Preparing for a World that Doesn't Exist - Yet: Framing a Second Enlightenment to Create Communities of the Future

by Rick Smyre, Neil Richardson

Are you really ready for change? Are you prepared for a world changing as fast as you can read this sentence? Most leaders say they are prepared for the future, yet many organizations and communities are doing things in the same old way they’ve been working for decades. We’re living on the precipice of a new era in human history. Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist - Yet offers an approach to getting ready for an emerging society that will be increasingly fast paced, interconnected, interdependent, and complex. In Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist - Yet, you will learn about an emerging Second Enlightenment and the capacities you’ll need to achieve success in this new, fast-evolving world. Higher education, health and wellness, governance and the economy are transforming in ways few of us could have imagined ten or even five years ago. In this book, you’ll get the skills you need to ride the wave of the future and the perspective you’ll need to be ready to catch the next wave, too. Planners, physicians, government and higher-education leaders are using the principles and capacities described in this book to create better organizations, and best of all communities of the future that will lead to a planet that can thrive. Join them in looking at the future with excitement and anticipation.

248 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2016

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book on a grand scale. It attempts to chart a transformation of humanity from where we are now, to where we might go in a second Enlightenment. It doesn't really achieve this objective, but it does have some interesting moments along the way. I was recommended the book by a colleague, and I am not sure whether or not I appreciate the recommendation.

This is an American book written for an American audience. I'm afraid to say that there isn't much to appeal to an audience outside of the US. There is a great exhortation for the rest of the world to 'be like us', without a critical appraisal of why we would want to do so. One of the main themes of the book is a future of healthcare, but why would any community in the developed world want to move from universal healthcare to partial healthcare? The American system has very little to recommend it to others.

There were a couple of ideas that I did like and I think are worth developing further. The first is the link between place, community, and prosperity. It is an old idea contained within the core of 'The Creative Community', but the book really did manage to establish that creative entrepreneurs can live anywhere. It is the attractiveness of location that creates the economy, and, only when that is established, will prosperity follow. I can now see a stronger case for public subsidies to arts festivals and the like, even the elitist and exclusive ones.

The other idea that I liked was the concept of the murmuration of markets. Traditional economics is taught to assume that markets function something like clockwork. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that they don't. However, it has been hard for me to conceptualise how they do work until I read the piece on murmuration within markets. Each market agent (consumer, producer, and so on) is nominally independent (the clockwork assumption), but also has their choices influenced by the choices of others (the murmuration effect). This idea has been around for some time, but visualising a flock of starlings helps to cnceptualise how markets work, and why, collectively we might head in the wrong direction. This is a thought worth developing.

The book has a feel of being self published. It is badly written and stands in need of a good edit, both for length and style. There are passages that are bloated, and that just gets in the way of the flow of the argument. There are passages that consist of nothing more than a list. I still struggle with the ungrammatical title. That is an itch that I just can't scratch. If you can see your way past all of this, you might find it an interesting book.

[Jeff]

I’ve never been much of a futurist but this book might be a “weak signal” of impending change. That’s sort of an inside joke for those that have read this. Not a speculative rant a look at changes that might be necessary in human relationships as we move into the future. And, not an ideological or apocalyptic rant despite the talk of a “second enlightenment.” The book works to stimulate a greater consciousness of the future.