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 gave, so this observation is based on viewing at a distance, and of course reading his seminal book “Being Digital”. During a time when technology, media and electronic innovation took off, he has been at the forefront in terms of vision and advocacy.

Creating and launching the Media Lab in 1985, Negroponte set a standard not seen since the Bell Labs days of the 50s, 60s and 70s. His innovation was to take the research out of the corporation and out of the university, but blend the two in a wonderful way, getting funding from corporations and housing the Media Lab at one of the greatest scientific universities in the world.

The fact that he started the Lab in 1985 and made the decision to leave active management of it in 2005 has a particular relevance to me. In speeches I give and in current essays I have coined the 20 year …

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, who’s in charge, Bush or Cheney? And of course there was the “Guns don’t shoot people, Vice Presidents do” humor. All these discussions are extremely valid and must be continued. However, I want to discuss an aspect of this bizarre situation that I think points to a couple of developing trends that seem to have the power of irresistable force behind them.

It wasn’t the act of an accidental shooting that upset people. It was the impression that the truth was being withheld, and that the second highest elected official in the country didn’t seem to be accountable or want to be accountable to the American Public. That is what got people all riled up. The arrogance of the Vice President of the United States to not immediately provide an account of what happened, that is what bothered us.

In this post-digital age where we are all connected, where information flows freely …

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 his own image, why would he want us to slowly, systematically destroy it, them and us? The bible speaks to God’s creation of the world and man in his own image. To my knowledge there isn’t much in the ‘great book’ on petroleum and the sanctity of the internal combustion engine.

But the key point here is that these 85 key Evangelical Christian leaders came together in a powerful visionary statement that it is time for those of the faith to rise up and fight global warming. And they conveyed this message in a full page ad in the New York Times! Yes!!

Here is why this is such a profoundly important event. The dependency on oil is the greatest immediate threat to the future of humanity. Thomas L. Friedman, in some of his recent columns, and James Howard Kunstler in his blog and books have written very clearly about …

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 that will be part of the effectiveness and measurement of the job: the success they have in the area of global cooperation as it affects monetary supply and other Fed instruments.

This first popped into my mind during the run up in short term interest rates that Greenspan led in the last three years. When the constant quarter point raises in the Fed rate was underway, the consensus, based on history, was that, after a lag time, the long term interest rates would also rise. The primary focus was the mortgage market, as historically those rates went up.

Something happened: they didn’t really move up that much. What was going on? Greenspan himself stated that he was surprised. When he couldn’t put the skids on the heated housing market by waving the raising interest rate wand he started to sputter about the ‘housing bubble’ in a way similar to his ‘frothy exuberance’ …