It was one hundred and six years ago that Albert Einstein stated that the speed limit of the cosmos was the speed of light – 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of light, the “c” in the equation E=mc2, has, since Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, been accepted as a fundamental axiom of science.  It is one of the foundations of quantum physics and much of scientific endeavor ever since.

This is why there has been such an uproar over the findings of a recent research project on neutrinos recently conducted at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research.. Neutrinos, sub-atomic particles were measured as traveling a distance of 450 miles (720 kilometers) 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. Even this miniscule difference raises the possibility that the speed of light is no longer the upper speed limit of the universe.  Einstein himself once said that, if you could send a message faster than the speed of light “You could send a telegram to the past” [It is a commentary on the speed of the last century’s pace of invention that Einstein used the word telegram, but that is something for another column, newsletter or even book]

So the science fiction possibility of actual time travel and longstanding ideas of cause and effect might now have to be reconsidered.  The most published quote in reaction to these ...]]> [Note:  This column was published in the most recent Shift Age Newsletter.  You can sign up for a free subscription here.]

It was one hundred and six years ago that Albert Einstein stated that the speed limit of the cosmos was the speed of light – 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of light, the “c” in the equation E=mc2, has, since Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, been accepted as a fundamental axiom of science.  It is one of the foundations of quantum physics and much of scientific endeavor ever since.

This is why there has been such an uproar over the findings of a recent research project on neutrinos recently conducted at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research.. Neutrinos, sub-atomic particles were measured as traveling a distance of 450 miles (720 kilometers) 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. Even this miniscule difference raises the possibility that the speed of light is no longer the upper speed limit of the universe.  Einstein himself once said that, if you could send a message faster than the speed of light “You could send a telegram to the past” [It is a commentary on the speed of the last century’s pace of invention that Einstein used the word telegram, but that is something for another column, newsletter or even book]

So the science fiction possibility of actual time travel and longstanding ideas of cause and effect might now have to be reconsidered.  The most published quote in reaction to these findings came from a theorist from CERN, Dr. Alvaro de Rujula: “If it is true, then we truly haven’t understood anything about anything.”  He further went on to say “It looks too big to be true.  The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.”

The group that reported the results was the Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus or Opera.  The Opera group agreed with Dr. de Rujula and said they have published the findings in order to have them scrutinized. The findings are so astounding and fundamentally hard to accept that the hope is that they are either corroborated and confirmed with another experiment, or that some yet to be found flaw in the measurements of the experiment can be found.    100 years of scientific endeavor, training and thinking have been called into question.

Is this a moment such as finding out that the earth revolves around the sun or that the earth is round?  Is this one of those times when totally accepted scientific thought is proven wrong? Is this one of those moments that decades and centuries from now will be looked upon as a breakthrough threshold of science?

Given that it was the Opera group that is asking the question, we have to say, sorry folks, that it isn’t over until another scientific team sings.  If these findings are corroborated, then it will most likely be in 2012.  What if it was corroborated on 12/21/12, the date that the Mayans said that the world as we know it will change?

In January, I started to say that we should stop calling it the “Greek Debt Crisis” and start talking about it being the potential death rattle of the Euro.  In August, I suggested a 30%-60% chance the Euro would collapse.  A couple of weeks ago, when the “Euro solution” was widely trumpeted in the media, people who knew of my view of the situation sent me links about it.  Not so fast, I said.  This is not the final answer; it is a temporary delay of inevitable further mass meetings of politicians to try to save face.  There was no solution there, just an agreement to move forward and hope to arrive at one.

I have long suggested that the Eurozone should allow Greece to become the third-world country it seems to want to become.  When was the last time the terms “innovation,” “strong work ethic,” or “growth economy” were accurately used in the same sentence as “Greece”?  In a country where 10% of the work force is employed by the government, ...]]> The Eurozone is a mess.  Mathematics, common sense, recognition of a changed reality, and, yes, democracy have all taken a back seat to a deep-seated, ego-related loyalty to a broken idea from the 20^th century.  This is one of a number of situations today where legacy thinking from the last century is propping up institutions and ways of looking at the world that will soon dissolve in the face of new forces and ways of thought of the 21^st century.

In January, I started to say that we should stop calling it the “Greek Debt Crisis” and start talking about it being the potential death rattle of the Euro.  In August, I suggested a 30%-60% chance the Euro would collapse.  A couple of weeks ago, when the “Euro solution” was widely trumpeted in the media, people who knew of my view of the situation sent me links about it.  Not so fast, I said.  This is not the final answer; it is a temporary delay of inevitable further mass meetings of politicians to try to save face.  There was no solution there, just an agreement to move forward and hope to arrive at one.

I have long suggested that the Eurozone should allow Greece to become the third-world country it seems to want to become.  When was the last time the terms “innovation,” “strong work ethic,” or “growth economy” were accurately used in the same sentence as “Greece”?  In a country where 10% of the work force is employed by the government, where tax avoidance is an embedded cultural practice, where the 3-hour lunch is common in spite of a 24/7 global economy, what were the Europeans thinking?  They weren’t.

