Recently, I wrote about the Big Three Auto companies and how they need to change, and change their product lines if they wanted to stay “big”.   Since those columns there has been even more evidence that these companies are struggling to keep up with current realities.  Additional plants have closed, the production of trucks has been dramatically lowered, the projected number of vehicles to be sold this year has been lowered and now Chrysler has gotten out of the leasing business because the resale value of the big vehicles leased has plummeted.

Earlier in the year I …

It was just reported that, as expected, there are now more Internet users in China than in the U.S. As of last month there were 253 million Internet users in China as compared to 220 million in the U.S. What is striking is that in just the last year, the number of new users in China was 90 million, or a growth rate of more than 50%. That annual increase in users is more that the total number of users in most countries in the world.

There are several interesting aspects to these numbers. Of course, since …

The tag line of this blog is “A Future Look at Today”. It is not a political blog, nor is this a political column. I have assiduously kept politics out of this space leaving partisan conversations about campaign issues to others. There is a lot of heat around partisan politics and such heat can prevent clarity. As a futurist I think about the future by looking at the trends, patterns and dynamic forces that exist or are beginning to form. Readers of this column come here to get a sense of what might happen and why. That is …

There have been many cultural changes so far in 2008.  Some of these changes are in response to the rapid increase in the price of oil and other commodities.  Some of these changes have been due to technological innovations.  In both cases new behavior patterns are being established that will, to some degree become permanent and will create new dynamics in certain industries.  Today we take a look at some of the predictions made here last January.

Shopping

The predicted shopping trends predicted were written with a long term view.  What is interesting is that the high price of gasoline has accelerated …