forecasting

An examination of cyberconciousness, describing the world's most sentient robot, Bina48, that is a nascent mindclone of the author's wife and discussing multimedia data that is collected to create a Mindfile which collects a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions through social networking sites and blogs.

Contains predictions for 2030 that are related to health, food, technology, and more.

Draws from global modeling research, analytical data, and travels throughout the Arctic Rim to provide an informed speculation on what the world will be like in 2050, predicting that the United States and seven other countries will become increasingly prosperous, powerful, and politically stable, while those closer to the equator will suffer water shortages, increased energy costs, coastal flooding, and other dilemmas.

Describes the colonization of California, exploring the reasons why so many people have historically chosen to settle in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, and discusses the geological instability that undergirds the booming development and why the author believes the stage is set for disaster.

Identifies patterns in the twentieth century regarding American peace, war, prosperity, and economic depression, and predicts America's course in the twenty-first, examining the future of both capitalism and the U.S.'s role in world politics.

Rock breaks scissors is based on a simple principle: people are unable to act randomly. Instead they display unconscious patterns that the savvy person can outguess. The principle applies to friends playing rock, paper, scissors for a bar tab as well as to the crowds that create markets for homes and stocks. With a gift for distilling psychology and behavioral economics into accessible advice, Poundstone proves that outguessing is easy, fun, and often profitable.

Posits that, among other things, "global warming isn't the problem; the real problem is an entirely predictable but potentially catastrophic mini-ice age, [outlines] which countries are on the brink of failure, chaos, and ultimately population collapse, and what that means for the rest of the world ... [and examines] the four main factors that will determine when China attacks the United States".