Now that PRISM has been revealed, there is and will be significant discussions about personal privacy and government monitoring of personal communications.  There are several levels or developing issues and trends that this very significant revelation triggers for all of us to think about.    Here and in future columns we will look at the major dynamics at play and take a look at what they suggest for the future.

Privacy

It is the rare speech Q&A session that I am not asked about privacy and the future of privacy.  The fast answer is that there is no longer any privacy.  Privacy as …

Recently there has been a lot of media coverage on new views of women in the workplace and what is a good work/life balance. The 50^th anniversary of the publication of “The Feminine Mystique” and the publication of “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook are primary triggers of this conversation. Another is Marissa Mayer taking the CEO job of Yahoo while pregnant and then setting up a nursery next to her office. These two dynamic executives are rare women in the male dominated world of Silicon Valley.

Sandberg is jump-starting an empowerment movement for women. …

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,

A New Book – “Entering the Shift Age”

This has been a year of extremely productive writing for me. Long time readers of this column may question that, as the frequency of columns here has been less in 2012 than in the prior six years.  The reason is that over the last twelve months I have been writing a book.

“Entering the Shift Age” is a deep look into the new age we are now in.  Five years ago when “The Shift Age” was published, I wrote that humanity was about to enter a new age.  In brief terms I described why …