Eric Garland's blog

The Internet is lit up with hand-wringing about a referendum in North Carolina regarding the passage of a referendum aimed at making gay marriage illegal in the state forever more. On Facebook, Twitter and in the comments sections of all the usual Internet hangouts, well-thinking people are lamenting this step toward a new Dark Ages, a further deepening of injustice, a coarsening of society.

Last week I read a piece in Forbes about how young people today should not complain about "underemployment," the phenomenon of working part-time or at a job unsuited to one's level of education.

"But there are no good targets in Afghanistan."

-Donald Rumsfeld, after being told that the 9/11 attacks came from Afghanistan, instead of some place more fun, such as Iraq

USA Today notes that America's student debt loan is set to top one trillion, even as the rest of the economy attempts in vain to deleverage. Even more interesting is the fact that the average loan is double what it was just a decade ago. What does this mean exactly?

Super-monster-seller-author-blogger-everything guy Seth Godin joins the long list of characters who have given up hope entirely. No, I don't mean that they are huddled up in front of their DVD player, sucking down pint after pint of Ben & Jerry's while watching The Princess Bride on a loop until God eventually kills them out of pity.

If you tell people that The System is totally broken and there are no jobs and everybody is in debt and sorry, nothing can be done, they can either revolt or simply walk away. We know what revolt looks like - Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street, Tiananmen Square and such. But walking away looks even more interesting.

The news media are complicit in the total inability of the average person to think about the long-term impact of anything. One of the potent techniques you will see is the positioning of a recent event as completely insulated from the longer-term trend at play.

Garland's Law of Foresight Journalism is a well-researched theory that guides the actions of magazine and newspaper editors, as well as television producers, regarding their decisions to report on future studies, forecasts, scenarios or predictions of any sort.

The law shows the following phenomena in the media ecosystem:

This episode of the Competitive Futures Podcast features Australian futurist Paul Higgins, founder of Emergent Futures. Paul has a fascinating background, a veterinary surgeon who turned toward foresight after a simple ad for a futures studies grad program.

The postmodernization of global economics started in earnest forty years ago when Richard Nixon announced the end of the gold standard, nominally to protect American economic interests. It behooves us to go back and listen to the man's statements regarding the decision.