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 …

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, …

It was twenty years ago last week that the Berlin wall ceased to be a barrier.  The wall of Berlin came down, starting several years of collapse and turmoil in what used to be called Eastern Europe.  This was one of the most remarkable, deeply moving events in my lifetime

My entire life up to that historic day of 11/9/89 was one lived with the world divided between the Western and Eastern Blocs.  It was an us versus them world and most geopolitical events were defined within this context.  As a young teenager, I had crossed through Checkpoint Charlie and always remembered the stark contrast between bustling West Berlin and the drab, empty East Berlin.  I chipped away two small pieces of the Wall on that trip and still have them encased in Lucite on a living room table.  To watch Checkpoint Charlie open up with hundreds of Berliners dancing on top of the wall brought tears to my eyes.

In “The Shift Age” book and in a presentation of the same name, I speak of the Threshold Decades, the 20 year period 1985-2005.  It is this 20 year period that will be seen by future historians as the threshold between the room of the past and the room of the future, between what was and what came to be.  There is no greater single geopolitical event of greater transformation that occurred during the Threshold Decades than the fall of the Berlin wall.

The fall of the wall was the start of the …

[Note:  This is a column reprinted from the current "Shift Age Newsletter" as it is very timely and has already received a lot of positive comment.  If you are not yet a subscriber of the newsletter, please go here and click on FREE subscription]

Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, …

It is about time!   The first steps that President Obama took recently to open up the U.S. policy towards Cuba are long overdue.  It has been clear to me for the past 15 years that the Federal Government’s policy on Cuba, instituted 50 years ago is a worn out relic of the Cold War era.

In the second half of the 20^th century, at least until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Americans were raised and educated that the bad guys were communists and that these communists threatened the way of life of the country and all that wanted freedom.  Well, for several decades that might have been true, but those times are long gone.  When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in the four years that followed, the eastern block collapsed and the global economy began.  The number of potential consumers of the capitalistic way of live basically doubled.  This led to economic upheavals that transformed China, Russia, South East Asia and Eastern Europe.  It was generally accepted that the U.S. and the West, had won.

The world is getting ever more interrelated in all areas economic.  It is getting ever more connected electronically.  It is starting to realize that there are global problems that face us all.  In such a new world, the idea that Cuba is a threat to the U.S, that Cuba is subversive is ridiculous.   What could Cuba possibly do to the U.S?  Let’s see, provide the …