The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise,Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster. In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century. In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future. |
Contents
The Party of Life | 27 |
The Infinite Series | 55 |
The Tree of Knowledge | 83 |
The Bonds of Life | 111 |
Creating Nature | 147 |
Fields of Play | 171 |
On the Verge | 191 |
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Common terms and phrases
allow American artificial beach volleyball Botkin Buchanan building central competition complex conservative create creativity criticism culture David David Gelernter decentralized demand dynamic processes dynamist dynamist rules E. F. Schumacher economic economist environment Esther Dyson evolution evolving experiments feedback Forbes future Gelernter genetic global goal Hayek human ideal ideas imagine immigrants improvements individuals industry infinite series innovation institutions intellectual Internet interview invention Jeremy Rifkin Joel Mokyr Jonathan Rauch Kirkpatrick Sale knowledge learning limits lives ment National nature open-ended Pat Buchanan play plenitude political predictable Press problem progress promise reactionary regulations require resilience Rifkin says simply social society stability stasis stasist static tacit knowledge tech technocratic things tion Tom Peters trade traditional trial-and-error University verge Virginia Postrel vision Worster writes York