Twenty-two hundred years ago, you needed to work 50 hours to buy an hour of light from a sesame oil lantern. Today, to purchase an hour of an even cleaner and brighter light, it takes the average person about half a second. Such is the nature of technological progress. Yet, I think we can all…

The think tank known as The Millenium Project has recently published a new report, “The State of the World 2011.” One particular paragraph caught my attention because it reinforces a concept (accelerating change) I’ve been espousing for some time: “The coming biological revolution may change civilization more profoundly than did the industrial or information revolutions.”…

“This is the futurist’s dilemma: Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable. Either way, a futurist can’t win. He is either dismissed or wrong.” So writes Kevin Kelly is this thoughtful piece. As a professional futurist, it’s a dilemma I struggle with on a daily basis as I help my…

The Economist is running a profile on one of Google co-founders, Sergey Brin. I have written about Google’s ability to jump the curve before (here and here). One of the reasons Google is successful and will continue to be is because, as Brin says, he and the company’s other leaders have a “healthy disregard for…

Personally, I despise the saying “Think outside the box.” Nevertheless, as a result of exponential advances in technology people will need to learn to “jump the curve” in order to envision how different the future will be. To this end, I’d refer you to the graph to the right. If you are inclined to “think…

With oil over a $100 a barrel and some analysts predicting it’ll go as high as $300, it is easy to think that the future will be more expensive than today. I, however, have a decidedly different take on the future, I believe it is going to be cheap—very cheap. For example, today’s Wall Street…