In the last three years, I have spoken about how 2012 might well be one of the most change-filled, disruptive years in America in recent memory.  It is a quadrennial election year.  It is the year of the Mayan Prophecy.  It figures to be a year of political conflict between those who want to hold onto the legacy structures and ways of thinking of the 20^th century and those who realize that the 21^st century is a time for new forms and ways of thought.  I had, until recently, felt that, while disruptive, 2012 would be about transformation and new beginnings.  The metaphor that comes to mind is birth: a process that is quite painful, but ultimately, produces a new, vibrant life.

In recent weeks, I sense that 2012 could well be a dangerous and strife-torn year in the United States.  A year when the fabric of our society will, to some degree, be severely tested.  Here are some recent facts that are disturbing:

- The wealth disparity in the U.S. is at a historic high.  The last time the concentration of wealth in the upper one percent of the country was as high as it is now was 1929.

- The number of people living below the poverty level is the highest it has been in 52 years. 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the last year alone.

- Median incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997, a span of 14 years.  The last time this happened in the …

[Note: The following column was published in the last Shift Age Newsletter.  If you would like a free subscription to the Newsletter, please click here and fill out the short subscription form]

Many of us attend conferences that are about certain topics, such as new technology, new behaviors or new forms of communicating. Speakers and panels get up on stage and spew new acronyms to show they are experts, or in the know, or specialists. Since we are not sure what they all mean, we think those who speak them must be smart. If we know what the jargon means, we feel in the know, and possibly, a sense of smugness creeps in.

When I speak about the future, people are sometimes surprised that I use simple language and stories to point out the trends and what the future might look like. Big concepts, macro trends and dynamic forces are simple, significant and profound, but speaking of them with lots of jargon is unnecessary and, in fact, false.

The short clip below is the ultimate statement ridiculing all those tragically hip, terminal insiders who think they can sound smart when reeling off jargon. Many of you have probably seen it, but watch it again in this context, and you might even laugh out loud at the jargon-speaking folks on stage at the next conference.

More seriously, as a speaker, I am always trying to get better at what I do. How can I impact the audience more directly? How can I be …

[Note:  This column was recently published in my Shift Age Newsletter. Please click here to sign up for a free subscription.]

In the past few months – and particularly the past few weeks – I’ve been asked everyday about what I think the near-term economic future will be. People even ask me about the stock market: Should they buy real estate? What do I think the price of gold might be? Because I’m a futurist who has been correct about some big things, they look to me for investment advice in these incredibly uncertain times.

I am not an investment advisor. I do not want the responsibility of guiding investors by answering their specific questions. That is not my expertise. My expertise is discerning long-term trends and developing long-term forecasts. Of course, these long-term trends could affect their specific investment. If questions are shaped in macro terms, I am happy to answer, as I feel some certainty and firmness of footing.

During the last few weeks of the debt debate debacle in Washington, I was asked every day what I thought might be the outcomes or consequences. In the week leading up to the August 2 deadline, I was in Australia and New Zealand, where it seemed everyone wanted my view. Other than the immediate statement that, as an American, I was totally embarrassed by the prioritization of party and special interests over the national interest, I did make some predictions

I said that if the debt reduction was not significant …

I have stated the above words several hundred times to audiences around the world since my speaking career as a futurist started to take off in 2007. The context of the statement is my general “The Shift Age” presentation, when I say that we have entered the global stage of human evolution.

Up through the Industrial Age, the highest form of human construct was the nation-state.  National economies, national identities and national cultures shaped thinking. During the Information Age, growing connectivity, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the true beginning of the global economy moved everything to a more global orientation. The nation-state remained. It had been clear to me for years that we were entering a period when the nation-state would begin to look ineffectual, as nation-states would no longer be able to separately deal with global problems. Can one or several nation-states deal with climate change or a globally connected financial crisis?

Post WWII, the United States, and to a slightly lesser degree, the Soviet Union, were so powerful they each could single-handedly initiate solutions or solve major world problems. That time – the modern height of the nation-state – has passed. Internally, we no longer follow our leaders; our leaders follow us. We listened to FDR, Churchill, Gandhi, JFK, Brezhnev, De Gaulle and Adenauer for direction. Now, our leaders ask their pollsters what we think. In effect, the people are now leading, and the leaders are following. “What do the latest polls say I should do?”

The only …

I find that the insights I gain relative to the future often come from reading small articles, graphs or photos that are buried deep in periodicals be it in printed or digital form.

Amidst all the media coverage of the past few weeks on Weinergate, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and who is or isn’t running for the Republican nomination for president there were two separate articles about water buried in the back pages of the New York Times.  The significance of these two short articles about water to me far outweighs all the coverage on the more popular subjects.  We all get seduced or distracted by immediate superficial media stories, but that is for another column.

Now back to the subject of water.  Water is a determinate of life, at least how we on Earth define life. I have written here about water before, relative to other planets, the relative droughts we have experienced in the past few decades, the dying oceans or a critically important new way to utilize water.  Water is more important than almost anything else in our lives, yet it only becomes a story if there is too much of it, too little of it or in the years ahead, it becomes too expensive.

In late May there were two stories about water that leapt off the page.

The first was about the reanalysis of some Moon dirt.  For decades the prevailing scientific view of the Moon was that it …