I am super excited to announce that I’m working on my first trade book, “The Invention of Tomorrow”, with Thomas Suddendorf and Jon Redshaw, to be published with Basic Books!
Here is the summary from our agency, “The Science Factory”
The first trade book dedicated to the emergence of foresight, how this prodigious capacity drove human evolution and how we’ll continue to rely and improve on it in the future.
Chimpanzees tend to grunt excitedly to say hello. But, curiously, our closest animal cousins never say goodbye. In fact humans may well be the only animals who bid one another farewell in mutual recognition that we are going our separate ways, and often in the hope our paths may cross again.
Your mind is a virtual time machine. You can relive past events and imagine future possibilities – even ones that you have never experienced or which may never materialize. Because you are a mental time traveller, you can prepare for threats and opportunities well in advance and deliberately shape the future to your own design. Humans run the zoos not because we are stronger than other animals, but because we can foresee what these animals need and what they can do. Foresight is essential to our dominance on the planet.
In THE INVENTION OF TOMORROW, three pioneering researchers in the field of mental time travel provide a ground-breaking exploration of one of humanity’s greatest powers, showing that humans are fundamentally a species of farsighted vision, not one of myopia and impulsivity. Far from being unequipped to deal with the challenges it now faces, our species has evolved to deal with future dangers more than any other creature that has ever existed.
An avalanche of discoveries in the past decade has dramatically transformed our understanding of our mental time machines and how we use them to envisage, predict and control the future. Drawing on cutting-edge research from many disciplines – cognitive neuroscience, archaeology, psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, and more – THE INVENTION OF TOMORROW tells a revolutionary tale of discovery that is providing a new perspective on the story of humanity.
Praise for Thomas Suddendorf’s THE GAP
‘Beautifully written, well researched and thought provoking’ – Jane Goodall
‘The book provides a new lens though which to see the world. Read it, and you might never look at yourself or your household pets in the same way’ – Science
Publication details
We have signed a deal with Basic Books for an estimated Autumn, 2022 release. Our editor is Thomas ‘TJ’ Kelleher. Our agent is Peter Tallack at “The Science Factory”.
The book will be around 90,000 words long, with lots of interesting illustrations.
Some of you will know that Thomas, Jon and I have been working hard on this for quite some time now. It has been a passion project in the evenings, on weekends, and wherever we can fit it in. We were all extremely pleased that the book found a home at Basic Books, especially given their excellent handling of Thomas’ previous book “THE GAP: The science of what separates us from other animals” (here’s a paid amazon affiliate link if you are interested in picking up a copy).
This new project has been a real adventure so far. I can’t wait to share “THE INVENTION OF TOMORROW” with you all – thanks for the continued support.
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