Last week the British Government released the Stern Report on Global Warming. As those of you who read about it know, the report suggested that, without immediate and aggressive spending, global warming will reduce worldwide productivity on the scale of the Great Depression. The report, commissioned by the British government is the most comprehensive study to date of the economic impact of global warming. The quick summary is that failure to act could cost up to 20% of lost income worldwide on an annual basis. Aggressive and immediate action to solve the problem would cost 1% …

In the last half of the twentieth century many of the major social, political and cultural trends in the United States started in California.  The worship of the car and the surrounding car culture, the glorification of suburbia via sitcoms, surfing, music, the drug and counter-culture,  free speech and student protest, progressive public higher education, the Silicon Valley explosion of technological innovation, and of course, right turn on red.  Later the negative issues of traffic gridlock, illegal immigration, brown outs and state budget deficits started first in California.  Now, on one of the most fundamentally important issues of the day …

A couple of months ago I made a post with this same  title.  I opened that post with the following language:

“Across the full spectrum of human endeavor, it is often hard to see what the future might be. Trend lines can be seen, and directions understood, but specific pictures of the future can be vague.  However, our future shows up most clearly in the area of technology.  Technology lets us see new potential.  It shows us new tools that may or may not become universally useful but provides us with possibilities to expect.”

Since I have an attraction to the …

As a futurist I spend a lot of time looking for patterns — pattern recognition — and forces that may develop into trends.  This is just the way I look at the world, trying to connect the dots into patterns and directions that suggest the future.  However, in some cases it doesn’t take a futurist to spot linkage between certain developments.  Let me take you back a few days to a walk on the beach.

I was in Sarasota, Florida to take care of some stuff regarding  my condo and to do a lot of writing and reading.  As I always …