Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being

A passionate defence of humanity and a work of radical optimism from the international bestselling author of Postcapitalism

How do we preserve what makes us human in an age of uncertainty? Are we now just consumers shaped by market forces? A sequence of DNA? A collection of base instincts? Or will we soon be supplanted by algorithms and A.I. anyway?

In Clear Bright Future, Paul Mason calls for a radical, impassioned defence of the human being, our universal rights and freedoms and our power to change the world around us. Ranging from economics to Big Data, from neuroscience to the culture wars, he draws from his on-the-ground reporting from mass protests in Istanbul to riots in Washington, as well as his own childhood in an English mining community, to show how the notion of humanity has become eroded as never before.

In this book Paul Mason argues that we are still capable - through language, innovation and co-operation - of shaping our future. He offers a vision of humans as more than puppets, customers or cogs in a machine. This work of radical optimism asks: Do you want to be controlled? Or do you want something better?

• How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System
• Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
• Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
• On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
• This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
• The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2)
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies