10 books about the future of technology

In The Infinite Retina, authors Irena Cronin and Robert Scoble attempt to answer the question of what Spatial Computing is, and help you to understand where Spatial Computing - an augmented reality where humans and machines can interact in a physical space - came from and where it's going.

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Abundance and Bold comes a practical playbook for technological convergence in our modern era. In their book Abundance, bestselling authors and futurists Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler tackled grand global challenges, such as poverty, hunger, and energy. Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of powerful new entrepreneurs. Now the bestselling authors are back with The Future Is Faster Than You Think, a blueprint for how our world will change in response to the next ten years of rapid technological disruption. Technology is accelerating far more quickly than anyone could have imagined. During the next decade, we will experience more upheaval and create more wealth than we have in the past hundred years. In this gripping and insightful roadmap to our near future, Diamandis and Kotler investigate how wave after wave of exponentially accelerating technologies will impact both our daily lives and society as a whole. What happens as AI, robotics, virtual reality, digital biology, and sensors crash into 3D printing, blockchain, and global gigabit networks? How will these convergences transform today’s legacy industries? What will happen to the way we raise our kids, govern our nations, and care for our planet? Diamandis, a space-entrepreneur-turned-innovation-pioneer, and Kotler, bestselling author and peak performance expert, probe the science of technological convergence and how it will reinvent every part of our lives—transportation, retail, advertising, education, health, entertainment, food, and finance—taking humanity into uncharted territories and reimagining the world as we know it. As indispensable as it is gripping, The Future Is Faster Than You Think provides a prescient look at our impending future.

Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard, shares breakthrough, frontier strategies to navigate the challenges marketers face to thrive in a modern business world that is changing with unprecedented speed and disruption. As technology has continually evolved in the last several decades, marketing has had to change with it, evolving through four significant stages that build on the strategies and tools of the previous era. What happens next in the fifth stage, or Fifth Paradigm, will not be an evolution, but a revolution. Almost everything about how marketing is done today, including the very notion of a brand itself, will require a complete re-imagination. As Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard--one of the world's most recognizable and decorated brands--Raja Rajamannar shares the forward-thinking ways all businesses must rethink their entire marketing landscape to remain relevant and be successful. Readers will: Understand the evolution of marketing and how to be at the forefront of future change. Get clarity on the right marketing strategies and tactics to pursue amidst an ever-evolving industry. Achieve breakthroughs in innovative thinking in order to compete in modern business. Gain perspective from top marketers across industries. Quantum Marketing is for all business people who seek to understand how rapidly marketing is evolving, what some of the smartest people in the discipline are doing to get ready for this dramatic shift, and what the new world will look like for companies, consumers, and society at large as the race to develop revolutionary marketing strategies reaches a whole new level.

From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain, an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. When we think about the future of war, the military and Washington and most everyone gets it backwards. We think in terms of buying single military systems, such as fighter jets or aircraft carriers. And when we think about modernizing those systems, we think about buying better versions of the same things. But what really matters is not the single system but "the battle network" -- the collection of sensors and shooters that enables a military to find an enemy system, target it, and attack it. This process is what the military calls "the kill chain" -- how you get from detection to action, and do it as quickly as possible. The future of war is not about buying better versions of the same systems we have always had; it is about buying faster, better kill chains. As former Staff Director for the Senate Armed Services Committee and senior policy advisor to Senator John McCain, Christian Brose saw this reality up close. In The Kill Chain, he elaborates on one of the greatest strategic predicaments facing America now: that we are playing a losing game. Our military's technological superiority and traditional approach to projecting power have served us well for decades, when we faced lesser opponents. But now we face highly capable and motivated competitors that are using advanced technologies to erode our military edge, and with it, our ability to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace. We must adapt or fail, Brose writes, and the biggest obstacle to doing so is the sheer inertial force of the status quo.

"In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. Drawing on extensive research with diverse parents, this book reveals how digital technologies give personal and political parenting struggles a distinctive character, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent, or support. The book reveals the pincer movement of parenting in late modernity. Parents are both more burdened with responsibilities and charged with respecting the agency of their child-leaving much to negotiate in today's "democratic" families. The book charts how parents now often enact authority and values through digital technologies-as "screen time," games, or social media become ways of both being together and setting boundaries. The authors show how digital technologies introduce both valued opportunities and new sources of risk. To light their way, parents comb through the hazy memories of their own childhoods and look toward varied imagined futures. This results in deeply diverse parenting in the present, as parents move between embracing, resisting, or balancing the role of technology in their own and their children's lives. This book moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research in the United Kingdom, the book offers conclusions and insights relevant to parents, policymakers, educators, and researchers everywhere"--

In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new “makers.” Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk—one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history—is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.

The Digital Pill reflects on apps and digital projects launched by pharmaceutical companies in recent years, as well as the first accreditations for digital pills already issued by recognised regulators. The Digital Pill is essential reading for anyone working in, engaged with or interested in understanding the e-health community.

The instant New York Times bestseller from legendary investment guru Ric Edelman, who presents a prescient personal finance guide on how technology and science will reshape the way we save, invest, and plan for the future. In The Truth About Your Future, award-winning financial advisor Ric Edelman reveals how technology and science are evolving at a blistering, almost incomprehensible pace—with profound implications for your personal finances. Ric radically upends traditional financial planning, showing that you need not just one financial plan, but three—one for now, one for later and one for much later. He explains: Why you’re likely to live much longer—and the impact on your financial future; how you must alter your plans to shift from the familiar linear lifeline (school-job-retirement-death) to the new cyclical lifeline; the importance of Career Planning—even if you’re in your fifties or sixties; how to invest in tech companies and how to generate income from your investments; why nursing homes are becoming obsolete—and with them, long-term care insurance policies, and what this means for you; how to protect your digital assets; and how you’ll spend your time—and money—in retirement, and why the future will be the happiest time of your life. The traditional paradigms of how we live, learn, and invest are shifting under our feet. Fortunately, Ric Edelman has seen the future, and in The Truth About Your Future he illustrates how smart investors can adapt and thrive in today’s changing marketplace. Newcomers and loyal Edelman followers alike will find value in his proven advice and trademark humor. This is a must-have guide for anyone serious about successfully adapting to the ever-evolving financial landscape.