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Media: The Old is New

It is often valuable to have a grasp of history when looking to the future.  Too often those that don’t have a historical perspective think that everything is new when in many cases what is new is a refurbished version of a past success model. 

The other day Clear Channel Communications announced that a station it owns in Dallas, KZPS, was going to stop airing 30 and 60 second commercials.  Instead of running lots of commercials, the station will have advertisers sponsor an hour of programming.  During each hour the DJ will spend about two minutes speaking about the sponsor or …

A recent column discussed the historical context for the emergence of intellectual property as the new and most important valuation of a company.  While this point of view is becoming more main stream every day the current problem is that there is no liquid market that can help determine actual valuations. Corporations and individuals can easily monetize their real estate holdings, their heavy and office equipment and just about any hard asset they have.  As stated in the prior column, 80% of …

One of the many unique aspects of the time in which we live is that it is no longer unusual to have more than one career in a lifetime.  Since the beginning of the Information Age 30 years ago it has been increasingly common for adults to have two or even three careers during their lifetimes.  Historically this is absolutely understandable.

Three hundred years ago one usually did the same work that one’s parents did, and usually in the same place. One hundred years ago, in the middle of the Industrial Age when new careers or jobs were being constantly created, …

We Have Only Just Begun

I have written several times about the fact that it was in 2006 that the U.S. crossed the tipping point on Global Warming.  It has only been in the last year that  the understanding of the global warming issue has become mainstream in this country.  Two years ago it was environmentalists that spoke of it, now almost everyone does.

As someone who has long been concerned that this country and the rest of the world were marching blindly forward toward an overheated planetary nightmare, I am happy to see that almost everywhere I look there is the subject of global …