Trees on Mars : our obsession with the future

ISBN: 9781609806378
ISBN: 1609806379
Physical Description: regular print 317 pages ; 23 cm
Edition: A Seven Stories Press first edition.
Publisher: New York : Seven Stories Press, 2015.
Copyright: &copy;2015.

Niedzviecki, Hal 1971- (author.).

Summary: A roller-coaster tour through our obsession with the future - and what's at stake when we neglect our present. Tech bloggers livecast the launch of the latest Kindle, crowds form serpentine lines outside of Apple stores on the eve of new iPhone releases, stock markets surge and recede on rumours of what Intel and Microsoft have in the pipeline, and, on college campuses across the country, universities offer master's degrees in Future Studies. Meet futurist consultants who preach the need for constant change, to a fourth-generation New Jersey dairy farmer grappling with the increasing complexities of a once-bucolic industry, to a group of Stanford undergraduates pulling all-nighters in an effort to produce the next must-have app. Through these characters and others, Niedzviecki shows how future-obsession and future-anxiety are affecting real people.