Future Imperfect
Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World

Future Imperfect describes and discusses technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications and how to deal with them.

David D. Friedman (Author)

9781107601659, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2011

358 pages
22.2 x 14.6 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

'Provocative would be another term for 'Future Imperfect', in which Friedman lays out a tantalizing range of either/or futures - greater personal privacy and choice protected by encryption and private contracts, or a Big Brotheresque world in which surveillance technologies and databases catalog our behaviors' San Francisco Chronicle

Future Imperfect describes and discusses a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work and play. We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

Part I. Prolog: 1. Introduction
2. Living with change
Part II. Privacy and Technology: 3. A world of strong privacy
4. Information processing: threat or menace? or if information is property, who owns it?
5. Surveillance tech: the universal panopticon
Part III. Doing Business Online: 6. Ecash
7. Contracts in cyberspace
8. Watermarks and barbed wire
9. Reactionary progress - amateur scholars and open source
10. Intermission: what's a meta phor?
Part IV. Crime and Control: 11. The future of computer crime
12. Law enforcement x 2
Part V. Biotechnologies: 13. Human reproduction
14. The more you know …
15. As gods in the garden
16. Mind drugs
Part VI. The Real Science Fiction: 17. The last lethal disease
18. Very small Legos
19. Dangerous company
20. All in your mind
21. The final frontier
22. Interesting times.

Subject Areas: Law [L], Economics, finance, business & management [K]