Recently, I have been struck by the number of anniversaries of significant events that have been acknowledged this year. This past summer was the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Loveâ€. August was the 60th anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan. This week marked the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of public schools […]
Through out the entire course of human history, there has been consistent reference to happiness. Many philosophers have basically come to the conclusion that the fundamental goal of a human life is to be happy, to find and share happiness. This thread exists from the earliest writing to the present day Dalai Lama. Perhaps 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 this seventh installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Feng Hsu. Facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species. There is a lot of media coverage […]
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 […]
The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817. This was some 50 years after the beginning of the Industrial Age. The need for the NYSE was, in part, a result of the transition of the U.S. economy from one that was completely agricultural to one that was rapidly becoming industrial. During the course of […]
People started using computers outside the corporate research lab in the 1950s. The early computers created in garages were brought to market in the mid 1970s. The PC came out in 1981. The 1990s saw the early explosive growth of the laptop and the current decade is when the PDA and other wireless devices took […]
This past weekend I had the great good fortune to attend a three day energy conference attended by some of the world’s greatest energy experts. Thanks to the good graces of the Foundation for the Future I was invited to attend the conference as an observer. The Foundation invited 15 of the foremost physicists and […]
Peak oil is loosely defined at the point in time when half of all the oil reserves in the earth have been extracted and burned. This means that we are half way through the oil consumption cycle and move into extracting the remaining 50%. Some of the most respected experts and oil geologists have long […]
Recently I have been thinking about the cultural process whereby something that initially is perceived as dangerous to society ultimately becomes a part of the cultural mainstream. New is often perceived as threatening. Its newness is not understood, so if it can’t be understood and fit into the status quo then it must be bad. […]