In the last column here, I forecast that humanity may well have entered a new era of lower cost energy. This could last for just a few years or could become something much more long-term. This is due to a combination of factors and trends. The only real question is the duration. Here is a […]
As many of you who have read my writings over the years know, I have written quite a bit about energy, sources of energy and the price of oil. In fact one of the first forecasts that gave me widespread recognition was made in the Spring of 2006 when I suggested that by 2008 […]
We are entering a new stage of the rapidly evolving global economy. The first stage has lasted some 25 years, beginning in the very late 1980s. As we move from 2014 into 2015 and 2016 there will be fundamental shifts in both the global economy and almost equally importantly, how we perceive it. By 2017, […]
Thousands of crumbling bridges, millions of gaping potholes, billions of dropped calls, limited bandwidth, a fragile electric grid, antiquated nuclear power plants, water and sewer systems that are decrepit and dangerous. This is not the foundation for another “American Century”. It is the disaster of the infrastructure in the United States half way through the […]
[This column was first published in the Shift Age Newsletter #27] Eight years ago I first began to write and speak about the future full time. Then, as always, I was asked about what accurate forecasts I had made. This told me of course that my legitimacy to some degree would be based upon this. […]
In two recent columns, here and here, I wrote about two of the three consumer economic trends that are and will dramatically change consumer and buyer behavior well into the 2020s. In this column I address the third major consumer economic trend, moving from an ownership to a rental society. This trend as with the […]
In a recent column I listed the Five Contexts of the Shift Age. As stated there, while the true cliché of the Information Age was “content is king” the true cliché of the Shift Age is “context is king”. We live in an increasingly contextual world. The context in which we receive or consume information […]
Earth Day is coming. April 22 to be exact. How I know is my email inbox. Every day for the past few weeks I get pitches to write about some company’s new eco product. The words LEED certified, Eco, Green, Recycled, Renewable have become an endless blur in the subject line of in-bound emails. This […]
[Note: This column was published in the most recent Shift Age Newsletter. You can sign up for a free subscription here.] It was one hundred and six years ago that Albert Einstein stated that the speed limit of the cosmos was the speed of light – 186,000 miles per second. The speed of light, the […]
In the past I have written that as a futurist, it sometimes feels like I live in a state of déjà vu. I spend a lot of time researching and looking into the future to develop the forecasts and trends that I write and speak about. I experience them, see them, and have varying degrees […]