What is the Future? John Urry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2016, 226 pp.

Futures studies has long been a paradoxical enterprise that has often made it vulnerable to misunderstanding and misuse. From time to time, however, a work appears that freshly reinterprets the current ‘state of play’ for wider audiences, thereby helping promoting wider understanding and greater traction. H.G. Wells, Alvin Toffler and Bertrand de Jouvenel all achieved something like this in their own time and place. Now John Urry has provided us with a further welcome example. Read more…