As regular readers of this blog know, I have been exploring the subject of disintermediation.  It is a dynamic force that has and will be reorganizing our culture and economy.  In an early post on the subject, I pointed out that in the late 1990s the Internet acted as the agent of disintermediation for the travel and stock brokerage business.  It became possible for people to buy and sell stocks on-line at a fraction of the cost they had incurred even years earlier.  This helped launch the day trading phenomenon.

Well, it now seems that the last bit of …

Back in April, I took a futuristic look back as the price of gasoline from the vantage point of April 2009.  The point was to suggest how the price of a gallon of gas got to $7.33.  In that post, I wrote:

“July 2006 There was general outrage at the pump and on the airwaves, when Americans hit the road for the July 4th weekend paying an average of $3.60 a gallon. The Bush administration tried to channel this anger into getting public opinion around opening up Alaska and other places for the drilling of oil. It was reported that …

Across the full spectrum of human endeavor, it is often hard to see what the future might be. Trend lines can be seen, and directions understood, but specific pictures of the future can be vague.  However, our future shows up most clearly in the area of technology.  Technology lets us see new potential.  It shows us new tools that may or may not become universally useful but provides us with possibilities to expect.

There were a couple of articles recently about technology that gave me a clear view of living in the future. The first was about a new flash drive, …

 Compassion and Wealth Together

Given the last post on this blog, this weeks announcement of the astoundingly magnanimous and generous gift that Warren Buffett made to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is worthy of comment.  Simply put, Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the United States, after Bill Gates, gave more than 80% of his total net worth or, $31 billion dollars to his friend Bill’s foundation.  This is more than doubles the size of the Gates Foundation which, at $30 billion was three times larger than the next biggest foundation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on grants …