The recent announcement from Amazon that in the past three months they had sold more e-books for their Kindle reader than hardcover books is significant.  It confirms that 2010 will be the year of lift off for e-books.  Amazon said that it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there are no Kindle editions.

This made me want to go back to past forecasts I have made about e-books to see how accurate they were.  As long time readers know, I have been forecasting the dramatic increase in e-books for four years.  In June of …

Many of you have been loyal readers of this blog for years and to all of you I loudly say thank you!  As many of you may know, about four months ago I became a featured contributor on Oprah.com writing a column every other week.  In fact, since I started to write that column it is clear that a lot of the new email subscribers to this blog are readers from www.oprah.com/davidhoule .

The columns I write there are different in subject, tone and address issues not covered here.  I would like to use this column to direct you to …

In my last column I wrote about Dubai and that it is a 21^st Century city.  As a futurist I felt at home being there as it feels like a city that is fully looking forward rather than stuck in a legacy past.  In this column I want to take a look at some of the dynamics that have shaped this city to be so forward facing.  Too many cities in the world are stuck in the past, the recent past or are looking into the future completely through present day problems.  What can other cities learn from Dubai?

Dubai exists …

In recent columns, here and here, I have written about how looking at the world through a lens of centuries can help to clarify what is in ascendancy and what is in decline.  Is something 20^th Century or is it 21^st Century?

I recently spent five days in Dubai.  Dubai is truly a 21^st Century City.  It is a city built for and in this century.  It is based entirely on a vision of the future.  As a futurist I look into and think about the future.  I look at trends, patterns, dynamics and directional energies to …