This week at the Consumer Electronics Show there are hundreds of companies touting new gadgets that are “revolutionary” “innovative” “at the cutting edge” and “totally cool”.  I will leave the descriptions of all these to the mainstream media as they already excessively cover this convention.  Instead I will give you some view on the larger trends that are clear.

Connectivity

We are rapidly moving to total connectedness. Whether you are in the office, in the home, on the road, or anywhere in the world you can be connected to information, data and billions of people.    Bill Gates spoke of the fact that …

In my last post I listed four General Trends and Dynamics that would gain power in this New Year.  The third one listed was the about alternative energy and Global Warming.  The fact that we reached a tipping point on this in 2006 will become much clearer this year.  It will be a dominant story, a forceful change in consciousness, a political/security issue, and both an economic issue and an incredible economic opportunity. 

In the first week of the year, while poor Denver continues to get blasted with snow, most of the rest of the country experienced spring weather.  Cherry …

As a futurist I am always asked to make predictions. Often somewhat in jest, people ask me who is going to win the election, how much will the stock market go up in the next three months, who will win the Super Bowl, things like that. While I have been accurate in such predictions, it is not what I do. My job is to analyze trends and the underlying dynamics that create them. Having developed a level of pattern recognition allows me to connect a seeming disparate collection of events and occurrences to discern the early development of a new …

This was a very interesting year from this futurist’s point of view.  It felt like a year of transition, of new beginnings and of breakthroughs.  New and clear trend lines were started in several areas that will continue next year and beyond.  Starting next week I will take a predictive look forward to 2007 and suggest trends and dynamics that will help shape the months and years ahead.  This post however will take a look back to point out developments that occurred as a preamble for the predictive look forward.

2006 will be looked back upon as the year where a …