluence of new middle classes throughout the developing world.The key to this book, as opposed to Gore’s earlier work, is that he does not focus on a single major issue that will impact humanity, but rather that he focuses on the interconnectivity of six major factors (as indicated by the book’s subtitle). These are: Earth Inc. (the rapidly growing and inter-connected global economy); The Global Mind (personal rather than economic or corporate connectivity – and his hopes for a new kind of electronic egalitarianism); Power in the Balance (the shift of global economic power, particularly from West to East); Outgrowth (our ever-greater demands on ever-dwindling resources, addressing both energy and food consumption patterns); The Reinvention of Life and Death (the additional stresses placed on society by an aging population, looking at Japan as the new paradigm that will eventually be realized in most industrial nations, as well as the costs – social and financial – of new life-extending and -improving technologies that may or may not be available to all); and The Edge (Gore’s most pessimistic look yet at just where we are as a planetary eco-system – the title of this chapter gives a pretty clear indication of exactly where he feels we are). This approach works very well, and is one of the book’s greatest strengths.
The other strength is the depth of research conducted. While the book proper weighs in at 374 pages, the bibliography and notes are an additional 154 pages. Climate change deniers tend to rely on anecdotal evidence (Fox News’s response to the blizzard (the “Snowpocalypse”) in Washington DC three years ago comes to mind – to paraphrase: “Well, that sure makes those Global Warming people look bad!”), whereas those knelling the bells have had the science solidly on their side for the last two decades at least; however, never in my reading have I come across a clearer argument, with a greater abundance of solid and varied evidence, that we as a planetary civilization are facing some very difficult times, than that made in this book. Kudos both to Gore and to his team of researchers.
This is not to say that Gore is all gloom and doom. Each chapter suggests solutions, alternate paths, or better possibilities that we can still reach if we can find the will. The greatest hope comes in his chapter on The Global Mind. He addresses the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements as two recent revolutionary actions that have ties to shared information and social networks, more so for the latter than for the former (this has more to do with the ubiquity of devices, connectivity, and reduced censorship as opposed to an active and conscience choice of differing methods of organization). He suggests that this could possibly be a harbinger of things to come, when people are able to find new centres of power within networks, and eventually move to a greater and more transparent form of democracy. High hopes indeed, somewhat tempered by his concerns over several countries that are choosing to follow in China’s footsteps – tight controls, censored sites, and limited connectivity to social networking not directly controlled by the government.
Gore ends the book with a call to action, and expresses grave concerns over our ability to come to consensus in a timely fashion. We are, according to his research, approaching a precipice (his “Edge”) which, should we not halt our forward momentum, we may pass over into thin air without realizing it until it is far too late, much like Wile E. Coyote running in place before falling to the canyon floor below.
Steve’s Grade: A
A well-written, solidly researched extrapolatory journey into a frightening and challenging future that is becoming all the more likely with each passing year.
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
I'm usually reluctant to read political documents, but this was chosen for our reading club so I decided to slog through it. It's often interesting although I felt sometimes that he was just summarizing each of the myriad of research articles pulled together by his research assistants in some kind
There's no way in hell I could summarize everything in less than 50 pages but I've got some general comments below. It's a good book to use from the index, i.e., want to see about a certain issue, hit the index and then read the few pages devoted to that topic.
Positives:
-Very good at capturing generational angst by which I mean that each generation seems to have some issue of apocalyptic concern that MUST be solved or the world will come to an end. Depending where (when) you live (d) that concern may be different but it's always there and is of overwhelming importance to those concerned.
-Great summary of much of the information out there and the issues. See my comments re the index above.
-Nifty bibliography. A great resource.
-Good summary of conflicts on page 124
-Recognition that retired people are a huge problem. (Full disclosure: I'm retired) This is a point I make to my colleagues and students. It takes 4.2 workers between the ages of 16 and 60 to provide enough tax revenue to support one retired person. That means lots of jobs to be created or lots of retired people to die off.
-Very good summary of the problems in the financial industry
Negatives:
-Ignored the role of religion and religious extremism. Religion is barely mentioned yet it's a major source of conflict which has the more immediate potential to cause a lot of grief.
-Too US-centric, i.e. U.S. as moral force that needs to enforce that morality. If corporations are too multi-national how do you effect change in other countries. I just don't buy the idea that the United States has to be the moral (read military) savior of the planet. Gore does and states so explicitly.
-Is it fair to deprive developing countries of the opportunity to become wealthier? We set a certain standard which we need them to emulate in order to consume more goods and then tell them they can't because it's bad for the planet.
