Susan Greenfield explores how the human nature of future generations could be on course for a dramatic alteration, arguing that the current revolution in biomedical science and information technologies will have a huge impact on our brains and central nervous system. She believes that the society in which future generations will live and the way they view themselves will be like nothing our species has yet experienced in the tens of thousands of years to date. makeover far more cataclysmic than anything that has happened before. As we appreciate the dynamism and sensitivity of our brain circuitry, so the prospect of directly tampering with the essence of our individuality becomes a possibility.

As we witness a series of social, political, cultural, and economic changes/disruptions this book examines the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the way emerging technologies are impacting our lives and changing society. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterised by the emergence of new technologies that are blurring the boundaries between the physical, the digital, and the biological worlds. This book allows readers to explore how these technologies will impact peoples’ lives by 2030. It helps readers to not only better understand the use and implications of emerging technologies, but also to imagine how their individual life will be shaped by them. The book provides an opportunity to see the great potential but also the threats and challenges presented by the emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, posing questions for the reader to think about what future they want. Emerging technologies, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, cloud computing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, fifth-generation wireless technologies (5G), and fully autonomous vehicles, among others, will have a significant impact on every aspect of our lives, as such this book looks at their potential impact in the entire spectrum of daily life, including home life, travel, education and work, health, entertainment and social life. Providing an indication of what the world might look like in 2030, this book is essential reading for students, scholars, professionals, and policymakers interested in the nexus between emerging technologies and sustainable development, politics and society, and global governance.

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Essential reading on how technology empowers rogue actors and how society can adapt. Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. A dramatic shift from 20th century "closed" military innovation to "open" innovation driven by commercial processes is underway. The diffusion of modern technology--robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, synthetic biology, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence--to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is the continuation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, from the invention of dynamite to the release of the AK-47, many of the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of technological advances combined with changes in who can use them. That shifting social context illuminates our current situation, in which new "open" technologies are reshaping the future of war. Cronin explains why certain lethal technologies spread, which ones to focus on, and how individuals and private groups will adapt lethal off-the-shelf technologies for malevolent ends. Now in paperback with a foreword by Lawrence Freedman and a new epilogue, Power to the People focuses on how to both preserve the promise of emerging technologies and reduce risks. Power is flowing to the people, but the same digital technologies that empower can imperil global security--unless we act strategically.

‘Morland predicts the future of humanity in 10 illuminating statistics (could the Japanese and Italians now go the way of the dodo?) and looks back to how ebbs and flows of population have shaped history, such as the Soviet Union’s plummeting birth rate in the 1960s, which hastened the end of the Cold War.’ - The Daily Telegraph ‘The Best Books for Summer 2022’ The great forces of population change – the balance of births, deaths and migrations – have made the world what it is today. They have determined which countries are superpowers and which languish in relative obscurity, which economies top the international league tables and which are at best also-rans. The same forces that have shaped our past and present are shaping our future. Illustrating this through ten illuminating indicators, from the fertility rate in Singapore (one) to the median age in Catalonia (forty-three), Paul Morland shows how demography is both a powerful and an under-appreciated lens through which to view the global transformations that are currently underway. Tomorrow’s People ranges from the countries of West Africa where the tendency towards large families is combining with falling infant mortality to create the greatest population explosion ever witnessed, to the countries of East Asia and Southern Europe where generations of low birth-rate and rising life expectancy are creating the oldest populations in history. Morland explores the geographical movements of peoples that are already under way – portents for still larger migrations ahead – which are radically changing the cultural, ethnic and religious composition of many societies across the globe, and in their turn creating political reaction that can be observed from Brexit to the rise of Donald Trump. Finally, he looks at the two underlying motors of change – remarkable rises in levels of education and burgeoning food production – which have made all these epochal developments possible. Tomorrow’s People provides a fascinating, illuminating and thought-provoking tour of an emerging new world. Nobody who wants to understand that world should be without it.