Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st Century (Paperback)
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Description
For generations, humanity stared at the vastness of the oceans and wondered, "What if?" Today, having explored the curves of the Earth, we now stare at endless stars and wonder, "What if?" Our technology has brought us to the make-or-break moment in human history. We can either grow complacent, and go extinct like the dinosaurs, or spread throughout the cosmos, as Carl Sagan dreamed of.What if your toothbrush becomes smarter than you? What happens to your business, your country, your planet and yourself? What if your car doesn't need a driver anymore? What if we don't need to age and die? What if machines are smarter than us? What if, instead of fear of the future - you see opportunity, instead of an end - you see a beginning, instead of loss - you see profit, and instead of death - you see life? What if you and your organization get future-primed?For many years Nikola Danaylov has been interviewing the future and motivating people all over the world to embrace rather than fear it. "Conversations with the Future" was born from those interviews and Nik's unceasing need to explore "What If" with some of the most forward thinking visionaries in the world today.
About the Author
In 2007, Nikola Danaylov was a master's degree student in Political Science looking for an interesting topic to write his thesis on. Nikola was tired of WWI and WWII research papers and wanted to do something different, something that not everyone was familiar with, where he could dare to make a contribution. One day, as he was watching the news coming from Iraq and Afghanistan, Nikola decided to look into drone warfare. Doing research on military drones pushed him into the field of Artificial Intelligence and there he discovered Ray Kurzweil's seminal book, "The Singularity is Near." The very next book he read was Charlie Stross' science fiction novel, "Accelerando." In 2009, he completed his master's degree and entered the army of unemployed job seekers at the peak of the recession. "I stopped counting after I sent out 300 resumes - I got one interview which apparently didn't go well because they never called me back, Nikola remembers. "One of my applications went out to the first and only blog dedicated to the technological singularity - Singularity Hub. The Hub was looking to hire a staff writer and, given my education, past research and writing skills, I thought I made the best candidate you could get. I eagerly anticipated an email telling me how totally perfect I was for the job, but the email never came. So, after two weeks of waiting in vain, it slowly started to dawn on me that I wasn't getting that job either. Then, a crazy thought occurred to me: maybe, just maybe, I didn't need them. Perhaps there was some tiny chance I might be able to do it on my own. I could start my own Singularity website. I mean, how hard could it be?" Seven years after its humble beginning, the Singularity.FM podcast has had over 4.2 million views on iTunes and YouTube and has been featured on international TV networks as well as on some of the biggest blogs in the world, such as BBC, ArteTV, TV Japan, io9, The Telegraph, The Huffington Post, ZDNet, BoingBoing and others. Today, the Singularity Weblog is the biggest independent blog on technological singularity, transhumanism, exponential technology and the future of humanity. The Singularity.FM podcast is the first, most popular and widely recognized interview series in the niche. Professor Roman Yampolskiy adds, "Nikola has established himself as the 'Larry King' of the Singularity."
