Climate, energy, biotechnology, data, artificial intelligence, inequality, geopolitics and migration. Everyone experiences daily how abstract changes touch our lives and affect our opportunities. Technology has penetrated our very fiber, climate change is boundless, and our destiny is intertwined with that of a great many others. How do we keep a grip on that world? How do we feel at home in it? And what role can independent media play in this? The future explorers of VPRO Tegenlicht examine the developments that are shaping the world in the twenty-first century. They are on the front lines, where new ideas in politics, economics, culture, technology and science are being developed, tested and criticized. Through cinematic means and in conversation with international thinkers and doers, they search for traces of tomorrow in today's world. This produces a kaleidoscope of myriad perspectives and often conflicting visions of the future. The Book of the Future reports on a wondrous world in the making. With new essays and a selection of international interviews from 555 audiovisual productions, it offers a timeline of the great questions of this century and a unique glimpse of a churning but hopeful world. Can we still discern the real world in the frantic stream of images and alternative facts? Can looking back help us see more sharply ahead? And what do we actually see when we stand still? The Book of the Future offers inspiration and perspective to anyone walking around with these questions and wanting to look further ahead. VPRO Tegenlicht is made on television and online by a collective of independent program makers who try to capture the zeitgeist from a moving train, with cinematic means and in dialogue with a strong Dutch community.