The fortune sellers : the big business of buying and selling predictions
The Fortune Sellers contains in-depth explorations of the seven most prevalent forecasting professions today - meteorology, economics, investments, technology assessment, demography, futurology, and organizational planning. As Sherden uncovers their historical roots and traces their track records, he deftly reveals just how accurate - or inaccurate - their predictions really are. Fascinating historical facts, scores of actual examples, and a wealth of eye-opening statistics illuminate the difference between reliable real-world information and spurious guesswork. In the Fortune Sellers, you'll discover: how anyone who is counting on a weather forecast more than a day or two in advance might just as well flip a coin; how economics earned its nickname - the "dismal science"--And why it sticks; how profits from prediction work on Wall Street; how academia, business, and the media feed our fascination with science fact and fiction and future technology; how futurists - predictors of societal change - use the infirm foundations of social science to predict everything from utopia to techno-totalitarianism; and how prognosticators failed to predict many milestone events, including the stock market crash of 1929, the recession of the 1980s, and the fall of East Berlin
Forecasting
xi, 308 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
9780471181781, 9780471358442, 0471181781, 0471358444
36969639
The Second Oldest Profession. When Chaos Rains. The Dismal Scientists. The Market Gurus. Checking the "Unchecked Population". Science Fact and Fiction. The Futurists. Corporate Chaos. The Certainty of Living in an Uncertain World. Notes. Bibliography. Index.