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This week it was announced tha the MIT Media Lab has a new leader, Frank Moss. He will be replacing the visionary founder, Nicholas Negroponte. NN is relinquishing leadership of the Media Lab to focus full-time on his global initiative of the $100 laptop.

This news story, as much as anything else this week, provokes thinking about the last two decades and the coming decades. It needs to be looked at and discussed on several levels.

First, a disclosure: I think Nicholas Negroponte is one of the coolest visionary guys on the planet. I only met him once after a speech he …

Cheney the Shooter

This was one of those news stories that prompted an initial “What! Are you kidding?”. Hey, over the weekend the VP shot someone. We all have pop songs that rattle around in our brain only to pop up at odd times. The late 90s’ OMC song “How Bizarre How Bizarre” popped up in my brain within minutes.

Of course there were the very valid discussions about why this was kept under wraps for so long, what would have happened if someone had shot Cheney, would he or she have been give a protection against a law enforcement investigation, and, of course, …

Praise the Lord, not Petroleum

As a futurist, as a spotter of trends, the most interesting news item this week to me was the fact that 85 of the most influential Evangelical Christian leaders in American rose up to state that it was god’s will to fight global warming.

Hallellujah! Hallelujah!

Seriously folks, this is a really big deal, a direction shifting event. I have been predicting (and hoping) that inevitably the religions of the world, starting with those based on the Bible would sooner or later have to embrace the larger issues of the environmental movement. If God created earth, all its creatures, and man in …

This past week, Alan Greenspan stepped down after 18 years as Fed Chairman. This was not only a story that was on the front page of the business sections, it was on the front page of the newspapers and one of the lead stories on the nightly newscasts. The Great Greenspan had steered the country through crises, and was now riding off into his emeritus sunset, a true economic hero.

I believe that Greenspan was the last, great Fed Chairman in the traditional mold. The definition of success has changed. Bernanke, and those that will follow him, have a new dynamic …