The Bush Administration has always made me think of George Orwell and his novel “1984” from the point of view of language.  While all politicians and all administrations I can remember have been somewhat loose with language and the truth, the current administration has realized the vision of Orwell in that language means nothing and […]

As a futurist, I look at long term trends and waves of history.  The three waves of history we know have been the Agricultural Age, the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  The first age began some 10,000 years ago when man first began to literally put down roots.  The second age began some 250 […]

Bali is a word that in 10-15 years I hope will represent and define the time when humanity made an essential shift in direction.  There are currently some 10,000 people attending the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali.  More than 180 countries are represented along with numerous attendees from non-governmental, intergovernmental groups and […]

Thinking a lot about the future as I do, I keep coming back to the fact that there are five or six fundamental and critical issues that face America in this still new century. The degree to which we begin to face these key issues and to start to do so right now will determine […]

 Last week Google announced that the company, and its philanthropic subsidiary, Google.org, would explore research and develop renewable energy.  The goal is to ultimately produce one gigawatt of renewable energy and do so more cheaply that coal-generated electricity, which of course creates vast amounts of CO2.  I was thrilled to read the news reports of […]

Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle electronic book reader feels momentous. It is the first time that the long anticipated, much debated future of the ‘ebook’ feels ready to begin in a meaningful way. During the past ten years there has been great debate about the ebook.  Generally speaking there have been three points of view […]

The electronic media is a wonderful invention.  The forty year old vision of Marshall McLuhan of a global village where the electronic media connects us all and becomes an extension of our brains is now truly a reality. The power to educate, connect and inspire are all inherently available on radio, television and the internet.  […]

Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the truest of holidays.  It is not connected to a religion or to a national political event.  It is about giving thanks and sharing life’s abundance, manifested by a large meal to be shared by friends and family.  Giving thanks for all the wonderfulness of this planet. On Thanksgiving day […]

All my life I have believed that there must be other intelligent life in the Universe.  When you gaze upon the endless starry night it seems statistically impossible that there isn’t some form of intelligent life out there.  It may not be human-like but life there must be.  In a prior column, I wrote about […]

In the 60 year history of computers, there has been a constant improvement of computational speed.  Ever faster has always been one of the driving metrics of the industry.  Moore’s Law has been manifested with desktops and laptops to the point where the computers we use are as fast as we need.  The machines we […]