-Again, the favorite whipping boy is corporations. It's all their fault. Everything. And this person business, yet as a lawyer he should have known the idea of corporations having "personhood" status is a very old one.i.e., “Since at least Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward – 17 U.S. 518 (1819), the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts.” That also increases their liability. “The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and the people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively. (see the excellent Wikipedia entry for more.) In this view, treating corporations as "persons" is a convenient legal fiction which allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association. A larger issue is that all of us who have, or want to have, a pension, MUST support the success of these corporations since pension funds are their biggest investors. Gore should know better. He sits on Apple's board.
-Ignores the failure of the legislative. The Supreme Court gets blamed for everything yet they are forced into this position because the legislative branch has completely abrogated its responsibility. -Money in politics, which Gore handles nicely, is a big problem. He has few solutions of merit, however.
-Solutions all require an authoritarian form of government.
-Emphasis on “reason-based” thinking when what we are learning is that to make change one has to appeal to the emotional side
-He has a tendency to celebrate the technological and then focus on the problems of technology which leaves the reader unclear as to what he’s demanding.
-No discussion of nuclear which is totally carbon-free. Reliance on solar and wind ignore storage issues. Energy experts say that as long as the storage issue remains unsolved, you have to build double the capacity if you build a lot of renewables so the grid remains stable. New nuclear technology such as low-pressure liquid sodium reactors hold a lot of promise.
-Ignores conservation and impact on standard of living, i.e. reduced consumption.
Issues:
-Gore serves on several corporate boards including Apple – what’s his responsibility as an individual in the seats of power.
-He’s a multi-millionaire. Gore got rich off his sale of the network: $100 million.
-Rich v poor – when has it ever not been so? Solutions are a bit simplistic: Lots of ideas collected by his research assistants, but ultimately I found his book very unsatisfying - lacks a sense of history and assumes that problems he sees are unique to current generation
-How do you define and accomplish goals in a democracy where self-interest is the highest value?
-Does apocalypticism bring benefits or just ignoring the problem.
-How do you determine what’s an opportunity vs a negative?
I couldn't help thinking if things would have been different had he been elected in 2000. It's unlikely he would have invaded Iraq, but he surely would have caved to pressure to invade Afghanistan. And how would he have handled Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, et al. The pressure on Democrats to use military might is always irresistible. I have a sneaky suspicion that we would be in precisely the same place we are today. That's discouraging.
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of coherent fashion.There's no way in hell I could summarize everything in less than 50 pages but I've got some general comments below. It's a good book to use from the index, i.e., want to see about a certain issue, hit the index and then read the few pages devoted to that topic.
Positives:
-Very good at capturing generational angst by which I mean that each generation seems to have some issue of apocalyptic concern that MUST be solved or the world will come to an end. Depending where (when) you live (d) that concern may be different but it's always there and is of overwhelming importance to those concerned.
-Great summary of much of the information out there and the issues. See my comments re the index above.
-Nifty bibliography. A great resource.
-Good summary of conflicts on page 124
-Recognition that retired people are a huge problem. (Full disclosure: I'm retired) This is a point I make to my colleagues and students. It takes 4.2 workers between the ages of 16 and 60 to provide enough tax revenue to support one retired person. That means lots of jobs to be created or lots of retired people to die off.
-Very good summary of the problems in the financial industry
Negatives:
-Ignored the role of religion and religious extremism. Religion is barely mentioned yet it's a major source of conflict which has the more immediate potential to cause a lot of grief.
-Too US-centric, i.e. U.S. as moral force that needs to enforce that morality. If corporations are too multi-national how do you effect change in other countries. I just don't buy the idea that the United States has to be the moral (read military) savior of the planet. Gore does and states so explicitly.
-Is it fair to deprive developing countries of the opportunity to become wealthier? We set a certain standard which we need them to emulate in order to consume more goods and then tell them they can't because it's bad for the planet.
-Again, the favorite whipping boy is corporations. It's all their fault. Everything. And this person business, yet as a lawyer he should have known the idea of corporations having "personhood" status is a very old one.i.e., “Since at least Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward – 17 U.S. 518 (1819), the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts.” That also increases their liability. “The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and the people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively. (see the excellent Wikipedia entry for more.) In this view, treating corporations as "persons" is a convenient legal fiction which allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association. A larger issue is that all of us who have, or want to have, a pension, MUST support the success of these corporations since pension funds are their biggest investors. Gore should know better. He sits on Apple's board.
-Ignores the failure of the legislative. The Supreme Court gets blamed for everything yet they are forced into this position because the legislative branch has completely abrogated its responsibility. -Money in politics, which Gore handles nicely, is a big problem. He has few solutions of merit, however.
-Solutions all require an authoritarian form of government.
-Emphasis on “reason-based” thinking when what we are learning is that to make change one has to appeal to the emotional side
-He has a tendency to celebrate the technological and then focus on the problems of technology which leaves the reader unclear as to what he’s demanding.
