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“Middle-aged people – like me – often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin,” said one of the authors, Daniel T. Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard. “What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

On the other hand, French postmodern philosopher Jean Beaudrillard contends that Fukuyama’s modernist theory is no more than an illusion caused by our particular relationship with time. He writes that contemporary civilization has simply “lost” its sense of history:

2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

16) “You” will be turning into a cloud of data that circles the planet like a thin gauze While it's already hard enough to tell how others perceive us physically, your global, phantom, information-self will prove equally vexing to you: your shopping trends, blog residues, CCTV appearances – it all works in tandem to create a virtual being that you may neither like nor recognize.

North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989 Quebec will decide to quietly and quite pleasantly leave Canada. California contemplates splitting into two states, fiscal and non-fiscal. Cuba becomes a Club Med with weapons. The Hate States will form a coalition.

if we should meet up in 2061, much less in the 26th century, you’re welcome to rib me about this talk. Because I’ll be happy to still be alive to rib.

In The Future, living forever is at hand, and its first test group are characters we meet in the play: they are our generation's children, as one of them mentions going to the London Olympics when he was six years old.

The same couples gather for each scene, with the plot having progressed at an interval of four years in between scenes. It's a storytelling device that works well, especially in the second act, when the world has changed massivley because of the drug and its societal side effects have become more apparent. Now in their late twenties, the men are old high school friends and in the beginning of the play, their conversational topics are mundane: whether or not to have children, debates about love and money, old memories and past slights. The first mention of Senexate is met with disbelief. But by the next act, most of the characters are taking it.

After the first excitement over immortality has faded, the problems become apparent. Harrison's medical mind has focused on the statistical and moral realities. Population control is a pressing, global issue — and soon an authoritarian system has fallen into place that limits the birthrate. Jobs and workers become stagnant with no new vacancies, no career ladders to climb. Without children to raise and faced with the possibility of perpetual life, the old-fashioned institution of marriage starts to break down. People in developing countries do not have the same access to Senexate, and the drug company that developed it has assumed massive proportions. There is talk of blood tests, genetic ID cards, and a vaccine that will prevent the drug from working forever, if you violate the rules.

The European Union is an entity like no other in world history. After the end of World War II, the international system was configured around a series of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and NATO. But the process of economic and political cooperation that West Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg began in 1951 is fundamentally different from the rest of the post-war organizations.

Immanuel Kant believed that Europe would only overcome its constant state of war by achieving some form of political unity.

Unlike computers, which we invented, the Earth's processes are something we can only understand through observation. And we need time to do it. Maybe not millions of years, but certainly not just a century either.

There is another kind of slow time that we often ignore in our rush to hurtle into tomorrow at light speed. This is called species time. It is the amont of time that a species, like say Homo sapiens, is likely to exist.

This is particularly important when you start to think about a reasonable timeframe for the development of space travel and solar system colonization.

This is a shame, because during the second half of the 20th century and continuing through the past decade, professional thinking about the future has grown from a niche field dominated by military strategists and predictioneers into a diverse global practice.

The Institute for the Future’s work is heavily influenced by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. By looking at the convergence of social and technological forces that shape our communities, we help individuals and organizations make better, more informed decisions about the future. 

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America’s indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time.

“Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model,” said Nunez.

no one had previously detailed the Aymara’s “radically different metaphoric mapping of time” – a super-fundamental concept, which, unlike the idea of “democracy,” say, does not rely on formal schooling and isn’t an obvious product of culture.

We’ve now dodged the bullet of a Mitt Romney White House, so let’s get back to reality. Despite his campaign-trail populism, the president will continue the politics of accommodation to conservatives. Two of the three priorities he has set out for his next term are at the top of the GOP agenda: a “grand bargain” to cut government spending over the next 10 years and corporate tax reform that would cut rates—don’t hold your breath—and close loopholes. The third priority, rationalizing immigration law, is one of the few progressive ideas that also has the support of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

President Obama says his top priority is a deal with House Republicans to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. His “liberal” position starts with a ratio of spending cuts to tax increases of 2.5-to-1. The only real dispute between the president and Republicans is whether the rich will have to give back the tax breaks George W. Bush gave them. So when the eventual deal is struck, the federal government will be taking more out of the economy over the next decade than it is putting in.

Off-shoring and automation will continue to shed jobs with no offsetting increase in the demand for labor. Budget cuts—including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid—will widen the holes in the social safety net and further limit investments in education, infrastructure and technology upon which any chance at future prosperity depends.

His book continues his war on digital utopianism and his assertion of humanist and individualistic values in a hive-mind world. But Lanier still sees potential in digital technology: He just wants it reoriented away from its main role so far, which involves “spying” on citizens, creating a winner-take-all society, eroding professions and, in exchange, throwing bonbons to the crowd.

