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, a forceful change in consciousness, a political/security issue, and both an economic issue and an incredible economic opportunity. 

In the first week of the year, while poor Denver continues to get blasted with snow, most of the rest of the country experienced spring weather.  Cherry …

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 is not what I do. My job is to analyze trends and the underlying dynamics that create them. Having developed a level of pattern recognition allows me to connect a seeming disparate collection of events and occurrences to discern the early development of a new …

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 …

In the post below, we looked at reasons why coffee and caffeine might have become the ‘drug’ of the current decade.  In our ‘always on’ culture, the need for a stimulating pick me up is clear.  I would now like to explore the other aspects of this new coffee culture, as it is the manifestation of a number of social trends and cultural dynamics that are fundamentally changing our society.

Starbucks [for this post I will use them, the biggest brand, as the representation of all the new wave of coffee houses] is often thought to be brilliant because they …