-No discussion of nuclear which is totally carbon-free. Reliance on solar and wind ignore storage issues. Energy experts say that as long as the storage issue remains unsolved, you have to build double the capacity if you build a lot of renewables so the grid remains stable. New nuclear technology such as low-pressure liquid sodium reactors hold a lot of promise.
-Ignores conservation and impact on standard of living, i.e. reduced consumption.
Issues:
-Gore serves on several corporate boards including Apple – what’s his responsibility as an individual in the seats of power.
-He’s a multi-millionaire. Gore got rich off his sale of the network: $100 million.
-Rich v poor – when has it ever not been so? Solutions are a bit simplistic: Lots of ideas collected by his research assistants, but ultimately I found his book very unsatisfying - lacks a sense of history and assumes that problems he sees are unique to current generation
-How do you define and accomplish goals in a democracy where self-interest is the highest value?
-Does apocalypticism bring benefits or just ignoring the problem.
-How do you determine what’s an opportunity vs a negative?
I couldn't help thinking if things would have been different had he been elected in 2000. It's unlikely he would have invaded Iraq, but he surely would have caved to pressure to invade Afghanistan. And how would he have handled Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, et al. The pressure on Democrats to use military might is always irresistible. I have a sneaky suspicion that we would be in precisely the same place we are today. That's discouraging.
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LibraryThing member DLMorrese
I can't say Mr. Gore is an excellent writer. His prose leaves something to be desired, but the information, ideas, and analysis he presents in this book are important and well worth consideration, although it is pretty depressing. The cultural, political, and technology challenges seem daunting,
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and one might come away thinking our civilization, if not our species, is doomed. But we have faced and met challenges before, and I'm not ready to give up on us yet. Show Less
LibraryThing member Razinha
He was going along quite well until he crashed into the mistake of calling Malcolm ("anecdotes trump real data") Gladwell an "analyst". Strike two was mentioning William Gibson. But the real problem I had was the chapter notes...more of the distressing trend of putting the sources at the end
Okay. Enough grousing. This is a dense book and full of important observations. Well written and well researched. I got a chuckle when he let the professional slip a few times: ...because of our idiotic acceptance of the livestock industry’s insistence that it is perfectly fine for them to reduce some of their costs by becoming factories for turning out killer germs against which antibiotics have no effect”
(Emphasis mine)
Now, he does get down and dirty on more than a few subjects. The section on eugenics is quite disturbing, particularly when he points out that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes' decision in 1927 (supporting forced sterilization) has ever been repealed. The economic, climate change, global political (and the other drivers) are in-your-face and must-be-dealt-with no nonsense subjects. He does well.
Gore packs a tremendous amount of information in his analyses of the drivers of the future. This is worth a second read to extract even more.
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without actually noting them. A book this dense with information, done right, has (or should have) many, many citations and I find it extremely annoying to have to flip back and forth wondering if the sentence I just read is sourced or not. Bad form. Yes, I know the intent is to not interrupt the flow, and to not make the text seem academic, but rare is the book I plan to read twice in a row and I don't want to go back to check sources because I want to move on to something else. Okay. Enough grousing. This is a dense book and full of important observations. Well written and well researched. I got a chuckle when he let the professional slip a few times: ...because of our idiotic acceptance of the livestock industry’s insistence that it is perfectly fine for them to reduce some of their costs by becoming factories for turning out killer germs against which antibiotics have no effect”
(Emphasis mine)
Now, he does get down and dirty on more than a few subjects. The section on eugenics is quite disturbing, particularly when he points out that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes' decision in 1927 (supporting forced sterilization) has ever been repealed. The economic, climate change, global political (and the other drivers) are in-your-face and must-be-dealt-with no nonsense subjects. He does well.
Gore packs a tremendous amount of information in his analyses of the drivers of the future. This is worth a second read to extract even more.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MHanover10
Al Gore reads this book and I can understand why it's 15 CDs, he reads the book slow. There are a few boring parts that feel like a textbook is being read to the listener, but there were also parts I was very interested in. Several parts I didn't know and it was kind of scary to learn some of the
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stuff happening to the population, our land/water and government. I'm kind of glad I won't be around in 50 years but also sad what we are leaving my daughter and future generations. It really made me think we truly are headed to a dystopia world. Seems like in 75 years there really won't be anything left if not in 50. Makes me very sad that we have abused this planet without really thinking about what we were doing. Show Less
LibraryThing member MarkLacy
In addition to the fact that I respect Vice President Gore, one of the reasons I purchased this book was because of Gore's use of mind-maps to introduce each section in the book. Visualizing the connections among different fields and different ideas is a powerful way of getting points across. But
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somehow, perhaps because of the length of the book, the book begin to gather dust on my shelf. I finally pulled it down, thinking to give it another try. But the world has probably changed more in the past six months than in the past six years. This is 2020, and this book came out in 2013. I wouldn't know what might still be relevant. So, unfortunately, I gave up. Show Less