I came across as excellent presentation about the future called Future Agenda. I think it showed up via one of the people I follow in Twitter. It’s gold for an SF writer…very visual, very easy to navigate, very clean, and it fits (in general) with my understanding of likely futures based on my futurist research. …
There are a lot of us being guardians at the gate. Environmentalists warn about species extinction and loss of the wonderful world we’re lucky enough to live on. Scientists and climatologists wring their hands about global warming. Governments worry about terrorism. We need the guardians at the gate, we even need to be the guardians. …
Every year I play a predictions game. It’s not really good futuring since the world is way too strange for prediction except by true experts in a field, and I’m a generalist. But I still like the game. So here goes: Publishing and Creativity: Preface to this section. I’m playing here, and frankly the book …
Arundhati Roy came to Seattle last night and spoke to a sold-out crowd at Town Hall. The rest of my family stayed home in an odd resonance: the family teenager was putting the finishing touches on a school project about Gandhi. If they don’t yet, schoolchildren will be studying Arundhati. For those who don’t yet …
 As many of you know, I have other hats besides writer/speaker/futurist.  I work for a city as the Chief Information Officer, or CIO. That means I’m responsible for all of the phones and computers and communications – people and budgets and decisions. We are one of many cities competing to have Google choose our community …
This is the third part of my futures post series for January 2010. The first one evaluated my results for 2009. The second talked about what I think will happen in 2010.  This is the “what could we do†post. There are a lot of things, but I’m going to pick four. Reform the way …
After evaluating my predictions from last year (which were in three separate posts to start with), I decided to keep it simple.  Remember that futurists have no crystal ball and I can no more tell you what a stock will be on a given day than a séance leader can.  We can see trends. We …
I’m not as much of a predictive futurist as some of my friends and colleagues, and I do like to play in the space once a year – right about now. I’m going to do this in three steps. Evaluate last year’s predictions, make this year’s predictions, talk about what we need to do this …
I got a new ipod for Christmas with radio, which meant that while I was at the gym yesterday I watched the news. Obama got it exactly right. He said the government needs to investigate and learn and get better. The government’s part is pretty much what you do anytime you have a failure, whether …
As a futurist, I’m often asked what I think we should focus on. I typically say health care, education, broadband, and saving the world (ecology/alternate energy and lifestyle). We have a good chance at one of them right now. We can do health care better for millions of Americans. We can help our businesses, our …
