2017 will see the continuation of the collapse of physical retail. There will be many more store closings this year following the recent announcements from Macy’s, Sears, and K-Mart. This is something I have been forecasting for years. Back in January 2009 I wrote: “Retailing is in a free fall. There will be numerous bankruptcies […]
In the last column here I discussed the lens of transformation relative to all the change going on in the world today. I also noted the unpredictability of a Trump Presidency and that it will obviously affect some forecasts in degrees. In addition a look at the U.S. and Global Economy, starting with the problems […]
In the more than 10 years I have been writing this blog, I have never asked for a favor, nor really promoted anything as that is not what this column is or should be about. That said, I am asking for a favor, and an immediate one at that. Six months ago I co-founded a […]
Climate Change is real. It is happening and it is accelerating. There are many obvious indicators to see for anyone not holding a contrived political filter, those that still live in the rapidly eroding state of denial. Sea level rise can now be seen in the present, not imagined decades down the line. Entire new […]
In March in this space I wrote a column called “A Major Energy Transition Has Begun”. The key point was my forecast that: “We are at the very beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. The use of fossil fuels will continue for decades but 2015-2017 will be looked back upon as the […]
For four days the entire electrical usage of a European country came from renewable energy sources. More on that in a few paragraphs. The thoughts we think and the reality we live in shapes what we think is possible. Time after time barriers are broken that were thought to be impossible. A great example is […]
“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew” – Marshall McLuhan In my prior column, I wrote about R. Buckminster’s forecast from the late 1960s that. in several decades, humanity would reach a fork in the road, utopia or oblivion. In the two years that it took to research and write “This […]
I have often been asked how I became a futurist. A part of the answer is that, starting in my 20s, I read the three people who, in my mind, were the greatest futurists of the last third of the 20th century: Alvin Toffler, R. Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan. Toffler wrote about “Future Shock” […]
[Note: This column was originally published in the Shift Age Newsletter earlier this month] We are at the very beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. The use of fossil fuels will continue for decades but 2015-2017 will be looked back upon as the beginning of the transition from growth to long slow […]
During 2015, I wrote and spoke about how significant a year it was and would prove to be. Many significant events occurred and several major trends became clear. It is these events and trends that will in part shape the world as we move into 2016. I want to leave the depressing and distracting circus […]