This was a very interesting year from this futurist’s point of view.  It felt like a year of transition, of new beginnings and of breakthroughs.  New and clear trend lines were started in several areas that will continue next year and beyond.  Starting next week I will take a predictive look forward to 2007 and suggest trends and dynamics that will help shape the months and years ahead.  This post however will take a look back to point out developments that occurred as a preamble for the predictive look forward.

2006 will be looked back upon as the year where a …

The last time a human being walked on the Moon was in 1972.  Close to half of the U.S. population has been born since then.  It therefore falls to people over the age of 50 to recall the incredible excitement and sense of discovery and adventure that was the NASA Space program up to that year.  There were few things in my lifetime that both excited and united humanity as much as the first 15 years of space exploration that started with Sputnik in 1957. I remember the day when John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth …

One of the trade offs we seem to have accepted during the past 20 years is a loss of privacy.  None of us say we approve of that, but we have embraced technology in such a way that a diminished sense of privacy has occurred.  The portability of storage and computing, as discussed on this blog in earlier posts, is a major reason.  The easier small storage devices and laptops are to carry, the higher probability of theft.

It was revealed the other day that a laptop, with personnel records for 382,000 Boeing employees was …

In a post two days ago I suggested that the Wii Video Game console from Nintendo was the clear winner in the new console competition with Sony’s PlayStation 3.  I based this on the fact that the Wii was an innovative product that both opened up the gaming space to new participants and was highly desired by experienced gamers.

Since that post I have come across sales numbers that emphatically point to the fact that consumers have embraced the new, innovative vision of the Wii.  The PlayStation debuted on November 17 and the Wii on November 19 and the November …