Each time Greek debt repayment guidelines and economic metrics have been set forth, they have always turned out to be no longer valid.  Greece is in a downward economic spiral, and there is clearly no way the massive amount of accumulated debt can be repaid in the foreseeable future.  The Greek people know this.  There is no question the Greeks lied to get into the Eurozone, lied about their government budgets, and then lied about their ability to make rapid changes to their economy to repay the debt they received through their deception and the greed of the European banks.

The answer has been clear for months.  To avoid the real threat of a financial contagion that spreads to Italy and Spain, the plutocrats spending hours negotiating should have done the obvious: They should have stated that since Greece was clearly in violation of all terms so far negotiated, they were being jettisoned from the Eurozone; AND, they should have indicated that the dramatic increase in funds to prop up the region was being redeployed to erect a firewall around Italy and Spain.  Cut the losses, stop contagion in its tracks, and get on with fortifying the banking system.

The Greek government, with loud demonstrations and strikes a weekly occurrence, briefly floated the idea that the Greeks should vote on whether to accept the onerous terms of debt repayment – which will ultimately destroy their economy in the name of protecting the banks – or returning to the drachma and suffering some short-term severe pain for long-term growth and independence, what do you think they would have done?  Why shouldn’t the Greeks vote for self-rule, rather than imposed rule of other countries primarily interested in preserving their banks?  So once again, the can has been kicked down the road, the markets swoon in reaction, and we are left with a situation that will only worsen and drag out the misery.

The old guard – in age and thinking – that architected the Eurozone would not accept reality.  More than two years ago internal IMF reports said that Greece was effectively bankrupt.  Instead of dealing with that reality then and there, they made all worship at the altar of devotion to the Euro above all else.  Now two years later there is more indebtedness that has had the effect of both spiraling the Greek economy into severe recession and also putting the banks of Europe – and therefore the global economy- at great risk.

What we are seeing here is the legacy thinking of the 20^th century keeping European leaders from facing the financial realities of the 21^st century.  What sounded like a noble idea – unifying a continent to better compete with the United States and the emerging China – was born from a late-20^th century world view. That is still valid.  The problem was thinking the next step – a single currency – would be manageable. Rules for membership and debt levels were legislated and then universally ignored for the sake of the vision of an ever-growing Eurozone.  By not seeing clearly, by not enforcing the rules set forth, the leaders of the Eurozone find themselves in an untenable situation.  They can hold on to a vision that no longer works and force the entire Eurozone into a half-decade of no-growth due to massive deleveraging, or they can move swiftly to jettison Greece, shore up Italy and Spain, accept downgraded credit ratings for a couple of years, and emerge in 2013 with something that could in fact be a powerful economic and financial force.

Sometimes dire situations necessitate humor.  While this clip is humorous, the numbers are basically accurate.  Truth in humor.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the greatest Presidents of the United States. He helped shape the ideal of a citizen’s democracy for America.  He was a visionary and evidently a futurist.  Here is what he said in 1802 about banking institutions:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.  If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”

What  would he  think and say about the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon?

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers almost three years ago, a number of people who had recently lost jobs due to downsizing, bankruptcy and lack of funding, have asked me where they should look for jobs.  My answer has been consistent: become your own job.

What is it that you love?  What is it that you are good at? What are your most marketable skills? What is your greatest value to the marketplace? If you stop and think about it, there should be a lot of overlap in the answers to these questions.

It is time to become the job you are.  It is time to embrace being a free agent.  It is time to be a one-person company.  It is time to let go of the concept that there is a job out there that provides security.

As early as late 2008, I forecasted that the unemployment rate in the U.S. would push through nine percent and perhaps reach 10 percent.  I further suggested that the country would stay close to these historically high levels of unemployment for ...]]> It is time to slowly say good-bye to the “job” as it has been known in our lifetime and the lifetime of our parents.  The parents of baby boomers were the first full generation that lived with the general concept of “life-long employment.” Baby boomers left college and stepped on lower rungs of a “career path.” Now, after three consecutive “jobless recoveries,” it should be clear that jobs as we had defined them are disappearing.

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers almost three years ago, a number of people who had recently lost jobs due to downsizing, bankruptcy and lack of funding, have asked me where they should look for jobs.  My answer has been consistent: become your own job.

What is it that you love?  What is it that you are good at? What are your most marketable skills? What is your greatest value to the marketplace? If you stop and think about it, there should be a lot of overlap in the answers to these questions.

It is time to become the job you are.  It is time to embrace being a free agent.  It is time to be a one-person company.  It is time to let go of the concept that there is a job out there that provides security.

As early as late 2008, I forecasted that the unemployment rate in the U.S. would push through nine percent and perhaps reach 10 percent.  I further suggested that the country would stay close to these historically high levels of unemployment for years. This reality is only now being discussed and accepted.  Two years ago, this forecast was doubted.  What led me to make this forecast?

