About this item
An in-depth look at the future of the future. An app on your phone knows you're getting married before you do. Your friends' tweets can help data scientists predict your location with astounding accuracy, even if you don't use Twitter. Soon, we'll be able to know how many kids in a kindergarten class will catch a cold once the first one gets sick. We are on the threshold of a historic transition in our ability to predict aspects of the future with ever-increasing precision. Computer-aided forecasting is poised for rapid growth over the next ten years. The rise of big data will enable us to predict not only events like earthquakes or epidemics, but also individual behavior. Patrick Tucker explores the potential for abuse of predictive analytics as well as the benefits. Will we be able to predict guilt before a person commits a crime? Is it legal to quarantine someone 99 percent likely to have the superflu while they're still healthy? These questions matter, because the naked future will be upon us sooner than we realize.
About the Author
Patrick Tucker is the technology reporter/editor with Defense One and deputy editor for the Futurist magazine. He has written on the topics of data, complexity, AI and AGI, information technology, cybernetics, nanotechnology, genetics and genetic ethics, invention, climate change and climate change mitigation, demography, and neuroscience and his writing has appeared in various publications and on many sites, including THE FUTURIST magazine, The Atlantic, National Journal, Quartz, Slate, The Sun (U.K.) MIT Technology Review, The Wilson Quarterly, The Johns Hopkins Magazine, Encyclopedia Britannica online, the Utne Reader, and the Discovery Channel. His first book, The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move?, was published by Current, a Penguin imprint, in March of 2014. As a science journalist and editor, he's interviewed such technologists, policy experts, and visionaries as MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks, Google research director Peter Norvig, military strategist Edward N. Luttwak, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former CIA director Robert James Woolsey, tech guru Tim O'Reilly, environmentalist Lester Brown, flying-car-creator Paul Moller, and inventor Ray Kurzweil on various topics related to technology and innovation. His writing has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. He's been quoted in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Globe and Mail, The Christian Science Monitor, and Voice of America, and has been a guest on such networks and programs as BBC World Service, WTOP in Washington, Russia Today, CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, Fox and Friends, and Science Fantastic with Michio Kaku.
