ABSTRACT
The central theme of this book has been to describe the path taken by humanity in reaching the situation in which it finds itself today, in the early years of the twenty-first century. It is a privileged situation in many respects. Human beings today enjoy living conditions incomparably superior to those of their predecessors, and those conditions have been improving tangibly generation after generation during the last two centuries. However, there are also reasons to be concerned; precisely because human beings have solved so many problems and have been able to adapt elements of nature to their own ends, they might have also unleashed mechanisms that could eventually have counterproductive effects. Perhaps, as in the case of the sorcerer’s apprentice, we have unchained forces that were originally beneficial but that in the long run could turn against us.
