Why an almanac?
Because modern life does not arrive in neat categories. Jobs change because of technology, but also because of wages, demographics, policy and global competition. Housing affects relationships and family formation. Information affects trust. Education affects work. Health affects money. A person trying to plan a life has to deal with all of it at once.
The Almanac brings those strands together. It is designed to answer a simpler question than most books about the future: what do I actually need to understand to navigate the world I am living in now?
What it covers
The recurring subject areas include work, automation, money, housing, cost of living, education, fertility, family formation, relationships, loneliness, health, ageing, belief, meaning, social cohesion, information, governance and artificial intelligence where it materially changes those areas.
Why A.I. is in the name
The distinctive idea behind the Almanac is to use A.I. as part of the machinery for understanding the age rather than making A.I. the centre of the story. It is used actively to interrogate large bodies of evidence, compare systems and countries, surface contradictions, trace connections between subjects and keep pace with developments that would be difficult to follow manually at the same scale.
That does not mean accepting model output as fact. Sources are checked, competing evidence is retained and human editorial judgement decides what belongs. A.I. helps build and update the map; the map is for people.
Who it is written for
It is written for a reader who may be choosing a career, paying rent, wondering whether a qualification is still worth pursuing, trying to understand why relationships and social life feel different, deciding what news to trust, or simply trying to plan several years ahead without being overwhelmed by contradictory predictions.
No technical background is assumed. The aim is clarity without oversimplification: enough depth to understand why something is happening, but always brought back to the consequences for ordinary life.
How the series develops
The 2026 edition establishes the baseline, predominantly through British and Western evidence. The 2027 edition deliberately widens the comparison through China and East Asia. The 2028 edition is intended to move towards a fully world-conscious structure in which major subjects are examined across the world systems and regions most relevant to the question.
Publisher
The A.I. Almanac is published by Copy Real. The wider Copy Real catalogue includes original fiction, non-fiction, illustrated editions, restored classics and Copy Real Audio productions.