The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years Paperback – August 28, 2007

I purchased this book for a college class. According to the syllabus, I will be reading it in about two weeks, so I cannot tell you if the material is valuable or not. However, after skimming through it, it appears to be well organized.

The author makes many speculative and outlandish predictions of the future. His sheer number of intuitive predictions will allow him to be right on many matters, but very off on some.What is lacking are analysis and technical details of why the future will be the way the author claims. For example, he claims lack of energy supply and technological progress will bring forth an age of hydrogen powered cars and fusion nuclear reactors. Yet, he provides no technical reasons why these two technologies will dominate the energy industry. Just how will we manage to produce hydrogen in large concentration and quantities which will be cost effective when it takes MORE energy to produce concenttrated hydrogen today than the energy value of the hydrogen themselves? Also, since when was controlled nuclear fusion reactors even possible? An explaination of how we will overcome the technical hurdles is missing throughout this book.Some of the claims are downright outlandish. For example, the author claims we will have teleporter which will transfer objects throughout the globe. Again, the missing piece is of any scientific backing or explaination.Some of the predictions are based on facts, and therefore, have strong predictive value. For example, the author claims that we will have a skilled worker shortage well into 2025 and beyond. This is based on a solid demographic data which indicates that we will have a shrinking workforce of suitable age in America.Finally, the author is a PhD, but he never says on what subject. He also seems to compare himself to Da Vinci.....He claims many of his previous predictions were right on target. But I imagine many of his predictions were dead off target as well. The sheer number of predictions in this book will allow the author to claim that he is a futurist because many of his predictions will probably come true. Just don't expect him to backup his claims with solid science, facts, or analysis.

I usually enjoy fiction but this was an interesting read.

Excellent book to read ,i would highly recommend it to anyone studying finace , MBA or related firld of study .

He offers not only the problems, but solutions. He thinks way outside of my thought process, so it was very interesting.

Though provoking and futurist thinking

The book contains a lot of preening; the author seems to think it is important to remind us (anecdotally) how many huge companies and heads-of-state he's interacted with. Many of his predictions range from poorly explored (he talks about a hydrogen fuel economy without addressing the fact that hydrogen is just a transport--not a readily available source of energy) to the absurd (predictions that teleportation will be available within decades, given the fact of photonic teleportation which doesn't even slightly approach the complexity of disintegrating, transporting and reintegrating an object!) There's also a lot of political advocacy here; I'd have simply preferred an analysis of technological and cultural trends along with research to back it up.

Right on time for class, I was able to sit in class with this book on the first day. I will order again from this vendor.

James Canton is on a journey to tell you something about himself and his company. This is James love story about him. He doesn't address anything about the future, doesn't provide any insight of what is happening now or foresight of what is too come. His only advice is hire him. This is a book to avoid.