Great quote about predicting the future

I just finished the book China Airborne: The Test of China's Future, by James Fallows, which is by far the most interesting book about China that I have yet read.  Fallows' narrative is entertaining and engaging, and yet he is able to use the development of a modern commercial airline industry as a very effective proxy for framing and (trying) to grasp the scale of both potentials and challenges in China.

At the very end he has a great line about the challenge in predicting China's future that I just loved:

But I know how much is in flux, and how much is at stake.  It is not an evasion of analysis but a recognition of China's complexity, and the world's, to say that a wide range of outcomes is possible, and that it is worth watching very carefully signals like those I have mentioned to recalibrate our estimates.

That's simply an awesome and elegant quote that I think captures the tentativeness and openness more or us should adopt in our thinking about the futures of complex life.

15 books for your Christmas list this year

Since it's that time of the year again, we've put together a list of recommended reading that might be helpful if you happen to be shopping around for Christmas gifts for any readers and deep thinkers on your list this year.  The selections below span a range from deep, almost academic treatments to long views of history to works on subjects that are a little more "top of mind."

Thinking About the Future

• The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: While somewhat contentious among trained futurist circles, Taleb's justly popular book on black swan events, randomness, and the limits of knowledge is an important set of intellectual reminders.
• Connections: James Burke's multiple television series on "Connections" is a perennial futures favorite as it wonderfully highlights the contingency of the histories we all take for granted.
• Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era: History, Purposes, Knowledge: For anyone interested in learning about the academic field of futures studies, this is a great place to start.
• Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and Civilizational Change: Produced by two great thinkers, this book reviewing big picture theories of social change is a must-read for serious thinkers about the future.
• Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation: A classic work concerned with scenario planning (popularized by the Global Business Network), this book is still recommended by professional futurists to professional futurists.

Economic Futures

• Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation: This most recent work by Cowen paints a vivid though not necessarily encouraging vision of our economic future that will definitely exciting to some, and depressing to others.
• The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time: Certainly receiving renewed interest since 2008, this famous work by Polanyi introduces both an important critique of modern economic flows and new definitions for understanding economic life.
• Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy: The futures of automation and the dislocation of human labor are hot topics at the moment, and this work by Brynjolfsson and McAfee is a wonderfully short and clear dive into the subject.
• Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization: Drexler almost single-handedly kicked off the nanotech craze with his book, Engines of Creation.  In his most recent work he returns to an exploration of the technology that remains poised to revolutionize material life.
• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages: For those interested in either "creative destruction" or solid theories of economic change, Perez's book on long cycles of technology-driven change is sure to delight.

Political Futures

• The Future of Power: Critical to any exploration of political futures is some consideration of power, and Nye's book does an excellent job of exploring the changing nature of power on the global stage.
• No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn: Amid the recent deluge on books about the future of the world order, the rise of China, and/or the decline of the US, Kupchan's book was an interesting, thought-provoking suggestion that the future will not be a new hegemony, but something with greater political diversity.
• The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History: For those interested in how the modern nation-state came to be, and what historical patterns suggest for it's future, Bobbitt's incredibly detailed account and theorizing will be thoroughly engrossing.
• Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future: Any long-view and deep history buffs will be sure to enjoy Morris' thoroughly engaging exploration about the patterns that made, and perhaps continue to make, the world order.
• Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety: Another in a long list of works on global political futures, Rachman's book is useful for the reminder that the world doesn't fall neatly into two ideological camps on all issues; rather it splits up messily according to specific issues.