Much of the book looks at the way Internet technology threatens to destroy the middle class by first eroding employment and job security, along with various “levees” that give the economic middle stability.

At different times, lesser events have transfixed Americans. This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them. This may be part of a cycle that shapes American interest in public affairs.

The United States was founded as a place where private affairs were intended to supersede public life.

In light of its economic problems and its leadership's waning popularity, the Netherlands will likely soften austerity measures in the short- and medium-term. In May, the European Commission gave The Hague permission to miss its deficit target for 2013. The country will probably fail to meet the required EU deficit goals again in 2014 -- the Dutch government has become increasingly worried about the negative effects of expedited spending cuts. While the European Commission is likely to pressure The Netherlands to implement additional spending cuts, it probably will not punish the country when it does not comply with those demands.

This goes beyond austerity measures; the Dutch parliament is currently assessing its broader relationship with the European Union. In a document released in June, the Dutch Cabinet indicated that no additional concessions of sovereignty should be made to supranational institutions, and that The Hague should keep as many of its own prerogatives as possible.

Because of its physical location in Europe, the Netherlands keeps strong political and economic ties with France and Germany. The Dutch will avoid any meaningful policy decisions until after Germans elections, which are scheduled for late September. The Hague will not openly criticize Berlin or Brussels as Paris has, but it will pursue a more independent fiscal policy by relaxing austerity at home in order to avoid a further drop in popular support.

Let’s talk about manufacturing. You say a country that stops doing mass manufacturing falls apart. Why? In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.

You also say that manufacturing is crucial to innovation. Most innovation is not done by research institutes and national laboratories. It comes from manufacturing—from companies that want to extend their product reach, improve their costs, increase their returns. What’s very important is in-house research. Innovation usually arises from somebody taking a product already in production and making it better: better glass, better aluminum, a better chip. Innovation always starts with a product.

American companies do still innovate, though. They just outsource the manufacturing. What’s wrong with that? Look at the crown jewel of Boeing now, the 787 Dreamliner. The plane had so many problems—it was like three years late. And why? Because large parts of it were subcontracted around the world. The 787 is not a plane made in the USA; it’s a plane assembled in the USA. They subcontracted composite materials to Italians and batteries to the Japanese, and the batteries started to burn in-flight. The quality control is not there.

from Poland to Azerbaijan, I heard two questions: Are the Russians on the move? And what can these countries do to protect themselves?

Moscow is anxious too, and some Russians I spoke to expressed this quite openly. From the Russian point of view, the Europeans and Americans did the one thing they knew Moscow could not live with: They installed a pro-Western government in Kiev.

In recent years psychologists have exposed the many ways that people subconsciously maintain and massage their moral self-image. They rate themselves as morally superior to the next person; overestimate the likelihood that they will act virtuously in the future; see their own good intentions as praiseworthy while dismissing others’ as inconsequential. And they soften their moral principles when doing a truly dirty job, like carrying out orders to exploit uninformed customers.

“We can’t make up the past, but the brain has difficulty placing events in time, and we’re able to shift elements around,” said Anne E. Wilson, a social psychologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. “The result is that we can create a personal history that, if not perfect, makes us feel we’re getting better and better.”

The countries we are visiting on this trip (Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland) occupy the borderland between Islam, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.

My interest in the region is to understand more clearly how the next iteration of regional geopolitics will play out. Russia is far more powerful than it was 10 years ago. The European Union is undergoing internal stress and Germany is recalculating its position. The United States is playing an uncertain and complex game. I want to understand how the semicircle of powers, from Turkey to Poland, are thinking about and positioning themselves for the next iteration of the regional game.

At first glance, the Obama administration appears to have ruled out the "concert of powers" approach to managing multipolarity. The United States instead remains committed to a 21st-century version of the "Open Door" policy, rejecting anything that would recognize "spheres of influence" or "zones of privileged interests" in the geographic neighborhoods of the other great powers. As Vice President Joe Biden reiterated in Kyiv in July 2009, "We don't recognize, and I want to reiterate this, any spheres of influence." Nor is it likely the current administration would embrace an updated version of Nixon's "regional policemen" idea -- having a major power assume the lead for ensuring stability and security in a specific region of the world.

Multipolarity is the future, says the U.S. intelligence community, and many serious students of foreign policy tend to agree. But policymakers in Washington don't seem eager to embrace change, or to make the strategic choices that would be needed to guarantee continued U.S. global leadership.

U.S. policy seems predicated instead on expecting the rise of other powers to be interrupted, or even reversed. There is some rationale for this approach