Une brève histoire de l’avenir is a book I recommend to everyone still fond of reading books.[1] According to Amazon, the English translation will become available early next year. Jacques Attali paints a broad-brush picture of the future well worth digesting ahead of time. And the picture is painted with masterly skill. Every now and then one is stunned by its grain, neither too fine nor coarse.

The book is divided into seven chapters, of which the first two recapitulate the past. This exercise is most useful, for it introduces the reader to the author’s sweep. The next four chapters offer a breathtaking picture of truly global scope. And the last chapter, focusing on France, offers a good model for many other countries, as well. It is useful to focus on one’s own country in the end, so as to feel the history of the future on one’s own skin.

Although a good part of the second-to-last chapter, envisioning global democracy that will follow global conflict and take us into the next century, is quite unreadable on account of its utopian optimism, it offers some hope for those who cannot imagine the collapse of the world as we know it. The author can only be commended for it, for the rest of the book would be difficult to digest without a juicy bone for the faint-hearted.

The book’s greatest appeal is that it does not offer even a hint of any remedy for the developments envisioned in the remainder of this century. Which is where much of my praise comes from, if not all of it. The world is as it is, and there is little we can do about it at this stage. Or any stage, for that matter. At best, we can understand it well enough to prepare ourselves for the consequences, no matter how dire.

Addendum I (August 25, 2008)

This morning I found Attali’s reply to this piece, which I forwarded to him without comment: “Many thanks!” But that was all. Without much thought, I responded as follows: “It is wonderful to hear from you, but it would be even more wonderful if you would comment on my pieces about your book.” At first I thought this would be enough, but then I added two more sentences: “We agree on many things, but disagree on some. The disagreements are perhaps more important than the agreements.” I wonder whether I will hear from him again. For some reason I doubt it, though.

Addendum II (August 26, 2008)

The plot thickens. “Thanks,” replied Attali. “Tell me more about yourself.” I responded by pointing him at my Residua website, which goes all the way back to 1976, as well as my biography attached to the site. “In short,” I wrote, “I am a creature of 1968, when I was quite active in Belgrade. The student uprising there has informed my entire life.” In conclusion, I offered to answer any specific questions he might have. “Many thanks,” he responded earnestly once again. One way or another, I doubt that our correspondence will ever amount to much. Cultural differences, I suppose.

Addendum III (August 30, 2008)

I just discovered a most interesting thing: no matter how I search for Attali using Google, I get no results pointing at anything I have written about him. Also, no matter how I search for his name on the Residua website using Google as the search platform, I cannot find anything I have written about him, either. And there are four recent pieces, including this one, in which his name appears in full. Most surprising, Google cannot find on my website either the title of his book about the future or the key concepts from that book to which I repeatedly refer. The only conclusion I can make is that he himself has disabled this search engine to prevent people from discovering anything I have written about him. Now, that is a most interesting discovery, indeed. After all, there is something of real interest in my response to Attali’s brief history of the future.

Footnote

1. Paris: Fayard, 2006.