I am back after taking the longest hiatus in the 16 month life of this blog. I would like to think this futurist was missed, but this is August and I would imagine most readers would be either be languidly lying about on vacation or keeping a nervous eye on the stock markets, both activities […]
When I made the post with my 2007 predictions, I wrote that I would revisit the predictions from time to time, both to explore them more deeply or to reference them as events warranted. One of the specific predictions (#3) I made was that gasoline will climb over $3 a gallon nationally and over $4 […]
In my last post I listed four General Trends and Dynamics that would gain power in this New Year. The third one listed was the about alternative energy and Global Warming. The fact that we reached a tipping point on this in 2006 will become much clearer this year. It will be a dominant story, […]
As a futurist I am always asked to make predictions. Often somewhat in jest, people ask me who is going to win the election, how much will the stock market go up in the next three months, who will win the Super Bowl, things like that. While I have been accurate in such predictions, it […]
In both the first and second posts with this title I stated that while in many areas it might be difficult to see into the future, in the area of technology the future can be readily seen. The speed of technological invention and innovation moves so quickly that we have barely assimilated a recent breakthrough […]
Last week the British Government released the Stern Report on Global Warming. As those of you who read about it know, the report suggested that, without immediate and aggressive spending, global warming will reduce worldwide productivity on the scale of the Great Depression. The report, commissioned by the British government is the most comprehensive study […]
In the last half of the twentieth century many of the major social, political and cultural trends in the United States started in California. The worship of the car and the surrounding car culture, the glorification of suburbia via sitcoms, surfing, music, the drug and counter-culture, free speech and student protest, progressive public higher education, […]
A couple of months ago I made a post with this same title. I opened that post with the following language: “Across the full spectrum of human endeavor, it is often hard to see what the future might be. Trend lines can be seen, and directions understood, but specific pictures of the future can be […]
As a futurist I spend a lot of time looking for patterns — pattern recognition — and forces that may develop into trends. This is just the way I look at the world, trying to connect the dots into patterns and directions that suggest the future. However, in some cases it doesn’t take a futurist […]
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 […]