Could Should Might Don't
By Nick Foster

Rigorous, rationally optimistic and ultimately empowering'and OLIVER BURKEMAN'A deeply-considered - and funny - treatise on complacency'and ALEX McDOWELL'Essential'and DAVID EAGLEMAN'A rare and wondrous thing'and STEPHEN FRYAs the tempo of change accelerates beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined, the ability to think clearly about what lies ahead has never been more important - yet we remain remarkably bad at it.So how might we think about the future with greater rigour?Nick Foster is one of very few people to have built a career considering this question, and in this book he's written an invaluable guide for the rest of us. From theand Couldand of excitable, science fiction utopianism and theand Shouldand of data-driven, dogmatic certainty, to theand Mightand of scenario planning and theand Don'tand of fear-driven risk avoidance, Foster explores how humanity has grappled with the concept of the future throughout history, tracing the emergence of distinct schools of thought and exploring the virtues, blind spots and inevitable shortcomings of each.Could Should Might Don'tand resists making cocksure prophecies and bombastic predictions, instead encouraging us to create more balanced, detailed and truthful versions of the future, so that we might improve what we leave behind for those who might follow.