[This column first appeared in the Shift Age Newsletter ]

People often ask me about what books I read.  I sense that they expect some kind of unique or weird answer from a futurist.  In addition to this question I am often given books or names of books to read, usually books that have transformed the life of that person.  So I often seem to be in book conversations.

So here is a list of recent reads that I have greatly enjoyed.  In a future column I will list some older favorites that stand the test of time, even for …

The human creation of content and the human interface with computers has, for a century, been based upon the use of keyboards. Typewriters, then electric typewriters were used for all forms of written documents be it letters or books. This was used as the data entry for computers in the early days of mainframes.

When the first PCs came along in the 1970s, the keyboard was the method of interface. This was expanded with the introduction of the mouse. What followed was the obvious need to make the human-machine interface more appealing and accessible, so the graphic …

I have written several columns about cell phones in the past. Each one was due to milestones of growth. The speed of growth in the use of cell phones continues to be astounding. It was announced last week by the International Telecommunication Union that the number of total global cell phone subscribers will exceed the number of non-subscribers for the first time in 2008.

When you stop and think about it, this is nothing less than amazing. This means that more than half of all human beings alive today have cell phones. That includes …

It was 50 years ago this week that the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to orbit the earth. It changed the world.  In fact, there are few, if any events of the last 50 years that had such a global impact on just about every aspect of humanity. I can still remember the night that, as a …