Not surprisingly, I've been doing a lot of talks about The Economics of Enough (see the Facebook page for details of talks past and future), and it's always interesting as an author to see what audiences pick up on. One popular theme is the banking industry and immoral bankers. But another is, of course, the future – why does it matter, how much should we care about it? And two upcoming panel discussions – 20th May at the Arnolfini in Bristol as part of the Festival of Ideas and 24th May at the British Library – are explicitly about the future. Both panels will include Mark Stevenson, author of An Optimist's Tour of the Future, and Jon Turney, author of Rough Guide to the Future.

So my request to blog readers is this: what should I read between now and then to refresh my thinking about the idea of progress and the relevance of the future to the present? All ideas welcome!