Think: I found this short article, The Mega-trends that Will Shape Our Future World, to be very insightful. My favorite category was “Innovation to Zero” by which the author means that crime, disease, hunger and pollution will all move in the direction of zero in the near future. Think Again: This Harvard Business Review article,…

Think Optimistically: Marc Andressen has written a long (5,000 words) but important article entitled The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. While I can’t say I agree with everything in the paper, I am in general agreement that there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future. I also agree that technology holds the biggest key to…

Think: Currently, two major labor strikes are taking place in the U.S.–autoworkers and Hollywood screenwriters (and actors). What do both strikes have in common? Answer: The workers are worried about technology’s impact on their wages and their livelihood. The Economist recently published an interesting opinion piece on AI’s future impact on jobs. The results were…

Think: If you want to think better–and, really, who doesn’t–read this article on the importance of handwriting. Even in the age of laptops, keyboards and voice recorders, I’ve long been an avid writer of handwritten notes. I scribble notes in the margins of books, jot things down by longhand at conferences, why I even still…

Think Optimistically: Over tens of thousands of years, the human brain has been trained to optimize around the notions of fear and scarcity. The reason for this is simple: The world our ancestors occupied was a scary place and it was hard to find food. I will be the first to admit that the world…

Think: Well, here we go. Researchers at CalTech have recently developed a robot that can crawl, walk, climb and fly. This article has a brief description of the technology along with an impressive video of the robot in action. My best guess is that among the first markets for the technology will be the police,…

Think: “The Great Progression, 2025-2050” is an insightful article and is well worth reading. It is on the long side (about a 20-minute read) but two quotes in particular stuck out to me: 1) “This slow-moving, pro-progress story is being missed by most of the mainstream media chasing the minute-by-minute story of crisis and decline”…

Think in Questions: Given the extraordinary advances in everything from artificial intelligence and robotics to biotechnology, nanotechnology, gene-editing and regenerative medicine, here is a question all of us should spend some time thinking about: How Old Can Humans Get? (Hint: One leading scientist thinks the answer may be 1,000 years–or more.) Think Different: What’s the…

Think: If you’re a leader in your organization, I encourage you to read–and then think deeply–about this article: Strategy as a Catalyst for Change. Thinking long-term can sometimes feel like a “fool’s game” because so much of the deep future (10+ years) is unknowable and will be unpredictable. Alas, not everything is unknowable. One thing…

Think in Questions: If you haven’t yet watched the new movie, “Oppenheimer,” I highly recommend it. One of the most interesting things for me is that at the time the scientists first tested the atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945 there was a “non-zero” chance that the weapon might ignite the atmosphere and destroy…