Thomas Jefferson and Banks

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?

As anyone who has read my book The Shift Age or has heard me deliver a presentation of the same name knows, Accelerating Electronic Connectedness is one of the three fundamental forces of the Shift Age. Since 2007, I have consistently stated that this force will not only create a global connectivity that will empower developing countries by lessening ignorance and challenging institutional authority, it will also create an extension of McLuhan’s electric global village.

In a recent column titled “Shift Age Forecasts,” I discussed the déjà vu type of reality I live as many of my forecasts come true. I stated that I would review some of the ones listed in that column to provide deeper examination of why they have become reality. In that column, I stated:

“-Accelerating Electronic Connectedness, one of the three fundamental forces of the Shift Age, would manifest itself in part with great political upheavals as connected individuals blow down the walled gardens of ignorance and political tyranny.

“Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya as the beginning. The nervousness in Iran, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China is palpable.”

This was a forecast I first made in 2008 when questioned about what effect this accelerating connectedness would have on dictators and Islamic nations.

When people connect via the Internet on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, they in effect become their own mini media companies. Twentieth-century power structures obtained power in a time when actual media companies – and only media companies – created media content. Now, every company, …

In the past I have written that as a futurist, it sometimes feels like I live in a state of déjà vu. I spend a lot of time researching and looking into the future to develop the forecasts and trends that I write and speak about. I experience them, see them, and have varying degrees of certainty when I publish or present them.

Since 2011 began, so many of the forecasts and trends I predicted over the last four years are coming true, I feel as if I’m in an almost constant state of déjà vu. Now, as I spend some 22 hours traveling from Chicago to Singapore, scanning stacks of periodicals from around the world, this feeling is amplified.

I will write a lot in the coming weeks and months about all these forecasts and trends. As a futurist, I should be judged in part on how accurate I am, so it is indeed gratifying that many of the events/trends I predicted have become reality in 2011. The purpose of all these upcoming columns is to be able to point to actual events as the manifestations of what I have been speaking and writing about since 2006, when this blog began, and 2007, when I wrote The Shift Age. This will help explain the truly transformative time we are now entering. In a few years, the world will look quite different from what it did in 2010. The early evidence is everywhere in 2011.

Here are some of the trends and forecasts …

01/01/11 is the second digital New Year’s Day in a row.  A year ago it was 01/01/10, also zeros and ones, the two digits of the Information Age of computers.  That column, called “The Transformation Decade” seemed to resonate immediately as it was widely sourced in the blogosphere and retweeted globally on Twitter.  I created a presentation, “The Transformation Decade: 2010-2020” that was widely requested and delivered around the world this past year.

The definition of ‘transformation’ is ‘a change in nature, shape, character and form’.  The Transformation Decade therefore will be the ten years when most of humanity and its’ institutions will change nature, shape, character and form. This transformative force will sweep most along with a palpable sense of acceleration and change.  In advising companies for example, I have said that old management theories that applied in the 20^th century are no longer sufficient, that only leading from a place of transformation will keep companies current with the world around them.  To not operate with a dynamic sense of the definition of the word transformation will risk decline and obsolescence.

In the past four years, and in the three years since my book “The Shift Age” was published, I have said two things.  First, that the Great Recession of 2007-2010 is a reorganizational recession as it is the economic transition between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.  Second, that we are already in the Shift Age but that the perception and acceptance of a new …

Last November, I wrote a column here about the future of cable television.  In that column from last November I forecast:

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety …