Well, it finally has happened.  The price of gasoline has increased enough to cause pain to Americans so that they are changing behavior. The approach of $4 a gallon gasoline has, in the last month produced two positive results.  First, after gasoline consumption increased 1.4% in March over the same month last year, it declined 0.6% in April.  Second, ridership is up on mass transit systems around the country, in some cases by double digit amounts. The  Minneapolis-St.Paul light rail line has increased ridership of 16% year to date over last year, and the Miami rail ridership is up 13% year in first quarter but an impressive increase of 28% in April 

As regular readers of this column know, I have long predicted current oil prices.  In April 2006 I predicted $125 a barrel price for February 2008, so I was off by two months.  Also in that month I predicted $137 a barrel price for April 2009.  I now think that might be low.  In a recent column I predicted that the trading range for oil for the next 18 months would be an unlikely low of $95 and an elastic upper range of $135.  I see many trends and market conditions that point to a trading range of $125-175 between now and the end of 2009.  In other words, get used to today’s prices being the normal or the low normal.

America has 5% of the worlds’ population but consumes 25% of its energy.  The numbers are even worse when …

One of the technological innovations I have written about here and here in this column has been the reduction in size and cost of computer storage.  It is one of the more significant developments in computing over the past two decades.  It is part of the foundation that has allowed the explosion in mobile computing to occur. It is an integral part of the massive media files we can all now assemble and of course in the ability for all of us to become ever more productive as individuals. 

Seagate, the largest producer of hard drives recently announced that it had just shipped its’ one billionth hard drive.  In 1979 the company was an early trailblazer in the manufacturing of hard drives small enough for the early PC’s that were just being produced.  Their first product was the ST506 which held just 5MB of storage, was 5.5 inches wide and weighed 5 pounds.  This was revolutionary compared to the 14 inch and 8 inch drives that were standard at the time.  This first innovation of size reduction has, of course continued to this day.  A similar sized external hard drive today would hold not 5MB of storage, but 500 Gigabytes of storage, an increase of 100,000% in terms of capacity to weight and size.
What is even more revolutionary is the reduction in cost of hard drive storage.  The ST506 was priced at $1,500 for a cost of $300 per megabyte.  The most recent Seagate …

Growing up as part of the baby boom generation, a distinct memory is the air raid siren tests.  Every Tuesday, if I recall correctly, at 10a there was the test of the air raid siren blaring across the entire city of Chicago.  This was to prepare us for the possibility of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union (so we could crawl under our desks as instructed by our teachers).  Since it happened each week at the same time we knew it was a test.  If it had happened on any other day, I might not be writing this column today.

The other thing I remember were those times, while riding in the family car, of listening to the testing of the national alert system via the AM radio airwaves: “This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system”.  What examples of communicating to the populace; sirens that pierced the air of every population center in America and the then ubiquitous AM radio band.  The air raid siren being the industrial age amplification of the town crier and the AM radio being the most widely distributed form of electronic media at that time.

All this came back to me a couple of weeks ago when I read that the FCC had approved a plan for an emergency alert system that would send text messages to cell phones. This system is expected to be in place by 2010. Now that 75% or the population have cell phones and we carry them every …

Two years ago in this blog, I wrote a futuristic column  from April 20, 2009. The title of the column was “Remember When Gas Was Cheap?” At that time I predicted that the price of oil in early 2008 would reach $125 and that in April 2009 it would be $137.
In January of 2007 I was invited on the “First Business” syndicated business program to discuss the price of oil for the remainder of the year. At the time the price was $53 a barrel. I basically told the flabbergasted reporter that I thought the price of oil would most definitely cross $80 a barrel and would approach, but not reach the $100 a barrel price. The counterbalancing view was some “oil industry expert” who said the price range for the year would be $50-70 a barrel. Of course we know what happened.

Last fall I wrote a column predicting that the trading range for the price of oil would be $80-125 for the next two years. I now want to revise that forecast. When I made that prediction, the price has recently crossed $80, charting new territory. While obviously not surprised, I did let all the disbelief I had been subjected to in my predictions to give me a sense of caution. Since $80 was the new high, and I was saying that it would be the price floor for the foreseeable future I thought it would be a correct floor. I did say in that column that …