Burning Man has become a meme.  A fast moving, rapidly expanding, global meme.

That was my take away from being at Burning Man this year.  It has moved beyond the San Francisco Bay area word of mouth organic growth of the 1990s and the 2000s and blown up into a phenomenon.

I first became aware of the Burning Man gathering about 10 years ago.  I was struck by the unique and amazingly creative images I saw in the media.  As a non-camper I was impressed that thousands of people would journey to a dusty Indian reservation in the northwest corner of Nevada …

Almost three years ago, on 01-01-10 I wrote a column called “The Transformation Decade”.  On this digital date I suggested that this decade would be shaped by massive transformation.  The dictionary definition of transformation is “a change in nature, shape, form or character”.   This means that this ten-year period will be a decade when most of humanity’s institutions will do exactly that.

Since that date, in columns and speeches around the world I have found that not only was this forecast correct, but that this definition helps people to better contextually understand the ever greater amount and accelerating speed …

We have left the Information Age and entered the Shift Age.  This new age is an era of transformation unparalleled in terms of the amount of change that will occur is the next 20-30 years.

As long time readers of this column know, I have been writing and speaking about the Shift Age since 2007 and my first book of that name was published exactly 5 years ago this month.  In serendipitous celebration of that anniversary, my biggest and best book about the future of humanity is being published on January 1, 2013.  Parts One and Two of that book,

[ This first appeared a week ago in my Shift Age Newsletter.  ]

In the first eight months of 2011, I made some economic forecasts relative to the global economic landscape.  As a futurist, that is part of what I do, as people always ask me about the future, particularly economics.  It is only fair to be accountable in this regard.

Here are some of the forecasts I made, with current commentary:

In January of 2011 I said that the growth rate of the US GDP would be 2% for the year. Well I got that one right.  In …