Looking Ahead: How We Are Narrating the Future

We can’t foresee the future. If you believe that you’re already living it, as some people in the Silicon Valley do, you need to adjust yourself because the future global power China is preparing to take over interpretational sovereignty. What, then, can we say about what is to come? Do we have reason to rejoice? Do we need to be scared?

Writer for DIE ZEIT and technology expert Dirk Preitz has travelled across the USA, towards the old future, and further still to Shenzhen, the new Silicon City of the East. On his travels he spoke to those who are already working on the world of tomorrow: professors at Stanford, think tank scientists, employees at tech companies, managers, urban planners and dreamers. The result is a travelogue from the present and the past of what is imaginable. A fascinating outlook on tomorrow as well as a smart, profound examination of the pressing matters of today.

»[Peitz] delivers both: the objective, enthusiastic view of the tech industry and the essayistic skill of layering the philosophical digressions crucial to the subject matter in between the lines.« Florian Zinner, MDR