ideas about the future

LA Times report on world hunger looks at why, despite "a worldwide glut of food", 800 million people on the planet are undernourished

My friend John Chittick is walking around on the planet, talking to teen-agers about AIDS prevention, in the hope that they in turn will teach their peer groups.

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The End of History and the Last Man - Francis Fukuyama

seminal article/book that began thinking about a post-Cold War future, and provides an earlier alternative view to Huntington's. Fukuyama argues that Hegel was right, Western democrary and liberalism will take over the planet.

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

Someone sent me Fukuyama's review of Huntington's book

Fukuyama now claims in Our Posthuman Future that we may see "the recommencement of history" when biotechnology "moves us into a posthuman stage of history" by changing human nature and therefore political realities.

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Interesting source book

David Johnson's overview of International Relations theories

Foreign Affairs: China threat?

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Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson * ground-breaking trilogy from the guy who coined "cyberspace"

Gibson reference page

another interview with Gibson

Parable of the Sower - Octavia E Butler * sci-fi with a mystical bent

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