What books or blogs should I read to get an idea how the world will change in the next 5-15 years?

July 11, 2011 6:07 PM

What books or blogs should I read to get an idea how the world will change in the next 5-15 years?

Stuff like mobile internet, 3d printing, china, debt, climate change etc etc.

posted by MetaMonkey to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

I always turn to Thomas Friedman to answer some of these questions for me.
posted by litnerd at 6:14 PM on July 11, 2011

Plan B 2.0 was assigned for a class I took on sustainable development, but I didn't actually manage to read it. Appears to be the kind of thing you're looking for, and was vetted by 3 professors who seemed to know what they were talking about.
posted by phunniemee at 6:18 PM on July 11, 2011

Michio Kaku.
posted by trevyn at 6:49 PM on July 11, 2011

The Oil Drum will give you a good basic grounding on the world energy market and where it's likely to take us in the near future.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:52 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Seconding Kaku. But also The Singularity is Near. It's a little out there an tehnophilic but it's what you're looking for.
posted by willie11 at 7:55 PM on July 11, 2011

Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years
posted by spasm at 9:05 PM on July 11, 2011

h+ "covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways." Although whether you think this is coming in the 5-15 year range depends on how optimistic/pessimistic you are.
posted by Ookseer at 10:34 PM on July 11, 2011

George Friedman (no relation to Thomas Friedman above) has a book The Next Decade that attempts to predict the next 10 years from a geo-political standpoint. Most of his predictions seemed fairly reasonable to me. It's also a good primer on current global conflicts and potential hot-spots.
posted by upplepop at 12:13 PM on July 12, 2011

Nobody can predict future. But I really enjoy reading about the possibilities exist to modify human being in Radical Evolution.
posted by Carius at 5:36 PM on July 12, 2011

I haven't read it yet, but based on a recommendation in another AskMeFi thread, I just picked up The Meaning of the 21st Century from the library.
posted by kristi at 1:55 PM on July 13, 2011

As someone who has to make a lot of these predictions as part of my job, let me offer something to keep in mind as you're reading these and other publications: most short term projections overshoot what will happen, while most long term projections undershoot what will happen.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 3:00 PM on July 13, 2011