Age of discovery : navigating the storms of our second renaissance / Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldin, Ian, 1955- author.

Kutarna, Chris, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Modern--21st century.

Civilization, Modern.

Civilization, Modern--21st century--Forecasting.

Progress--Forecasting.

Progress.

Renaissance.

Civilization, Modern--Forecasting.

Forecasting.

Physical Description:

xxv, 521 pages : illustrations, maps ; 20 cm

Edition:

Revised paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Business, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017.

Summary:

Now is humanity's best moment. And our most fragile. Global health, wealth and education are booming. Scientific discovery is flourishing. But the same forces that make big gains possible for some of us deliver big losses to others-and tangle us together in ways that make everyone vulnerable. We've been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, redrew all maps of the world, liberated information and shifted Western civilization from the medieval to the early modern era. Such change came at a price: social division, political extremism, economic shocks, pandemics and other unintended consequences of human endeavour. Now is our second Renaissance. In the face of terrorism, Brexit, refugee crises and the global impact of a Trump presidency, we can flourish-if we heed the urgent lessons of history. Age of Discovery, revised and updated for this paperback edition, shows us how.

Contents:

1 To Flounder or Flourish? 1

The moment we're in 1

The past is prologue 5

The way forward 11

Good housekeeping 15

Part I Making Sense of a Second Renaissance 21

2 New World 23

New maps 23

New media 38

3 New Tangles 57

Trade 58

Finance 67

People 77

Technology 93

Beyond 'connected' 100

4 Vitruvian Man 109

From misery to middle class 112

A new golden age 120

Why now? 133

Tarnish on a golden age 146

Fresh stains 151

Glimpsing greatness 162

Part II Flourishing Genius 167

5 Copernican Revolutions 169

Paradigm shifts 169

New shifts 178

The formula for flourishing genius 216

6 Cathedrals, Believers and Doubt 229

Collective efforts 229

Collective doubt 245

Four reasons to believe 253

Reasons to fear 269

Part III Flourishing Risk 281

7 The Pox Is Spreading, Venice Is Sinking 283

The downside of linking up 283

Too complex to untangle, too concentrated to keep safe 286

New poxes 293

Merchants of destruction 307

Taking nothing for granted 316

8 Prophets and Bonfires 335

Populist bonfires 335

A second bonfire of vanity 342

From bonfire to revolution 355

A new crisis of faith 363

Losing control of the narrative 373

Steering the second Renaissance 378

Part IV The Contest for Our Future 383

9 David 385

Magnify flourishing genius 387

Mitigate flourishing risk 415

Goliath 442.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

First published in 2016 under the title "Age of discovery: navigating the risks and rewards of our new renaissance"

ISBN:

147294352X

9781472943521

OCLC:

1021256254