Description
Looking back from the Future provides an imagined perspective looking back from an unspecified
time in the future, on significant events in the eras that have passed. Onitsha today is a leading
Igbo and Nigerian city on the banks of the River Niger. In the envisaged future it is a major city in
what has become a ‘World of Homelands.’ The defining feature dividing early and later eras is:
‘rooted ethic.’ In the early eras the ‘Ethic of Darkness’ (with attendant attributes of
exclusion/division/acquisition) is dominant. In the later eras the ‘Ethic of Light’ (with attendant
attributes of realization/actuation/civil persuasion/inclusion) is dominant. Looking Back explores
prospects offered by the ‘transformational’ properties of the computer, the internet and the world
of cybernetics. It suggests possibilities for movement out of Darkness, into sustained Light, and on
towards establishment of the Civil Commons, throughout what is envisaged as a World of
Homelands’—the socio-ethno/political units that have replaced States and most Nations.
Professor Michael Vickers, historian and writer with a range of scholarly, literary and journalistic
contributions over the past fifty years, has given much of his mind and heart to the land and folk of
Nigeria; and in more recent years to projecting their path, along with all Africa folk, to what he
perceives as the Horizon Future. Recipient of the Distinguished Academic Award (2012) from the
University of Ibadan, he has taught and conducted research at the University of Ife (now Obafemi
Awolowo University) Nigeria, and other universities in America, Canada and UK. He is author of
several acclaimed books, including most recently, On Wings of Light (2015), and Bright Beams in
Dark Shadow (2017); the principal themes of which derived from this current work, Looking Back
from the Future, in its original (2011) form. He holds a doctorate in Political Science and West
African Studies from the University of Birmingham, UK, and is Emeritus Director of Parliamentary
and Public Affairs, The Hillfield Agency (UK).
ISBN: 978-1-943533-34-3 Ι Published 2018 Ι Pan-African University Press
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