Regular readers of this column may have noticed that in the past two months I have gone to a once a week posting.  That has in part been due to weeks of non-stop travel, speaking engagements and book signings.  I now find myself  being able to sit at my writing table for a whole week. A wonderful feeling! As a result, I will be posting some shorter columns over the next two weeks, addressing a backlog of topics that I have wanted to write about.  Those of you that have let me know you appreciate the slightly longer thought pieces, don’t worry, I will come back to those soon.  

A couple of weeks ago I launched a YouTube channel.  For at least the past year, people have been suggesting that I do video blogs or vlogs.  Since YouTube has become the place for videos, it made sense to create a channel there.  The idea is to create short videos that deal quickly with a single topic. Short attention span theater. Currently there are nine videos up, and I will be adding one or two a week.  The first group of videos relate to the themes that I speak about to audiences around the country and have written about in my new book “The Shift Age”.  While the subjects I write about here at Evolution Shift are usually topical, I want the videos to have a somewhat longer life so the subject matter is about this new age we are entering.

The link …

Growing up as part of the baby boom generation, a distinct memory is the air raid siren tests.  Every Tuesday, if I recall correctly, at 10a there was the test of the air raid siren blaring across the entire city of Chicago.  This was to prepare us for the possibility of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union (so we could crawl under our desks as instructed by our teachers).  Since it happened each week at the same time we knew it was a test.  If it had happened on any other day, I might not be writing this column today.

The other thing I remember were those times, while riding in the family car, of listening to the testing of the national alert system via the AM radio airwaves: “This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system”.  What examples of communicating to the populace; sirens that pierced the air of every population center in America and the then ubiquitous AM radio band.  The air raid siren being the industrial age amplification of the town crier and the AM radio being the most widely distributed form of electronic media at that time.

All this came back to me a couple of weeks ago when I read that the FCC had approved a plan for an emergency alert system that would send text messages to cell phones. This system is expected to be in place by 2010. Now that 75% or the population have cell phones and we carry them every …