As a professional futurist, I don’t claim to predict the future. However, the two things I’m confident in stating are: 1) Today is the slowest rate of change we will ever experience again; and 2) the greatest change today is the rate of change. The world is accelerating and it’s imperative that business leaders spend…

One of my many strategies for thinking about the future includes the dropping of words. This old post explains the concept but an example of the idea can be found in the term “color TV.” When most television sets were black-and-white it was necessary to add the word “color” as a necessary descriptor for new…

Did you know the cartoon series The Jetson’s was originally released in September of 1963? Also, the program wasn’t a commercial success and only 26 episodes were ever produced. The program’s relative failure may, perhaps, surprise you—especially if, like me, you grew up watching countless re-runs of the program. The reason the program didn’t meet…

Over the coming months, I’m scheduled to deliver a series of 12 keynote presentations across the United States for Verizon Wireless on “How the Internet of Things Will Transform Business.” I have written a little about the “Internet of Things” here but it’d be presumptuous for me or anyone to claim that they will know…

A common and popular vision of the Internet of Things—which I loosely define as the connection of billions of physical objects to the Internet through the use of low-cost sensors—is the example of an alarm clock smart enough to read your daily schedule, review the latest traffic and weather reports and then communicate this information…

We live in amazing times and our world is about to become even more amazing in the near future due to a plethora of game changing technologies. To understand why, it first helps to consider just a few of the technologies and trends that did not make my list: 3D printers, flying drones, low-cost robotics,…

Last week, I shared with you 10 ways Google’s new “Project Glass” might change the world around us. Smithsonian is now reporting that some clever innovators are already experimenting with the technology to deliver real-time foreign voice translation. The video below is a little slow and the wearer’s googles look quite unappealing but I encourage…

As I wrote in an earlier post, Google is only 13 years old; Facebook is a mere 8 years old; and the iPhone just turned five. Each has impacted the world in some surprising and unexpected ways. From my perspective as a futurist, Google’s “Project Glass” (which offers enhanced augmented reality as well as the…

I’m in Dallas today to deliver a keynote presentation to the National Multi-Housing Council. The title of the talk is quite lengthy, “How the Internet is Creating a New Type of Consumer; Why Social Networks are Essential Anchoring Tools; and How Great Storytelling and Extended Relationships Will Enable Businesses to Engage with Customers in New…

I love irony. It is one reason I enjoy telling the story of how Bethlehem Steel’s once mighty steel plant has been converted into the National Museum of Industrial History by the Smithsonian Institute. In this same spirit, I just stumbled across this nugget on the Mim’s Bits Blog. It seems the massive 1.4 million…