Science fiction can be extremely thought provoking, particularly to one who thinks about the future.  There are novels that are fantastical and take place centuries in the future in galaxies ‘far far away’, populated by weird creatures and other worldly landscapes.  Then there are the many novels that are more conceptual, set slightly in the […]

Yesterday we looked at how Media has been disintermediated and transformed during the past 30 years. Today we look at two industries that are on the threshold of some degree of disintermediation. Using the four part definition of the term , it is clear that real estate and insurance are going to be reorganized from […]

In the last post on disintermediation , I gave a deeper definition and current meaning to the term: 1. Disintermediation is the removal of the intermediary or entity 2. If the intermediary remains in place, it will be drained of any excess compensation 3. Industries that hold information hostage for financial gain will be disintermediated. […]

The “Remember When Gas Was Cheap?”  post on 4/20/06 provoked a lot of response. That post looked back at the rise of gas prices, written from the future perch of 4/20/09. In that futuristic look back to see how gas went from $3.00 in April, 2006 to the $7.33 price in April, 2009, I wrote […]

“The future, what’s that?” -Belisario, one of a group of hunter-gatherers who left the Columbian jungle to join the modern world This was the “Quotation of the Day” from yesterday’s New York Times.  It was lifted from the remarkable front page article about the Nukak-Maku and that a group of almost 80 of this Stone Age […]

[Reader note: in the short life of this blog your feedback has been important. There have been two format suggestions that have been made several times. First, people have said they like the orginal ideas, depth of content and the writing. Second they have said that they often do not have the time to read […]

The issue of energy and the systemic societal addiction to petroleum around the world is at the top of the list of important issues we now face.  It, more than any other current issue affects how the future of humanity will be written.  As stated in the ‘blog origins’ section of this site, I believe we […]

I want to take a momentary break in the discussion of the future price of oil, disintermediation and the Future of Today to express a personal message of thanks. Yesterday this blog received kind words of recommendation from Stephen J. Dubner on the www.freakonomics.com web site.  As practically any reader with any amount of world […]

I wrote the last post, “Remember When Gas Was Cheap?” a week ago. I based my predictions on both looking ahead and on research regarding the history of gasoline prices in the United States. In that post I predicted that gas would be $7.33 in April of 2009 and that oil would be at $137 […]

[Readers please note that this post is written as a post to the blog April 20, 2009] Remember when gas was cheap? Remember back in 2006 when gas was just above $3.00 a gallon and it was the top story on the evening newscasts? Well that now looks like the ‘good old days’. Yesterday the […]