Fifteen Eighty Four

Future Imperfect author David Friedman was recently interviewed on KCSB Santa Barbara’s The Marketplace of Ideas.

Have a listen!

Lew McCreary, writing for Harvard Business review, recently commented on Future Imperfect.

‘We want the world to be orderly, but too often it is simply a mess. Friedman, a law professor, gleefully sorts out a host of messes having to do with a wide range of world-changing technologies. For every manifest benefit (say, reducing crime through universal surveillance), there’s a gnarly negative (adios, privacy). Friedman doesn’t duck the big issues: the death of copyright protection; nanotechnology; cloning, genetic engineering, and other advanced reproductive therapies; cognitive enhancement through pharmacology; the growing difficulty (due in part to tools that allow users to veil their identities) of enforcing contracts in cyberspace.

‘Friedman is honest enough not to claim to be a seer—the future is both imperfect and uncertain. But he frames the possibilities evenhandedly, with energetic comprehensiveness.’