Up until a few decades ago, our visions of the future were largely - though by no means uniformly - glowingly positive.Science and technology would cure all the ills of humanity, leading to lives of fulfillment and opportunity for all.
Now utopia has grown unfashionable, as we have gained a deeper appreciation of the range of threats facing us, from asteroid strike to epidemic flu and to climate change.You might even be tempted to assume that humanity has little future to look forward to.
But such gloominess is misplaced.The fossil record shows that many species have endured for millions of years - so why shouldn't we? Take a broader look at our species' place in the universe, and it becomes clear that we have an excellent chance of surviving for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years .Look up Homo sapiens in the "Red List" of threatened species of the International Union for the Conversation of Nature (IUCN) ,and you will read: "Listed as Least Concern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline."
So what does our deep future hold? A growing number of researchers and organisations are now thinking seriously about that question.For example, the Long Now Foundation has its flagship project a medical clock that is designed to still be marking time thousands of years hence .
Perhaps willfully , it may be easier to think about such lengthy timescales than about themore immediate future.The potential evolution of today's technology, and its social consequences, is dazzlingly complicated, and it's perhaps best left to science fiction writers and futurologists to explore the many possibilities we can envisage.That's one reason why we have launched Arc, a new publication dedicated to the near future.
But take a longer view and there is a surprising amount that we can say with considerable assurance.As so often, the past holds the key to the future: we have now identified enough of the long-term patterns shaping the history of the planet, and our species, to make evidence-based forecasts about the situations in which our descendants will find themselves.
This long perspective makes the pessimistic view of our prospects seem more likely to be a passing fad.To be sure, the future is not all rosy.But we are now knowledgeable enough to reduce many of the risks that threatened the existence of earlier humans, and to improve the lot of those to come.
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A. It could be that we are evolving two communities of social scientists:one that is discipline-oriented and publishing in highly specialized journals,and one that is problem-oriented and publishing elsewhere,such as policy briefs.
B. However,the numbers are still small:in 2010,about 1,600 of the 100,000 social-sciences papers published globally included one of these Keywords.
C. the idea is to force social to integrate their work with other categories, including health and demographic change food security, marine research and the bio-economy, clear, efficient energy; and inclusive, innovative and secure societies.
D. the solution is to change the mindset of the academic community, and what it considers to be its main goal. Global challenges and social innovation ought to receive much more attention from scientists, especially the young ones.
E. These issues all have root causes in human behavior. . all require behavioral change and social innovations , as well as technological development . Stemming climate change , for example , is as much about changing consumption patterns and promoting
F. Despite these factors , many social scientists seem reluctant to tackle such problems . And in Europe , some are up in arms over a proposal to drop a specific funding category for social-science research and to integrate it withincross-cutting topic
G. During the late 1990s , national spending on social sciences and the humanities as a percentage of all research and development funds-including government, higher education, non-profit and corporate -varied from around 4% to 25%; in most European na
Analyses reveal that the number of papers including the keywords “environmental changed” or “climate change” have increased rapidly since 2004,(43)____ When social scientists do tackle practical issues ,their scope is often local