Megachange: The World in 2050: 105 - Rilegato

Daniel Franklin is executive editor and business-affairs editor of The Economist. He is also the editor of The Economist's annual publication on the year ahead, The World in....

John Andrews has written for The Economist for more than 30 years and is deputy editor of The World in?. He is the author of The Economist Book of Isms.

Megachange looks at the forces that have been driving change and where they are headed over the following decades. Its conclusions about how the world will look in 2050 are often surprising, not least in their optimism. Following an introduction, the book is divided into four parts containing 20 chapters that cover everything from health to wealth and religion to outer space.

People and relationships

• Not quite destiny

• The health of nations

• Women's world

• Friends indeed

• Cultural revolutions

Heaven and earth

• Believe it or not

• Feeling the heat

• The future of war: the weak become strong

• Freedom's ragged march

• Taming Leviathan: the state of the state

Economy and business

• The age of emerging markets

• Globalisation, growth and the Asian century

• The great levelling

• Schumpeter Inc.

• Market momentum

Knowledge and progress

• What (and where) next for science

• Ad astra

• The web of knowledge

• Distance is dead. Long live location

• Of predictions and progress: more for less

The contributors

Barbara Beck is The Economist's special-reports editor.

Geoffrey Carr is The Economist's science and technology editor.

Philip Coggan is the Buttonwood columnist and capital-markets editor of The Economist. He is the author of The Economist Guide to Hedge Funds and, most recently, Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the New World Order.

Simon Cox is The Economist's Asia economics editor.

Tim Cross is a science correspondent at The Economist.

Kenneth Cukier is The Economist's data editor.

Martin Giles is The Economist's US technology correspondent.

Anthony Gottlieb is a New York-based writer. A former executive editor of The Economist, he is the author of The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance.

Robert Lane Greene is The Economist's professional-services correspondent. He also edits "Johnson", The Economist's blog on language, and is the author of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity.

Charlotte Howard is The Economist's health-care correspondent.

Laza Kekic is director of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Country Forecasting Service.

Edward Lucas edits The Economist's international section. His most recent book is Deception, on East-West espionage.

Zanny Minton Beddoes is The Economist's economics editor.

Oliver Morton is The Economist's briefings editor and was previously energy and environment editor. His most recent book is Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet.

John Parker is The Economist's globalisation editor.

Matt Ridley is a former science and technology editor, Washington bureau chief and United States editor of The Economist. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.

Ludwig Siegele is The Economist's online business editor. He was previously technology editor.

Matthew Symonds is The Economist's defence and security editor.

Paul Wallace is The Economist's European economics editor. He is the author of Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster Shaking Business, Finance and Our World.

Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist's management editor and Schumpeter columnist. He is co-author of several books and, most recently, the author of Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World ? for Better and for Worse.