To quote from one of the four prior posts with this title:

“While in many areas it might be difficult to see into the future, in the area of technology the future can be readily seen.  The speed of technological invention and innovation moves so quickly that we have barely assimilated a recent breakthrough when another shows up to knock us back on our heels again.  While these innovations do provide a glimpse of our future, they can be disorienting in that they show us that the Present that we are struggling to accept and assimilate will soon be outdated.”

Cloud computing …

In prior columns, here and here I have written about the transformative power of the cell phone.  Currently there are more than 2.1 billion cell phone accounts in the world and more than 220 million in the US.  More people have cell phones than have computers or use the Internet.  Globally, there are some 15 to 20 million news cell phone accounts opened up every month.

The cell phone has obviously changed the way we communicate.  We are all available all the time no matter where we are.  Text messaging is a new form of communication that did not …

Science fiction can be extremely thought provoking, particularly to one who thinks about the future.  There are novels that are fantastical and take place centuries in the future in galaxies ‘far far away’, populated by weird creatures and other worldly landscapes.  Then there are the many novels that are more conceptual, set slightly in the future on planet Earth that posit interesting social views and visions of how humanity might live and be governed; far enough ahead to allow a disconnect from current reality, but close enough to current day that they seem possible.  It is these novels that can …