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Could Should Might Don't

How We Think About the Future

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Could Should Might Don't

By: Nick Foster
Narrated by: Nick Foster
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'Rigorous, rationally optimistic and ultimately empowering' OLIVER BURKEMAN
'A deeply-considered - and funny - treatise on complacency' ALEX McDOWELL
'Essential' DAVID EAGLEMAN
'A rare and wondrous thing' STEPHEN FRY

As the tempo of change accelerates beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined, the ability to think clearly about what lies ahead has never been more important – yet we remain remarkably bad at it.

So how might we think about the future with greater rigour?

Nick Foster is one of very few people to have built a career considering this question, and in this book he’s written an invaluable guide for the rest of us. From the Could of excitable, science fiction utopianism and the Should of data-driven, dogmatic certainty, to the Might of scenario planning and the Don’t of fear-driven risk avoidance, Foster explores how humanity has grappled with the concept of the future throughout history, tracing the emergence of distinct schools of thought and exploring the virtues, blind spots, and inevitable shortcomings of each.
Could Should Might Don’t resists making cocksure prophecies and bombastic predictions, instead encouraging us to create more balanced, detailed and truthful versions of the future, so that we might improve what we leave behind for those who might follow. Anthropology Ethics & Morality Future Studies Philosophy Social Sciences Funny
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Critic reviews

It's a rare and wondrous thing to read someone who can bring potential futures to life without being stuck in retreads of yet more takes on AI and robotics. Nick Foster's Could, Should Might, Don't blows a draught of fresh and thrilling air through a genre that has lately become stale, repetitive and unproductive. It's the kind of book you keep dropping down to your lap as you look up and wonder (STEPHEN FRY)
Praise for Nick Foster: Nick Foster is one of the world's foremost leaders in speculative design
Nick is the uninhibited master of design as a means for translation and clarity. He finds the soft underbelly of ideas, listens at the door of culture, clears away the tangle of hyperbole - and reveals those few notes that matter (CHARLIE SUTTON, Head of Design at Facebook/Meta (2017-2022))
All stars
Most relevant
Like: interesting and well thought out - vaguely reminiscent of Bill Bryson. Dislike: The sound quality was a little over compressed, not enough to distract or spoil the experience but enough to notice

Well thought out take, not on the future, but on how we think about the future and the consequences of that.

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