European Visions for the Knowledge Age provides a glimpse into some radical, and sometimes controversial, European perspectives on the future of the information society. The contributors address what could be, what should be, and sometimes warn about what should not be the future. Edited by Paul T Kidd, a researcher and writer with long experience in the field of manufacturing futures, the contributions have been written with a wide audience in mind. Both the technically and the non-technically oriented will find elements in the contributions that will challenge their world views and their taken for granted assumptions. The contents are organised into five self-contained parts: European Manufacturing 2035; Novel Perspectives for Networked Intelligence; The Future of Body and Mind; New Directions for Power and Participation; and The Distant Horizon. Each section brings together a number of essays under a broad theme relevant to the future. Each section can be read independently. The first part, European Manufacturing 2035, examines how in the future, information and knowledge is likely to become linked to the physical world in unexpected ways. It illustrates radically new systems of production, product-service systems, managed consumption, and manufacture based on micro particles and the atomic level. These could radically change patterns of consumption, and help move society towards a more sustainable future. The second part, Novel Perspectives for Networked Intelligence, explores what the world will be like once computers have disappeared from view and information processing and exchange become part of an everyday networked life. What will be the features of such networked systems? Will such ambient systems be technology-centred, reducing human roles to insignificant acts, or will they be truly symbiotic, and enhance distinctive human abilities? How will people use these systems, and how will digital ownership be ensured? What are the implications and scenarios for future living? These are some the questions that this part of the book addresses. The third part, The Future of Body and Mind, considers the way that health and wellbeing determine the degree to which people can live fully in the world. Information and knowledge-based technologies are playing an increasing role in peoples’ health, representing an increasing linkage between the body, mind and technology. Intelligent biomedical clothes, preventative medicine, body repair, intelligent drugs, may all lead to new heights of being healthier than healthy. At the same time, new possibilities of mind-computer interfaces could enable people to control machines through thought. In the fourth part of the book, New Directions for Power and Participation, important global issues such as the knowledge economy, globalisation, and democracy, are considered. The section explores some of the ways information and knowledge technologies may influence these global issues in the future. Democracy, the cornerstone of European society, is dependent on how peoples’ participation in decision making is enabled. Intangible assets are changing the way trade is considered. Change and complexity are seen as inevitable. What are some of the prognoses for the future? The fifth and final part, The Distant Horizon looks further into the future. Thinking about where society is headed and why, is important, but not necessarily easy. Past choices and prevailing attitudes both determine the direction in which the future unfolds, for better or worse. The essays in the final section are perhaps the most speculative and questioning in this respect, but they also relate back to some of the topics taken up in contributions in preceding sections. Each author writes about a view of the possible futures, towards which society could, or should be moving, and what needs to be done to ensure that the distant horizon is potentially a happy and meaningful place.