I am a philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and futurologist. My work at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, St. Antony’s College, and the World Economic Forum (as a member of the Global Future Council on the Future of Complex Risks) focuses on transdisciplinarity, with an emphasis on the interplay between philosophy, neuroscience, strategic culture, applied history, technology, and global security. I am particularly interested in the exponential growth of disruptive technologies, and how they have the potential to both foster and hinder the progress of human civilization. My mission is rooted in finding transdisciplinary solutions to identify, predict and manage frontier risks, both here on earth and in Outer Space.
I wrote...
The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West: Implications for Contemporary Trans-Cultural Relations
My book seeks to improve understanding of the West and the Arab-Islamic world, their exchanges and shared heritage, as well as the role of the Arab-Islamic world in the rise of the West. The book examines the cultural transmission of ideas and institutions in a number of key areas, including science, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, humanism, law, finance, commerce, as well as the Arab-Islamic world's overall impact on the Reformation and the Renaissance. In doing so, it showcases how encounters between East and West served to advance our collective knowledge. More broadly, the book offers a timely discussion of this shared history for contemporary trans-cultural relations, with the aim of fostering positive relations, today and in the future.
Despite having been published 70 years ago, this eloquent book still has enduring appeal as it provides an intellectually stimulating way of approaching big ideas.
It teaches us how to think both deeply and pragmatically about the monumental challenges facing humanity. In his unique way, Berlin, a Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford and one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, gives us prescient philosophical insights into human behaviour.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain…
This book is a timely primer on the promise and peril of artificial intelligence (AI) authored by an unlikely coalition of insightful thinkers: a 100-year-old diplomat, a former Google chief executive, and an M.I.T. professor.
They present an interesting overview of the range of AI technologies and their likely impact on many spheres of life, from medicine and the military to health care and urban development.
The result is an accessible, thought-provoking book that asks important questions about the role of machine learning in changing human society, for good and ill.
Three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society—and what this technology means for us all.
An AI learned to win chess by making moves human grand masters had never conceived. Another AI discovered a new antibiotic by analyzing molecular properties human scientists did not understand. Now, AI-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. AI is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality.
On a basic level, this is a book about nuclear weapons and why humanity ought to eschew them. But it is also much more than that.
Published on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this masterpiece examines three foreseeable scenarios for the human race: the end of human life, a decline to barbarism after a disastrous decrease of the world’s population, and a unification of the world under a single government.
Russell describes how “pride, arrogance and fear of loss of face have obscured the power of judgment.” This is sadly no less true today, as the emotionality of human beings continues to strongly influence international relations.
This is a fascinating book that explores the risks to humanity’s future, from well-documented threats such as climate change and weapons of mass destruction to less understood dangers emanating from disruptive technologies and man-made pandemics.
Ord, an Oxford philosopher, does an impressive job at explaining complex scientific issues in terms easily digestible for a broader audience. The book also develops important moral frameworks for tackling a wide range of existential risks.
This urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time.
If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes - those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence.…
The highly respected Cambridge scientist and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees provides a fascinating and highly accessible read on how we can harness science and technology for the betterment – and ultimately preservation – of humanity.
The book is a refreshingly optimistic take on how advances in, for example, robotics and biotechnology, can protect us against the greatest threats facing humanity. This is a must-read book which pushes the boundaries of scientific knowledge while building bridges to many other academic disciplines.
A provocative and inspiring look at the future of humanity and science from world-renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees
Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes-good and bad-are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity's prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow.
On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required. In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.
Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series
The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…
