Blogs

Running toward the future: Innovations from Nike

Nike's new Flyknit line of shoes was discussed in this post from Co.DESIGN yesterday. As a runner, I'm eager to check these shoes out...even though I haven't run in a pair of Nike in years. Professionally, I found several things of interest in the chatter that emerged yesterday about the Flyknit shoes. In particular, the way Nike approached the project echoed many of the things we hear our colleagues at Strategos recommend.

originally posted at The Trend and Foresight Blog

An Awesome Adventure to the Future

In the new book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler offer a vision of the future that’s truly awesome in both the most traditional and modern understandings of the word; it’s as big as it as awe inspiring.

Tomorrow is promised to no one

I have long followed the original thinking of Nikkol Kondratieff, a Russian economist, who was the first to base his theories on actual statistics. He saw the economy as a 55- to 60-year cycle where technology supplanted the old ways of doing things by increasing productivity and through the replacement of certain industries and ways of thinking with new industries and approaches.

What people think I do meme - Futurist

A new meme (“What People Think I Do / What I Really Do”) has been spreading around the social media scene and we thought we'd try it out and create one for the Futurist community. Let us know what you think and if you share yours with us, we'll post it at our blog.


What People Think Futurists Do

originally posted at The Trend and Foresight Blog

Review of ConsumerShift

The most important change happening in the minds of consumers today is a shift towards post-modern values systems. ConsumerShift is a comprehensive cartography of the emerging consumer psyche.

The Dismantling of our Power Industry Infrastructure

On Wednesday I was invited to speak on a panel at the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in Washington DC. As the kickoff speaker on the panel, my message to them noted that the power industry is an industry that is under attack. An attack not being carried out by terrorists or invading armies, rather it is being attacked by emerging new technologies that have been advancing quickly and are currently beginning to boil around the edges.

more WFS blogs

Futurist Update

In the Current Issue:

  • Too Much Passenger Screening Is Making Airports Less Secure
  • Reducing Inequality in Europe Could Boost Growth
  • Tornadoes of the Past Offer Clues of Tornadoes to Come
  • Visionaries And Inventors to Gather in Toronto
  • IBM Gets Atoms to Remember Data
  • What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine

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The Futurist

In the Current Issue:

  • Nuclear Power’s Unsettled Future
  • A World Wide Mind: The Coming Collective Telempathy
  • Thriving in the Automated Economy
  • Hard at Work in the Jobless Future
  • Rethinking “Return on Investment”
  • A Future of Fewer Words?
  • From the Three Rs To the Four Cs: Radically Redesigning K-12 Education

Interviews

THE FUTURIST Interviews Tomas Brückmann On Creating a Chemical Free Future For Farming

in

As the world’s farmers strive to produce more food, they rely on ever-increasing quantities of pesticides—which includes products to kill weeds, insects, and any other organisms that might threaten crops. Environmental groups warn that the extra food comes at a heavy cost, however, of severe harms to the health of farmers, consumers, and ecosystems everywhere.

How to Read Minds: THE FUTURIST Interviews Neuroscientist Jody Culham

in

Your secret plans aren't so secret after all. Last year, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which reveals blood flow within the brain, Jody Culham and her fellow researchers at the University of Western Ontario discovered that areas of the brain associated with motion exhibit increased blood flow not only when acting but also when considering whether or not to act. In the January-February issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, we look into the study. Culham explains her work and its applications to FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker.

The Futurist Interviews Jim Motavalli, author of High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry

in

Electric vehicles have existed as a concept since the 1890s, but now the technology is finally here to make them a standard consumer vehicle of choice, according to Jim Motavalli, environmental writer, in his new book, High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry (Rodale, 2011).

World Future Review

In the Current Issue:

  • Extreme Asymmetric Warfare of the Future
  • Michio Kaku’s Religion of Physics
  • Energy in 2030 and Conservation
  • Taming Global Governance Idea Chaos
  • Planning for a College’s Future
  • Germany’s Approaching Pension Disaster
  • On Foresight, Prospective, and the Affairs of Nations
  • Featured Futurists: Interviews with Michael Brown, José Luis Cordeiro, and Steve Brouwer
  • Doctors as an Army for Peace?
  • New and Forthcoming Books
  • Abstracts of Recent Futures-Related Writing

Reviews of New Books

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Image of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
Author(s): Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler
Publisher: Free Press (2012)
Binding: Hardcover, 400 pages
List Price: $26.99

In Abundance: Why the Future is Better Than You Think, (Free Press, February 21) Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler offer a vision of the future that’s truly awesome in both the most traditional and modern understandings of the word; it’s as big as it as awe inspiring.

Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

Image of Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
Manufacturer: Digital Frontier Press
Part Number:
Price: $3.99

Why has median income stopped rising in the US?

Why is the share of population that is working falling so rapidly?

Why are our economy and society are becoming more unequal?

A popular explanation right now is that the root cause underlying these symptoms is technological stagnation-- a slowdown in the kinds of ideas and inventions that bring progress and prosperity.

Communicating with the Future: How Re-engineering Intentions Will Alter the Master Code of Our Future

Image of Communicating with the Future: How Re-engineering Intentions Will Alter the Master Code of Our Future
Manufacturer: CGXPublishing
Part Number:
Price:

A business that wants to survive and thrive must do more than simply plan for the future, says Thomas Frey, the DaVinci Institute’s executive director and senior futurist. He advises future-wary businesses everywhere to take personal ownership stakes in creating the future.

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World

in
Image of The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World
Author(s): Paul Gilding
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press (2011)
Binding: Hardcover, 304 pages
List Price: $25.00

In World War II, the United States and its Allies rallied their citizens to labor, sacrifice, and produce like never before to defeat fascism. Ecologist Paul Gilding expresses hope in The Great Disruption that, as the depth of the climate crisis hits, the world will in like fashion launch into wartime-like mobilization to avert ecological and socioeconomic catastrophe.

Learn about the future of ...

Commerce

Tomorrow is promised to no one

I have long followed the original thinking of Nikkol Kondratieff, a Russian economist, who was the first to base his theories on actual statistics...

Earth

Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal

The The Wall Street Journal's Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate...

Futuring

February 2012, Vol. 13, No. 2
  • Too Much Passenger Screening Is Making Airports Less Secure
  • Reducing Inequality in Europe Could Boost Growth
  • Tornadoes of...

Humanity

The Future(s) & Religion(s

When I moved to Hawaii six years ago to pursue a Master's degree in Religion at the University of Hawaii, I did not expect to earn a PhD in...

Sci/Tech

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030

Yesterday I was honored to be one of the featured speakers at the TEDxReset Conference in Istanbul, Turkey where I predicted that over 2 billion...

Governance

The Dismantling of our Power Industry Infrastructure

On Wednesday I was invited to speak on a panel at the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in...