In the fall of 2019, as the LLAIC courses were switching to all Zoom, I gave a course entitled Brave New World Unvisited.  It was a course that attempted to capture the new technologies of the time, and to predict what would be happening five years from then — which is now.

We looked at the current state and expected advances in medicines, personal relationships, cultural and societal organization, food, energy, communications, work, Artificial Intelligence, and international relations.

My hope in this class will be to look back at what was happening then, compare that to what is happening now, see what was successful, what has disappeared, and what we are still waiting for.  Then we will attempt the impossible task, with help from other sources, to predict what our world will be like in 2030, five years from now, assuming we will all be here.

I will do my best to de-emphasize the political aspects of everything, especially the day-to-day perturbations, and keep the focus on the bigger picture.

I will send about an hour’s worth of reading each week on some of the topics listed above, with a few questions.  We will discuss all of this in class, which will be about one-third presentations, and two-thirds discussions.   Bring your tin-foil hats.