In 2007, I forecast that humanity, and particularly the developed countries of the world, would enter the “reorganizational recession of 2007-2010.” Considering that this is a blog that looks into the future, it might seem contradictory to be looking back at this event, but by doing so, I can explain why it was accurate and why understanding it will help us better navigate and understand what lies just ahead.

The reason for the length, breadth and depth of the 2007-2010 recession was that it was a reorganizational recession between the Information Age and the Shift Age. Most economists look at recessions through the eyes of history, measuring whatever recession we are currently in against past recessions. Phrases such as “this looks to be another jobless recovery similar to the recessions of the 1990’s” or “the recovery will be on the back of the consumer – when the consumer starts spending, we will emerge from this recession” (both paraphrases) are common and represent economists looking at economic downturns purely through economic filters. That is why they have had to keep revising ...]]> In the last column here, I pointed out that a number of my Shift Age forecasts have come true. I wrote about several of them and how I get an odd sense of déjà vu when these forecasts become reality. In this and coming columns, I will revisit them – not to gloat, but to provide explanation, because people read and hear forecasts differently from explanations of the actual events they become.

In 2007, I forecast that humanity, and particularly the developed countries of the world, would enter the “reorganizational recession of 2007-2010.” Considering that this is a blog that looks into the future, it might seem contradictory to be looking back at this event, but by doing so, I can explain why it was accurate and why understanding it will help us better navigate and understand what lies just ahead.

The reason for the length, breadth and depth of the 2007-2010 recession was that it was a reorganizational recession between the Information Age and the Shift Age. Most economists look at recessions through the eyes of history, measuring whatever recession we are currently in against past recessions. Phrases such as “this looks to be another jobless recovery similar to the recessions of the 1990’s” or “the recovery will be on the back of the consumer – when the consumer starts spending, we will emerge from this recession” (both paraphrases) are common and represent economists looking at economic downturns purely through economic filters. That is why they have had to keep revising their forecasts. The Great Recession of 2007-2010 was more than just a bad economic recession; it was a reorganizational recession.

When the world drifted into recession in 2007 and then went into economic free fall in the fourth quarter of 2008, I said that it was not only reorganizational but that it would last longer than any recession in memory.  I also said that it represented a transition from the largely 20^th-century way of doing business to the new 21^st-century reality of the global economy. The analogy I’ve used is the 1970’s, and the multiple recessions that occurred from 1973 through 1982. During that time, the developed countries of the world went through the very painful reorganization from being purely Industrial Age economies to becoming Information Age economies.  Economies based on atoms to economies based on digits. This took a decade to occur.

The accelerating speed of change suggested to me that humanity would pass through a period of five or six years and would emerge economically into the Shift Age. Some economies will emerge in 2011 substantially different from what they were when they entered the recession four years ago. Entire industries have entered the creative destruction phase. New dynamic business sectors based on the accelerating electronic connectedness of humanity have taken root. These are Shift Age companies. New businesses based on non-physical realities are now thriving.  They are Shift Age companies. The ascendancy of entirely new businesses and business models is the reality today, just as it was in the 1980’s, after the decade of economic upheavals between the Industrial and Information Ages.

Hundreds of CEOs and business leaders have told me that this concept of a reorganizational recession is the context that has helped them understand the disruptions they confront in the marketplace. When asked, “When will things come back?” my answer has always been, “They will not come back.  It will get better, but it will be in different forms, shapes and ways.”

Oh yes, remember that chestnut that we will exit the recession when the consumer starts to spend again? Since 2008, I have strongly said that “thrift will be the new cool, the new extravagance” and that the consumer has been scarred, and this scarring will last for years. I have continually forecast that consumers will not lead countries out of recession as quickly as they have in the past. The parents of the early-stage baby boomers lived through the Great Depression, and that scarred them for life. It affected the way they looked at the world for the rest of their lives. Well, consumers in general – and in particular, the American consumer – have been scarred by the Great Recession of 2007-2010 because the things we believed in, such as ever higher real estate values and ever increasing 401Ks, were proven false.

The Shift Age is about saving more, living with less, owning less, living in smaller homes, driving smaller cars, having fewer physical goods and more digital goods. Growth for the sake of growth – an economic axiom prior to this reorganizational recession – is now seen as hollow in a world whose very existence depends, to some degree, on sustainability.

As we emerge from the Global Recession of 2007-2010, we see a changed landscape from what existed before. Welcome to the Shift Age!

