The Great Transformation: History for a Techno-Human Future

ISBN-13: 9781138186903 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 262 str.

Judith Bessant

Opis

Since the 1970s information sciences and new communication technologies have changed the ways we produce everything, from food and material goods to knowledge. These first steps in the Great Transformation are unlike earlier agricultural or industrial revolutions. This transformation will dramatically increase productivity while radically reducing demand for human labour across all skill levels. When work as we know it disappears, what will we educate for? How will we live? Will this change enlarge or further impoverish democracy? These are questions we need to address. If policy responses to previous socio-economic crises like the 1890s and 1930s 'depressions' and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis are any guide, we have no guarantee that good policy will prevail. How can we avoid the pitfalls of willful blindness as we confront this unprecedented change? The book shows how we can do better this time.

Spis treści

Introduction  1. Freedom and Determinism: Alpha Go, AI Financial Trading and Japan’s Mika Diva  2. What is Happening? : The First Axial Age  3. Changing Our Minds: The Techno-Axial Age  4. Crisis and Learning from the past: Three economic crises, 1890-2008  5. Recursivity in Times of Crisis: A Heuristic  6. Data is the New Oil: Leadership and Political Rhetoric in the Techno-Axial Age  7. What experts say about Artificial Intelligence  8. Social design for the new Techno-Axial Age  Conclusion

O autorze

Judith Bessant is a Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She is widely published and her research interests include policy, sociology, politics, youth studies, media-technology studies, and history. She has also worked as an advisor for governments and non-government organizations. In 2017 she was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) for her ‘significant service to education as a social scientist, advocate and academic specializing in youth studies research’.