Macrotrends of our present: instructions for use

We live in the age of endless change. Technological innovations are profoundly and irreversibly affecting our everyday life. Progress seems somehow to subvert individual and collective parameters in such a way that often we tend to ask ourselves what we can do for machines more than what they can do for us. In these pages the author shares a participating and curious gaze to the deep changes of our times, with the ongoing tension to grow together the scattered pieces of information left by our uncertain present and to gain new keys to interpretation. From the new technologies of AI and ubiquitous compunting to the growing issues of international security, from the so called Fourth Industrial Revolution to the new paradigm of the sharing economy, from the role of the technological mammoths in the new world order to the changes in the labour market and the increasing societal inequalities: a bunch of burning issues are here addressed both with intellectual commitment and conversational levity, with the aim to foster public debate and awareness and to help present day and future leaders to shape new policies, both at business and governamental level.

Gianmarco Montanari, engineer and economist by training, has held senior positions in private and public companies belonging to different sectors: manufacturing, services, bancking, public, research. He was and still is Board member of various public and private companies including Fineco Bank and the Agency for Digital Italy. Montanari is currently Director General of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. He holds 5 degrees and in 2017 was appointed as Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.

Realized in collaboration with 24Ore Business School