The human creation of content and the human interface with computers has, for a century, been based upon the use of keyboards. Typewriters, then electric typewriters were used for all forms of written documents be it letters or books. This was used as the data entry for computers in the early days of mainframes.

When the first PCs came along in the 1970s, the keyboard was the method of interface. This was expanded with the introduction of the mouse. What followed was the obvious need to make the human-machine interface more appealing and accessible, so the graphic user interface (GUI) became the next development. Screens with letters and numbers and blinking dots gave way to icons, pictures and animation. This, along with rapidly dropping prices, made the PC and its subsequent family members the laptop and the notebook computers a consumer product with annual sales in the hundreds of millions.

We are now moving to touch and voice interface. This was what was so revolutionary about the iPhone as was discussed here. It points to the touch interface of computers now coming to market. Voice recognition software has now enabled us to speak names for automatic dialing on our phones or in our luxury cars. “Phone home”, famously spoken by ET is now spoken by hundreds of thousands of people every day in this country.

Humanity is now entering the voice and touch phase of interaction with all technology. In speeches I give …

GM, Ford and Chrysler represent to a large degree the Industrial Age legacy of manufacturing in the U.S. “What was good for General Motors was good for the United States” was, for decades in the 20th century a very true statement. The manufacturing might of America post WWII was an economic miracle and the apotheosis of the Industrial Age. Supported by the explosive growth of television and the American advertising business, the consumer market of wondrous new goods exploded. The Big Three auto companies rode this wave to unprecedented success.

Every year, there were the exciting new model introductions of all the auto makes in the Fall. Families became conditioned to buying new cars every few years just to keep up with the styling - and their neighbors.. Planned obsolescence was part of the business plan of the U.S. auto industry. The oil embargo of 1973-74 was a major hiccup and it provided a market opportunity for Japanese auto makers to enter the market with small cars that provided higher MPG than those provided by the Big Three. Once the price of oil collapsed after the Iranian revolution the next two decades of cheap oil allowed the Big Three to manufacture ever bigger SUVs and trucks which they sold the American public with their powerful marketing efforts.

The problem was that the leadership of the Big Three never adjusted to the post-9/11 world. Oil has increased in price by 1400% since 1998 and …

Regular readers know that I have often written about Intellectual Property in this space. IP is increasingly important in the valuation of all enterprises. I provided a historical context to this trend here, and later talked about Ocean Tomo, one of the companies that is helping to create the IP marketplace.

As mentioned in one of the earlier columns, the percentage of the aggregate value of the S&P 500 companies that is IP has gone from 17% in 1975 to 80% in 2005. The transactional process of IP, until very recently, has largely been the same as it was 20 years ago. This inevitably means that a more fluent, liquid and transparent marketplace for IP must develop. One of the initial developments over the past two years has been the IP auction. While there are a number of these auctions, I have been privy to the Ocean Tomo auctions and using the results from these auctions alone the trend lines are very clear.

Two weeks ago, Ocean Tomo had its’ spring auction in San Francisco. Once again record prices for IP portfolios were reached. One of the lots up for auction sold for $6,600,000, setting a new world record for a patent lot at a multi-lot live auction. The lot was for processing digital data in bit streams In addition there were three other lots that resulted in seven figures sales. What is interesting about these numbers is they are solidly going …

Regular readers know that I have often written about energy conservation, alternative energy and innovative ways that people are working to make all that we do more energy efficient.  I recently wrote here about how a simple keycard technology employed around the world could save the U.S. hotel industry money and conserve a great deal of energy.  The most recent column was about how a Brazilian company has been working with Intel, a U.S. technology giant to find ways to reduce and even eliminate heat from laptops.

There are two themes I would like to explore in this column.  The first is how, just by trying to rethink our existing use of energy, we can find ways to immediately lower energy usage. Lowering energy usage today, when the majority of energy in the world comes directly or indirectly from fossil fuels, is a direct tactic in the effort to slow global warming.  The second is how companies that are industrial age or second wave companies are, through innovation, reinventing what they do to better help address the energy crisis and global warming.  This is one of the developing themes of the Shift Age, the linkage of entities that might not initially be thought of as complimentary or compatible.

I wrote here some 18 months ago about how Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched two initiatives: one that could save some 40 billion kilowatt hours within three years and the other that could cut 1% of annual U.S. energy usage.  The first …