Alvin Toffler - The futurists (1972)

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Margaret Mead, R. Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, and Marshall McLuhan discuss the future of civilization.

Mumford Enid - Redesigning human systems (2002)

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Organizational change is becoming increasingly complex, challenging and difficult to handle as technology advances. And there is a need to discuss how it can be both more effectively managed by large and small organizations, while at the same time the strategies for changes are based on ethical notions of democracy and participation. Redesigning Human Systems assists those interested in and responsible for the management of major change within organizations, and provides the theories and values that should be adhered to in order to achieve that change successfully and effectively.

 

David C. Korten - The Great Turning From Empire to Earth Community (2007)

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In his classic international bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten exposed the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy and helped spark a global resistance movement. Now, he shows that the problem runs deeper than corporate domination—with far greater consequences.

Here, Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely one manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society through hierarchy and violence that has largely held sway for the past 5,000 years. Empire has always resulted in misery for the many and fortune for the few, but now it threatens the very future of humanity. Korten points to global terrorism, climate change, and rising poverty as just a few of the signs that the burdens of Empire now exceed what people and planet will bear.

The Great Turning traces the roots of Empire to ancient times and charts the long evolution of its favored instruments of control, from monarchies and bureaucracies to the transnational institutions of the global economy. Korten also tells the parallel story of the attempt to develop a democratic alternative to Empire, beginning in Athens and continuing with the founding of the United States of America. But this remains an unfinished project—Korten documents how elitists with an imperial agenda have consistently sought to undermine the bold and inspiring “American experiment,“ beginning in the earliest days of the republic and continuing to the present day.

Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things—we can turn away from it. Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that “Earth Community”—a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering human society based on democratic principles of partnership—is indeed possible. And he details a grassroots strategy for beginning the momentous turning toward a future of as-yet-unrealized human potential. The Great Turning illuminates our current predicament, provides a framework for grasping the potential of this historic moment, and shows us how to take action for the future of our planet, our communities, and ourselves.

 

Buckminster Fuller - Utopia or oblivion the prospects for humanity (1963)

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Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. For more than five decades, he set forth his comprehensive perspective on the world’s problems in numerous essays, which offer an illuminating insight into the intellectual universe of this renaissance man. These texts remain surprisingly topical even today, decades after their initial publication.