The Middle of the Future

This issue of NPQ gathers together some of the most penetrating and enduring interviews and essays on topical subjects that have appeared in our pages over the last 20 years.

Since the path from ideas to their realization is a slow one, collectively these pieces are a snapshot of the “middle of the future,” reflecting the human condition both as it is and where it is headed.

This issue comprises Part I of the selection. The subject matter is divided among broad headings—“Where We Live,” “World Order,” and “Change.” Part II will appear in the next volume of NPQ in 2014. It will also be divided into three sections—“China,” “Soul and Science,” and “Women Leaning Forward.”

These editions follow on an earlier collection, “Dialogues on Civilization” (Fall 2009/Winter 2010), a more philosophical series that included conversations I held with great thinkers ranging from the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz to Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford historian of ideas, to Lee Kuan Yew, father of “the East Asian Way.”

Like NPQ in general, the selection presented here seeks to “connect the dots” by linking the correspondences in the thinking of wide-ranging figures from the arts to literature, science, technology and political philosophy.

Following NPQ’s mission as a global journal of social and political thought, this selection cross-fertilizes beyond boundaries. It is another contribution to the challenge of ensuring that the information age does not become the age of non-communication.

Nathan Gardels, editor