Thanks to our dependency on interconnected complex systems the world we live in is teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Nick Smith talks to author John Casti, whose new book analyses our technology-dependent 'house of cards'. WE HAVEN'T heard much about the future in the news recently. Maybe this is because the present is so frightening we don't have time to look ahead. Today, you can't pick up a newspaper without reading about the collapse of national economies, the increase in instability of the world's geopolitical hotspots and rising tensions over control of natural resources. But these very modern-sounding media phenomena are in fact the beginning of a future where society will be under constant threat of attack. If the 20th Century was all about nations sending in tanks and bombs to compete in territorial disputes, the 21st will be about splinter groups, terrorist factions and rogue states disabling the long-established order with cyber-war, biological attack and electromagnetic plagues.
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