Since 2011 began, so many of the forecasts and trends I predicted over the last four years are coming true, I feel as if I’m in an almost constant state of déjà vu. Now, as I spend some 22 hours traveling from Chicago to Singapore, scanning stacks of periodicals from around the world, this feeling is amplified.

I will write a lot in the coming weeks and months about all these forecasts and trends. As a futurist, I should be judged in part on how accurate I am, so it is indeed gratifying that many of the events/trends I predicted have become reality in 2011. The purpose of all these upcoming columns is to be able to point to actual events as the manifestations of what I have been speaking and writing about since 2006, when this blog began, and 2007, when I wrote The Shift Age. This will help explain the truly transformative time we are now entering. In a few years, the world will look quite different from what it did in 2010. The early evidence is everywhere in 2011.

Here are some of the trends and forecasts ...]]> In the past I have written that as a futurist, it sometimes feels like I live in a state of déjà vu. I spend a lot of time researching and looking into the future to develop the forecasts and trends that I write and speak about. I experience them, see them, and have varying degrees of certainty when I publish or present them.

Since 2011 began, so many of the forecasts and trends I predicted over the last four years are coming true, I feel as if I’m in an almost constant state of déjà vu. Now, as I spend some 22 hours traveling from Chicago to Singapore, scanning stacks of periodicals from around the world, this feeling is amplified.

I will write a lot in the coming weeks and months about all these forecasts and trends. As a futurist, I should be judged in part on how accurate I am, so it is indeed gratifying that many of the events/trends I predicted have become reality in 2011. The purpose of all these upcoming columns is to be able to point to actual events as the manifestations of what I have been speaking and writing about since 2006, when this blog began, and 2007, when I wrote The Shift Age. This will help explain the truly transformative time we are now entering. In a few years, the world will look quite different from what it did in 2010. The early evidence is everywhere in 2011.

Here are some of the trends and forecasts I have made, listed with the events that are now making them real for the world and a déjà vu experience for me flying at 39,000 feet.

-Humanity would not globally exit the Great Reorganizational Recession of 2007-2010 until 2011.

Clearly, we are slowly and tentatively exiting the reorganizational recession this year.

-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  Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China is palpable.

-Oil would trade in the $90-$120 per barrel range for most of 2011 and would cross $100 a barrel in the first half of the year.

As of this writing, the price of Brent crude is $104 a barrel and $94 on the NYNEX

-The warming of the planet, climate change and increasing abnormal weather would have a profound upward effect on the price of food commodities, with possible dire economic consequences.

Corn, wheat, and rice futures are way up compared with 2009-’10, and current estimates are that some 40 million people in developing countries will fall from the middle class this year because they have to spend the vast majority of their household income on food.

-Work and Place will separate.

Cisco’s Telepresence suites and those of its competitors are being built around the world in ever-increasing numbers; Skype just came out with group video service; and as of last year, more than 50% of IBM employees worked from home.

-High Tech/High Touch – Technology will become ever more tactile and personal.

I checked in at the airport yesterday with a touch screen, used my iPhone at the airport, and my wife is playing a scrabble game and surfing the Internet with her fingers on our iPad. Sometimes it looks like people have a deeper personal relationship with their touch-screen devices than with the humans around them.

-Volatility in metal commodities and global stock markets will be the constant for the next few years.

Google or Bing the last six months of trending for global stock markets and the futures price of practically any metal.

-States and Municipalities would face and declare bankruptcy.

Just look at and read the media every day – a very serious stress on our country.

The above is just a partial list of the forecasts I’ve made – the ones that everyone can now see, not just this futurist. Déjà vu all over again! Watch this blog, my Free Newsletter, and the Shift Age Trend Report for deeper discourses in the coming weeks and months.

Welcome to the Shift Age!

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety ...]]> Last November, I wrote a column here about the future of cable television.  In that column from last November I forecast:

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety of cascading problems for all those reliant upon cable television distribution.”

This part of the forecast will take a few years to become fully realized.

In conclusion, there might be an occasional uptick in cable television subscriptions ahead, but the long term trend of declining subscriptions has just begun.

What do we know at the blocking and tackling level in regards to the Brown victory?

