I just returned from a trip through Normandy with my son.  The focus of our visit was the beaches of D-Day.   I was trying to connect a column billed as “A Future Look at Today” to the powerful emotions I was feeling.  On Omaha beach there is nothing on the beach to acknowledge what occurred on June 6, 1944 except for a very modern sculpture dedicated in 2004 for the 60th anniversary.  Nearby was a plaque with the words of the sculptor, Anilore Banon, as to his creative inspiration for his creation, “The Wings of Hope”

“So that the spirit which carried these men on June 6, 1944 continues to inspire us, reminding us that together it is always possible to change the future”

Connection made

Brasilia, the capitol of Brazil, represents an example of what humanity must do in this early part of the 21st century.  In my last column, I discussed the history of this great city and the fact that it was created in the late 1950s to be “the capitol of the third millennium” and that it was built literally in the middle of Brazil hundreds of miles from the nearest city.  In other words the eyes of the visionaries who built the city were completely focused on the future.  What should a capitol of the future look like?  How should it be laid out?  How can future governmental needs and functionality be anticipated and planned for?

It is this type of thinking on a grand scale that is needed now more than ever as humanity approaches 7 billion in number, the planet is warming, water scarcity is growing and we have entered our global stage of evolution.  Forward thinking these days seems to come primarily from innovative, fast moving, companies in the private sector.  National leaders seem increasingly to be following their citizens rather than leading them.  There seems to be a reliance on past processes as ways to confront the future.  There is a growing number of people who are now realizing that many of the ‘old ways of doing things’ have run their course and that new approaches are essential for facing the issues. This is, to be sure, one of the forces fueling the success of Barack Obama in …

It is generally accepted that America could immediately reduce energy consumption by at least 20% if intelligent conservation efforts were implemented at all levels. As a country, we established energy use habits decades ago when all forms of energy were relatively cheap. Lights on in high rise building at night, corridors in hotels and office buildings that are almost painfully bright, lights on in empty rooms and offices, and escalators that move even when no one is on them.

This all came back to me yesterday. I am in Brazil to deliver a speech to the top executives of a company whose annual management meeting theme is “Leading the Future”. When I checked into the upscale, business hotel here in Joinville, in the Santa Catarina state, I went through a sequence that reminded me once again how energy wasteful the U.S. is. The elevator would not operate unless I inserted my room key card into a slot. As an American I thought this was a good security feature. Then, when I got off at my floor the hallway was completely dark. With mild trepidation I stepped out and the lights went on due to a motion sensor. I proceeded to head down a dark corridor and, every 20 feet or so the lights went on as the sensors …

I have written several columns about cell phones in the past. Each one was due to milestones of growth. The speed of growth in the use of cell phones continues to be astounding. It was announced last week by the International Telecommunication Union that the number of total global cell phone subscribers will exceed the number of non-subscribers for the first time in 2008.

When you stop and think about it, this is nothing less than amazing. This means that more than half of all human beings alive today have cell phones. That includes all children, all the elderly, all the people living in poverty around the world, all the people living in underdeveloped countries and all those living in remote areas of the world where there is no cell phone use. Of course there are a number of people in the U.S. and elsewhere that have more than one cell phone, but that is a very small percentage of total users.

In 2006, when doing research on my forthcoming book and for speeches I deliver, the latest projections at that time suggested that this 50% threshold would not be crossed until 2010 at the earliest. This time compression of projected growth of electronic connectedness has become a familiar experience to me. In addition to cell phone subscriber projections there has been an almost constant upward estimation of Internet users and terabytes of content coursing through the Internet. Research conducted …