The social concept of jobs, careers and companies really developed over the last 300 years in the Industrial Age. Before the invention of the steam engine, the centralization of industry, and the urbanization of the developed countries, people were artisans, cobblers, blacksmiths and farmers. One apprenticed with a master and gradually learned the trade. Craftsmanship and high-quality work were prized; scale was small and individualized. People plied their crafts on a one-to-one basis.

The 100 years from the Civil War through the 1950s was a time of scale, mechanization, centralization and the creation of vertical hierarchies that rapidly became bureaucracies. People started at the bottom, or if they had a college degree, slightly above the bottom, and over time, moved up the career ladder in a life-long sequence of promotions, often moving wherever the company told them to. The apotheosis of this was post-WWII America, with its triumphant manufacturing power that was the envy of the world.

The 1970s ushered us into the Information Age – with computers and communications satellites – and started the transition from production of goods to the generation of information at ever-increasing rates. An economy based on atoms was ceding to an economy based on digits. Waves of technological innovation across all sectors of the economy provided us all with moments of Toffler’s “Future Shock.”  The future kept showing up and altering our life, work and behavior.

The last decade of the 20^th century, with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, unleashed globalism and the global economy. Work began to transcend national boundaries. The birth of the Internet launched the connectivity revolution, which is playing out to this day. Technology moved from the desktop to the briefcase, and now to the pocket. It moved from the office to the home. The clear consumerization of technology is flowing through the global workplace.  People can now sit in a coffee shop or on a park bench and run companies, create products, collaborate globally.

In the Industrial Age, machines replaced manual or blue-collar labor. In the Information Age, computers replaced office or white-collar workers. Hardware and software replaced people doing jobs.  The Internet connected the world, so the lowest-cost producer became ascendant. Now in the Shift Age, all is in a state of shift. Instead of hierarchies, silos and vertical management structures, we are becoming a global net of connected work.

Jobs have less and less value, which is why people who have lost their jobs in the recent Global Financial Crisis cannot find jobs that pay the same as the ones they lost. It is time to let go of the concept of a job and think of becoming a node in the global network of commerce, of creativity.  What might be your highest value to others? What is your greatest passion? What is it that you do well?  What can you give to others in the connected global economy that will give you money in return? What is your innovative idea? In the Shift Age, wealth will flow from IP, intellectual property. What is your IP?

Stop looking for the “job” that is increasingly hard to find. Create your own job.  Become the job you are.

Now, three months later, I am happy to report that the response from the education community has been strong and extremely positive. Two conferences that had me as the keynote speaker purchased copies of the book for all attendees, and the feedback from these educators has been so positive that I am humbled. In addition, several school superintendents have purchased copies for the principals in their districts. I am currently scheduled to present to three large education conferences this summer and fall, as word of mouth on the book is spreading across the country. As I am a futurist and not a professional educator, it is truly gratifying to hear such positive reactions from K-12 educators.

Why did a futurist write a book on transforming education? Here are some of the reasons:

-There is so much noise, finger-pointing and argument about K-12 education today that it became clear to me that there’s a lack of vision. Many people have points of view, but they are relative to practices they either criticize or support, all based on the present landscape. The present system doesn’t work, so we have to completely start over with a new vision.

-The current system is from the Agricultural Age for its school year, the Industrial Age for most of ...]]> As many of you who subscribe to my Shift Age Newsletter know, I co-authored a book with Jeff Cobb on transforming education. Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education was published in April by Corwin Press.

Now, three months later, I am happy to report that the response from the education community has been strong and extremely positive. Two conferences that had me as the keynote speaker purchased copies of the book for all attendees, and the feedback from these educators has been so positive that I am humbled. In addition, several school superintendents have purchased copies for the principals in their districts. I am currently scheduled to present to three large education conferences this summer and fall, as word of mouth on the book is spreading across the country. As I am a futurist and not a professional educator, it is truly gratifying to hear such positive reactions from K-12 educators.

Why did a futurist write a book on transforming education? Here are some of the reasons:

-There is so much noise, finger-pointing and argument about K-12 education today that it became clear to me that there’s a lack of vision. Many people have points of view, but they are relative to practices they either criticize or support, all based on the present landscape. The present system doesn’t work, so we have to completely start over with a new vision.

-The current system is from the Agricultural Age for its school year, the Industrial Age for most of its buildings and schools, and the Information Age for now-outdated technology. It’s time for Shift Age education. The legacy thinking from the 19th and 20th centuries must be jettisoned and replaced with a vision of what 21^st-century education looks like.

- One of the questions I am most often asked by audiences in the United States is if we will remain a great country or if we are beginning an inexorable slide downward. If we want to remain a great country, we must better educate our children. If we want to remain a great nation, we must have better educational opportunities for citizens of all ages. It must start with our children. That is why I have written this book on the essential need to transform K-12 education.

There is a companion website for the book, www.shiftedtransformation.com If you want to go straight to the videos, click here. In addition, if you want to hear about the education curriculum of the 21^st century, the 5C’s, click here.

In Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education, we set forth a vision for transforming education for this century. We ask educators to step up and create this vision or come up with a better one. It is time from transformation, as nothing less will be enough.