We are now in the transition from the Information Age to the Shift Age. In recent columns I have positioned the recent financial melt down and global economic collapse as the beginning of a painful transitional restructuring between ages. Just as the 1970s with all its stagflation and unprecedented turmoil was the transitional period between […]
Last week the Internationale Funkausstellung was held in Berlin. This is the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, equaling and perhaps surpassing the CES show that occurs every January in Las Vegas. One of the central themes behind major new product launches was the Internet and the central role it is now beginning to play […]
The tag line of this blog is “A Future Look at Today”. It is not a political blog, nor is this a political column. I have assiduously kept politics out of this space leaving partisan conversations about campaign issues to others. There is a lot of heat around partisan politics and such heat can prevent […]
There have been many cultural changes so far in 2008. Some of these changes are in response to the rapid increase in the price of oil and other commodities. Some of these changes have been due to technological innovations. In both cases new behavior patterns are being established that will, to some degree become permanent […]
[Note to readers: this column was written a number of weeks ago, but was in holding as I wrote columns about some more immediate travel related subjects. With the turmoil in Tibet this past week, it is clearly a topic in the news. I have updated the prior column to include the recent upheavals.] When […]
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 […]
Google has now made the long awaited announcement that it would be entering the wireless arena. It was not a product, or “Google Phone†roll-out, but rather the announcement of OHA, or the Open Handset Alliance. OHA(my choice to come up with an acronym as the full name sounds a bit too bureaucratic and almost […]
There is no question in my mind but that oil will rise to at least $100 a barrel within the next year. It is easy to see a scenario of $125 a barrel price in the same time frame. The triple digit price of oil will become the norm. Recently it has been trading in […]
People started using computers outside the corporate research lab in the 1950s. The early computers created in garages were brought to market in the mid 1970s. The PC came out in 1981. The 1990s saw the early explosive growth of the laptop and the current decade is when the PDA and other wireless devices took […]
In the last year I have written often about disintermediation. It is a force that is affecting numerous industries. Residential real estate, as I have written here, is one of those businesses. Any business that has historically inserted itself between buyer and seller and has also kept market information to itself is a business that […]