First, the political “pundits” – and that word is always best in quotes – are back.  What did they have to say about Tiger Woods except to speak of a fallen idol?  What could they say about Haiti except to express what an unspeakably horrible tragedy it is?  Ah, but now there is blood in the water!  Political drama of the highest order!  It is so predictable what is going to be said on Fox News, on MSNBC and even CNN in the days, weeks and unfortunately months ahead.  Raised voices!  Pompous posturing and prognostications about the status of health care, the Democratic majority and the Obama Presidency.  How will the Republicans relate to the Tea Party folks?

It is clear that Brown ran a perfect pitch campaign.  Timing, image, message and package were all right on target.  Coakley ran perhaps the most lackluster campaign in recent memory.  What killed her, and is the point of this column is that her campaign, her demeanor reeked of entitlement.  This was a Democratic seat in a Democratic state ...]]> As a futurist, it is imperative to be a student of history.  The macro trends, rhythms, and forces of the past can be of great assistance when trying to see ahead clearly.  In the case of the Massachusetts Senate Election I found myself understanding it within the context of American history.  So, Thomas Jefferson a little bit later in the column

What do we know at the blocking and tackling level in regards to the Brown victory?

First, the political “pundits” – and that word is always best in quotes – are back.  What did they have to say about Tiger Woods except to speak of a fallen idol?  What could they say about Haiti except to express what an unspeakably horrible tragedy it is?  Ah, but now there is blood in the water!  Political drama of the highest order!  It is so predictable what is going to be said on Fox News, on MSNBC and even CNN in the days, weeks and unfortunately months ahead.  Raised voices!  Pompous posturing and prognostications about the status of health care, the Democratic majority and the Obama Presidency.  How will the Republicans relate to the Tea Party folks?

It is clear that Brown ran a perfect pitch campaign.  Timing, image, message and package were all right on target.  Coakley ran perhaps the most lackluster campaign in recent memory.  What killed her, and is the point of this column is that her campaign, her demeanor reeked of entitlement.  This was a Democratic seat in a Democratic state and hey she won the Democratic primary.  Why do I have to shake hands with voters?

This is why the electorate is in revolt.  We voted for change in 2006, change in 2008 and change in 2010.  It isn’t that citizens are voting against health care, though I am sure many did.  It is not that citizens were voting against the Democratic Congress, though I am sure some thought they were.  What the voters were voting against was this entitlement stink of a professional, careerist political class.  Every election from now on out will be about this to some degree.  They got us into two wars, two recessions, historic collapse of housing values, record unemployment and have added 20 trillion dollars  debt and unsecured liabilities and that is just in the last nine years.

In the last four months as I speak to audiences about the trends, changes and transformation that is about to occur in the coming ten years, there has been an emerging consistent point of view and question.  It goes something like this:  we understand that this is coming but will the politicians ever get it?  In Canada they speak about the insular, dull, bureaucrats in Ottawa.  In the U.S. it is about the life-long politicians beholden to special interests for self perpetuation.  If your party is in power you get a job.  If your party is out of power, you become a lobbyist until the revolving door brings you back into the corridors of power.  For two years I have been saying that, increasingly, the phrase “national leaders” is oxymoronic.  It is the people that seem to lead the politicians.

When the founding fathers crafted those exquisite documents and initiated the greatest experiment of democracy in history they never, ever, envisioned an entrenched political class whose sole interest was  perpetuation of their power and their party’s power. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer.  He became a great statesman, a magnificent president and left a towering legacy of compassionate love of country.  Then he went back to being a farmer.  The founding fathers imaged a citizen’s democracy, where service was given and then, private life was resumed.  That was the assumed practice.  Where were political parties mentioned in those documents we revere?

In my current Trend Report and in Q&A with audiences I suggest that by 2016 there could well be a new, third party in ascendency, winning across the map. Both the Democratic and Republican parties feel so 20^th century, burdened by legacies no longer pertinent to the 21^st century and the Shift Age.

The historians of 2020 or 2030 may well point to this period as  a new beginning when Democrats and Republicans were marginalized, giving way to a party tuned to the realities of this new century, this new age, this new decade.  We shall see.

At the beginning of the 20^th century there were dozens of car companies.  The story of the last century is one of consolidation so that by the 1990s there were only the Big Three and a few foreign companies producing vehicles in the U.S.  These companies from the last century will continue as the scale part of the business for the next 5-10 years.  They will be joined by smaller, more nimble companies that will bring innovation to the marketplace.  Tesla and Aptera, mentioned in the last column are just two examples.  There is a real possibility that there will be dozens of companies by 2015.  The new companies will not provide scale, at least initially, but they will lead the market with innovation.  Some companies may produce hundreds of vehicles, others thousands, others tens of thousands.  These companies will successfully compete with the big companies on the playing field of innovation.

