In the middle of the 19^th century, the telegraph was the first technology in history to speed up communications between two people or two locations.  Prior to the telegraph the speed of human communications was measured in horse days; how far a horse could travel in a day. It always amazes me to think that this was the reality only 160 years ago.  My great grand parents were alive then!

There was the brief two year run of the Pony Express, which sped that up by having a fresh horse every 10 to 15 miles between St. Louis and California as …

In the last column here I wrote about the decline in what used to be called privacy.  The definition of privacy is mutable, ever changing.  What was considered private 100 years ago, even 20 years ago is practically non-existent today.  As I wrote in 2006 before the iPhone and all devices that have followed  “Technology Increases, Privacy Declines” One of the characteristics of the Shift Age is that all of us now live with two realities, the physical  reality and screen reality.

So, the uproar around Mr. Snowden’s disclosure of PRISM and how much the NSA, with …

Now that PRISM has been revealed, there is and will be significant discussions about personal privacy and government monitoring of personal communications.  There are several levels or developing issues and trends that this very significant revelation triggers for all of us to think about.    Here and in future columns we will look at the major dynamics at play and take a look at what they suggest for the future.

Privacy

It is the rare speech Q&A session that I am not asked about privacy and the future of privacy.  The fast answer is that there is no longer any privacy.  Privacy as …

We have left the Information Age and entered the Shift Age.  This new age is an era of transformation unparalleled in terms of the amount of change that will occur is the next 20-30 years.

As long time readers of this column know, I have been writing and speaking about the Shift Age since 2007 and my first book of that name was published exactly 5 years ago this month.  In serendipitous celebration of that anniversary, my biggest and best book about the future of humanity is being published on January 1, 2013.  Parts One and Two of that book,