Information Society

Five hundred years ago there was no telephone. No telegraph, for that matter. There was only a postal system that took weeks to deliver a letter. Communication was only possible in any fluent manner between people living in the same neighborhood. And neighborhoods were smaller, too. There were no cars allowing us to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. So the world was a bunch of disjointed groups of individuals who evolved pretty much oblivious to what happened around them.

I have written several articles on network communications on this blog site as well as on other sites, describing its e

I was recently asked a question that I hear all too often:

You have been studying today's most favored methods of working for many years. What are the big headlines about that? Just where are we going? Or rather, are we all going to stay home and work from there all the time ?

No, we’re not all going to “cocoon” and never leave our home offices! That would be insane.

December is a natural time of year for both reflecting on the past and looking ahead to the new year.

As I think about the challenge of "futureproofing" an organization, I--like many other futurists--have come to believe in scenario planning as a powerful tool for helping to anticipate, and prepare for, the future. However, I also know that the value of any scenario depends critically on an organization's ability to imagine what the future could be like--to "think outside the box" and beyond the obvious trends.

And organizational imagination in turn depends on the collective wisdom and insights of a large and diverse group of thoughtful individuals who are willing to share their perspectives and to learn from each other. In short, the only way to develop meaningful scenarios of future possibilities is to engage in rich, extended conversations.

Although digital divides between the world’s industrialized and developing areas loom large, development experts are finding ways to cross them.