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 […]

What might the future of the Internet be?  What can it be?  How empowering can it be for Capitalism and Democracy in the 21st century? What must we do to maximize the positive possibilities the Internet provides humanity as we stand at the fork in the road Buckminster Fuller foresaw decades ago: – Utopia or […]

This is the second of three columns where I look at all the forecasts I have made about things that might happen through the end of 2013.  As I wrote in the first column here this is not an exercise in self-congratulation.  It is an opportunity to look back not just on forecast accuracy but […]

[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.  […]

This column first appeared in the Shift Age Newsletter. Regardless of what transpires in the geo-political landscape relative to the civil war in Syria, it may well be looked upon as a pivot point for citizens of the United States.  This could be the beginning of a necessary and critical conversation about the future of […]

Burning Man has become a meme.  A fast moving, rapidly expanding, global meme. That was my take away from being at Burning Man this year.  It has moved beyond the San Francisco Bay area word of mouth organic growth of the 1990s and the 2000s and blown up into a phenomenon. I first became aware […]

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 […]

Since 2010 I have been speaking about what I see as three new consumer economic trends that will alter consumer behavior in the developed countries of the world.  A number of aligning forces are significantly increasing the influence and impact of these three trends. In a recent column here, I wrote about Conscious Capitalism, one […]

In 2010, I made the decision to write a book about the New Health Age.  Along with my co-author, Jonathan Fleece, we realized that the discussion about health care in America was being driven by fear, ignorance and manipulated by politicians.  Any discussion with these three components is a stupid conversation.  We decided to write […]

[This column was first published in Shift Age Newsletter #22] One of the three major consumer trends I have been speaking about during the past few years is conscious capitalism.  Conscious capitalism is when a company takes on an altruistic cause, charity or practice and applies revenue to that endeavor. Initially this behavior was mostly […]