Taming An Uncertain Future

Examines the intersection between temporality, futurity, and the political in contemporary society by exploring how the imperative to govern an uncertain future affects the way political power is organized and exercised.

A popular clich in contemporary public discourse holds that we live in a time of increasing uncertainty; that the next catastrophe is perpetually imminent and yet increasingly beyond our capacity to foresee. The future, in short, is becoming much more difficult to control. One consequence of this increasingly widespread understanding of the future is that societies have turned to anticipatory governance strategies based on such concepts as risk management, the precautionary principle, and pre-emption to manage human affairs. This book takes an in-depth look at this trend by using the example of the 'pre-emptive security' strategies deployed in the post-9/11 War on Terror to develop a critical understanding of how the proliferation of such anticipatory governance strategies affects the way political power is organized and exercised. The book also makes a wider case for taking issues of time and the future more seriously in the study of contemporary global politics in particular and the social world more generally.

An examination of the cognitive tools that the mind uses to grapple with uncertainty in the real world. How do humans navigate uncertainty, continuously making near-effortless decisions and predictions even under conditions of imperfect knowledge, high complexity, and extreme time pressure? Taming Uncertainty argues that the human mind has developed tools to grapple with uncertainty. Unlike much previous scholarship in psychology and economics, this approach is rooted in what is known about what real minds can do. Rather than reducing the human response to uncertainty to an act of juggling probabilities, the authors propose that the human cognitive system has specific tools for dealing with different forms of uncertainty. They identify three types of tools: simple heuristics, tools for information search, and tools for harnessing the wisdom of others. This set of strategies for making predictions, inferences, and decisions constitute the mind's adaptive toolbox. The authors show how these three dimensions of human decision making are integrated and they argue that the toolbox, its cognitive foundation, and the environment are in constant flux and subject to developmental change. They demonstrate that each cognitive tool can be analyzed through the concept of ecological rationality—that is, the fit between specific tools and specific environments. Chapters deal with such specific instances of decision making as food choice architecture, intertemporal choice, financial uncertainty, pedestrian navigation, and adolescent behavior.

Our capacity to reshape the future has never been more powerful. Yet our ability to foresee the consequences of what we do has not kept pace. Is the idea that we have responsibilities to future generations therefore meaningful? This book argues that it is, with the aid of a unique reading of the care ethics tradition.

The embedding of any new technologies in society is challenging. The evolving state of the scientific art, often-unquantifiable risks and ill-defined developmental trajectories have the potential to hinder innovation and/or the commercial success of a technology. The are, however, a number of tools that can now be utilized by stakeholders to bridge the chasm that exists between the science and innovation dimensions on the one hand, and the societal dimensions on the other. This edited volume will draw together leading researchers from the domains of law, philosophy, political science, public administration and the natural sciences in order to demonstrate how tools such as, for example, constructive technology assessment, regulatory governance and societal scenarios, may be employed by stakeholders to assist in successfully embedding new technologies into society. This volume will focus primarily on the embedding of two emergent and emerging technologies: nanotechnologies and synthetic biology. Government, industry and the epistemic community continue to struggle with how best to balance the promised benefits of an emerging technology with concerns about its potential impacts. There is a growing body of literature that has examined these challenges from various cultural, scientific and jurisdictional dimensions. There is, however, much work that still needs to be done; this includes articulating the successes and failures of attempts to the societal embedding of technologies and their associated products. This edited volume is significant and timely, as unlike other books currently on the market, it shall draw from real work experiences and experiments designed anticipate the societal embedding of emerging technologies. This empirical work shall be supported by robust theoretical underpinnings.

The essays in this collection are written to make readers (re)consider what is possible in Africa. The essays shake the tree of received wisdom and received categories, and hone in on the complexities of life under ecological and economic constraints. Yet, throughout this volume, people do not emerge as victims, but rather as inventors, engineers, scientists, planners, writers, artists, and activists, or as children, mothers, fathers, friends, or lovers – all as future-makers. It is precisely through agents such as these that Africa is futuring: rethinking, living, confronting, imagining, and relating in the light of its many emerging tomorrows.

Macroeconomics is evolving in an almost dialectic fashion. The latest evolution is the development of a new synthesis that combines insights of new classical, new Keynesian and real business cycle traditions into a dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that serves as a foundation for thinking about macro policy. That new synthesis has opened up the door to a new antithesis, which is being driven by advances in computing power and analytic techniques. This new synthesis is coalescing around developments in complexity theory, automated general to specific econometric modeling, agent-based models, and non-linear and statistical dynamical models. This book thus provides the reader with an introduction to what might be called a Post Walrasian research program that is developing as the antithesis of the Walrasian DSGE synthesis.

This edited book explores the multi-layered relationships between public diplomacy and intensified uncertainties stemming from transnational political trends. It is the latest wave of political uncertainty that provides the background as well as yields evidence scrutinised by authors contributing to this book. The book argues that due to a state of perpetual crises, the simultaneity of diplomatic tensions and new digital modalities of power, international politics increasingly resembles a networked set of hyper-realities. Embracing multi-polar competition, superpowers such as Russia flex their muscles over their neighbours; celebrated ‘success stories’ of democratisation – Hungary, Poland and Czechia – move towards illiberal governance; old players of international politics such as Britain and America re-claim “greatness”, while other states, like China, adapt expansionist foreign policy goals. The contributors to this book consider the different ways in which transnational political trends and digitalisation breed uncertainty and shape the practice of public diplomacy.