Clearly the cars produced in the next 10-15 years will be generally smaller, much more fuel efficient and will use less and less gasoline.  The first stage ...]]> In the last column we looked at the general dynamics underlying the reality and need to create an automotive industry in the U.S for the 21^st century. We now take a look at what this industry might look like. An analysis of trends, developing technologies and the role that the federal government can and should play, makes it is clear that this industry will be substantially different than that of the 20^th century.

At the beginning of the 20^th century there were dozens of car companies.  The story of the last century is one of consolidation so that by the 1990s there were only the Big Three and a few foreign companies producing vehicles in the U.S.  These companies from the last century will continue as the scale part of the business for the next 5-10 years.  They will be joined by smaller, more nimble companies that will bring innovation to the marketplace.  Tesla and Aptera, mentioned in the last column are just two examples.  There is a real possibility that there will be dozens of companies by 2015.  The new companies will not provide scale, at least initially, but they will lead the market with innovation.  Some companies may produce hundreds of vehicles, others thousands, others tens of thousands.  These companies will successfully compete with the big companies on the playing field of innovation.

Clearly the cars produced in the next 10-15 years will be generally smaller, much more fuel efficient and will use less and less gasoline.  The first stage is small, internal combustion (IC) engine cars and small hybrid cars such as the Prius that utilize gasoline and electric batteries.  These will be followed by electric dominant cars that have very small IC engine used only to charge the electric batteries when the power is low.  Then there will be the pure electric plug-ins that are electric only.  These vehicles will provide 50+ miles per charge which is sufficient as half of the US public drive less than 40 miles per day.  All of these different power trains will also show up in public transportation and trucks.

The initial limitation will be how many can be produced, the scalability of production.  The second limitation will be the US landscape which has been created on the false premise of always cheap gasoline.  In other words, unless you have a single family house with a garage, the chances are high that where you park your car does not have an electrical outlet nearby.  A significant part of our landscape, and certainly our cities will need to be rewired.  This rewiring will need to be a part of a larger, more energy efficient and technologically innovative 21^st century power grid.  The federal government will need to provide huge financial investment to rewire America, intelligently.

This wave of electric vehicles will be closely followed by the developing wave of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  These vehicles will have all the same attributes as electric ones; they will use no gasoline, they will not create greenhouse gases, they will be able to be refueled at home and they will be quiet to drive, all great attributes.  They also have the same problem that electric vehicles do, which is the lack of a national infrastructure of charging/fueling/refueling stations.  Again, it is now time for the federal government to step up and spend tens of billions of dollars, along side private investment to create the needed infrastructure to allow the automotive industry to move toward the goal of having a majority if not all Americans driving alternative fuel vehicles.

This is what the federal government has always done.  In the 1930s the government largely funded the creation of hydro-electric energy in the U.S.  In the 1950s – 1970s it funded the creation of the interstate highway system.  If President Obama and the elected politicians in Washington truly want to gain independence from foreign oil, they must invest in the 21^st century transportation infrastructure.  The investment, in relative terms, is not that great.  A $10 – 15 billion investment, a fraction of what the government has already given to GM would be enough money to establish an initial refueling infrastructure of hydrogen fueling stations that would be accessible within 2 miles anywhere in the top 100 metropolitan areas of the country.  That investment would in turn allow the private sector to both further build out this refueling infrastructure and to scale up production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, dramatically lowering the price into the realm of affordability.

So, the federal government absolutely needs to make the right policy and tax decisions in the next two years if they mean what they say.  If they do, then private industry will rapidly ramp up so that by 2015 there will not be a single IC only vehicle made in the US.  The average fleet fuel efficiency of the US automotive industry can be a 100 mpg or greater by 2020.

There is one final point that needs to be made.  If the federal government does not fully commit to this vision of the future in the next two years, there will be many hundreds of billions to be made by German, Japanese, Chinese and Korean companies as their governments have embraced this general vision and are supporting it.  Not doing what is clearly needed will mean an abdication of leadership, allowing these other countries and their automotive industries to completely eclipse the US in transportation technology and innovation for decades to come.

The future is clear and within our grasp.  The private sector is ready to provide the necessary innovation.  Are our elected officials ready to provide the long term policy and funding to create the future we all want?