Heart-Centered Thinking: If you’ve ever wondered if I take my own advice and block out large chunks of time to dedicate to the act of thinking, the answer is yes. In fact, I try to pepper in at least a few “think weeks” throughout the calendar year. This year, my wife and I traveled to the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota for just such a week. We wrote this article for the Minneapolis Star Tribune–Still Beauty to Sooth Your Troubled Soul. We hope it encourages some of you to get out into nature and under the night skies to contemplate those things which make your heart and soul sing and, thus, make life most worth living.

Think Skeptically: “What America watched Sunday was the first attempt to have people understand that AI will change every aspect of our lives by doing everything better, faster and cheaper.” This was just one of the gems I gleaned from this informative article, The Way AI will be sold to a skeptical public is starting to become clear. I encourage everyone to spend more time thinking about AI because, while the companies promoting the technology are trying to “humanize” it, the reality is that AI also has the potential to dehumanize. (Just to be clear, I am not anti-AI, I am only saying we must take this technology’s downsides very, very seriously and that is why I’d like to see society regulate it as though humanity’s future depends upon it–because it does.)

 Think Fast:  In spite of its rather confusing first sentence, this article on the biggest technology trends in the next 10 years offers a good perspective on the major trends transforming the world of tomorrow. (Here are just a few of the author’s thoughts: AI and automation will become omnipresent; Healthcare will be transformed by biotechnology, and the world will embrace “sustainability out of necessity.” The one area which I disagree with is the author’s prediction that most of us will be living “digital lives.” I am of the opposite opinion–I believe in the near future a growing number of people will return to human-to-human relations and will be spending more time in nature and less time living “digital lives.”

Think Small: One of the more interesting yet difficult aspects of being a futurist is trying to discern if “weak signals”–small trends which are today on the fringe of society–may become the mainstream ideas of tomorrow. This story on microgrids has me thinking this weak signal has a good chance of moving into tomorrow’s mainstream.

Think the Unthinkable: My responsibility as a futurist is not to tell people, organizations or industries what they want  to hear, my job is to tell them what they need to hear. This report on toxic agricultural chemicals being found in 4 out of every 5 people could be a big deal and it is something customers, food producers and farmers should be thinking about today.

Afterthought: “The real concern with artificial intelligence is not that computers will begin to think like humans, but that humans will begin to think like computers.” –Jack Uldrich

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