[This column first appeared in the Shift Age Newsletter ] People often ask me about what books I read.  I sense that they expect some kind of unique or weird answer from a futurist.  In addition to this question I am often given books or names of books to read, usually books that have transformed […]

The human creation of content and the human interface with computers has, for a century, been based upon the use of keyboards. Typewriters, then electric typewriters were used for all forms of written documents be it letters or books. This was used as the data entry for computers in the early days of mainframes. When […]

I have written several columns about cell phones in the past. Each one was due to milestones of growth. The speed of growth in the use of cell phones continues to be astounding. It was announced last week by the International Telecommunication Union that the number of total global cell phone subscribers will exceed the […]

It was 50 years ago this week that the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to orbit the earth. It changed the world.  In fact, there are few, if any events of the last 50 years that had such a global impact on just about every aspect of humanity. I can still remember the […]

To quote from one of the four prior posts with this title: “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 when another […]

In prior columns, here and here I have written about the transformative power of the cell phone.  Currently there are more than 2.1 billion cell phone accounts in the world and more than 220 million in the US.  More people have cell phones than have computers or use the Internet.  Globally, there are some 15 […]

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 […]