In the 20 years after WWII Japan was the source of cheap goods for the U.S. and the world. In the 1950s, “Made in Japan” meant cheap stuff that was showing up in a lot of product categories. Then in the late 1960s and through the 1970s quality technology brands emerged; Sony, Panasonic and then […]
This blog is now almost four years old. Many of you have been loyal readers since 2006 and I deeply appreciate your loyalty and continued support. There have been many more who have become readers through the years and of course I also appreciate your readership. Evolutionshift has and will be the place where I […]
I know I am most definitely dating myself by using that iconic Warner Wolf phrase from the 1970s. Any baby boomer from the first half of the boom that ever watched sports on TV can remember that phrase. Well, this is a column about going to the video tape. Internet 2.0 is video. On January […]
In the early 1970s, when I was first really getting into jazz, I heard one of those glib statements that stuck with me. “The history of the jazz trumpet can be written in four words: Louis Armstrong Miles Davis” Now this obviously is not true as there have been dozens of great jazz trumpeters, but […]
The Rio Olympics are the first true Shift Age Olympics. While the Beijing Olympics were the first of this new age, the Rio Olympics were the first selected in the Shift Age. The Rio Olympics point to the fact that we are not only in the global stage of human evolution, but that the major […]
The recent election in Japan is extremely significant. It indicates that the country is beginning to catch up to the rest of the world. In my book “The Shift Age” and my speech with the same title I speak about the “Threshold Decades”, a 20 year period from 1985-2005 when the developed countries of the […]
As a futurist I write and speak about long term trends. As an advisor and speaker to CEOs, I am looked to for more short term trends and forecasts. Last September, when the growing recession went into a global financial meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I was constantly being asked about what was […]
In the last column I looked back at the history of K-12 education in the U.S. This was to provide background and context for this and future columns. I also mentioned in that last column that I was fortunate to participate in an exciting conference of people committed to creating the 21st century K-12 campus […]
The US automotive industry is about to go through a historic transformation. It is very possible that by the year 2020 we will have largely weaned ourselves off of the pure internal combustion engine. The key is to make the right decisions about the next 12 years in the next 12 months. To initiate a […]
Regular readers of this column know that I have been a clear and forceful advocate of alternative ways to power transportation. The internal combustion engine was invented more than a century ago. We are now entering the decade that will take us toward the new definition of automotive transportation. We are about to define what […]