Every industry has its own “favorite son”, but for many areas of new technology there are no real household names associated with them. There are no people like Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, or Chuck Norris rising to the forefront of these technologies. Put another way, these technologies represent industries without their own rock stars.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The fundamental unit of the new economy
is not the corporation, but the individual.”

- Thomas Malone & Robert Laubacher

Running a solo business in the past meant that you had a one-person practice, most often offering a professional service, well suited for lawyers, accountants, and doctors.  However, a new breed of solo business has emerged that allows people to leverage the power of the Internet and control a vast empire from their home office or wherever they happen to be.  Across the world thousands of people are giving birth to what is being called an “Empire of One”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Participatory Parks will Create New Cultures in Communities Choosing to Charter Their Own Destiny

Great cities throughout history were known far and wide for the grand parks that served as their centerpieces. But what do we think about today when we conjure up the image of a park? Fresh cut green grass, trimmed trees, playground for the kids, and perhaps a stream of water running through part of it.

Parks have somehow deteriorated into rubber stamped open space, boiled down to the bare essentials of grass, trees, sidewalks, playgrounds, and benches – nothing memorable, with little to inspire the mind. While there are a few exceptions to the tedium of today’s park culture, like the famed sculpture parks in Loveland, they remain isolated examples of what most would aspire to become.

For this reason, I would like to propose a new approach – the idea of participatory parks where the community decides on a particular theme and becomes integrally involved in creating the distinctive features. Participatory parks will range from active to passive on various community involvement scales, but in each case, the host city will set into motion a long range plan for people to rally around.

Read the rest of this entry »

Launching a New Era in the Future of Money

Imagine yourself sometime in the future sitting in front of a television, watching your favorite show, and a pizza commercial comes on. This is one of those commercials that hits you at exactly the right time and you instantly start craving pizza. For the next few seconds you stare at the screen and your mind thinks of nothing other than pizza. Finally you give in and utter the single word “yes”.

Thirty seconds later a flying pizza drone docks at your house with a piping hot pizza with exactly the right toppings. In addition to the pizza the drone also comes with a six pack of beer, and not just any beer, but you’re favorite import beer from Australia. When you gave the command by saying “yes” it automatically knew what you wanted.

The marketing world has long tried to figure out a way to combine the buying moment with the marketing moment. In this example I take it one step further and combine the marketing moment with the buying moment and the fulfillment moment. No time to second guess yourself because the transaction is complete. In this scenario, you will very likely have a slice of pizza in your mouth before you realize how much you spent. For major cravings, price is irrelevant.

Read the rest of this entry »

Frictionless Vehicles and Binary Power will Define Transportation in the World Ahead

Transportation technology is progressing at a much slower pace than some of the other sciences such as information technology, biotech, and nanotechnology. As an example, the world’s human speed record was set in 1969, a full 37 years ago, when Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan flew in Apollo 10 at 24,790 mph. While there is much talk about flying at a speed that approaches the speed of light, very little effort is actually being expended in this area.

However, transportation technology is about to move ahead more rapidly in the coming years with the advent of two radically new technologies – frictionless vehicles and binary power.

Throughout history we have learned that the two principle driving forces of humanity are freedom and control. While current automotive technology gives us the freedom to drive as fast or slow as our vehicle will take us, and control over our timing and direction, we are still restricted to driving on the ground and we have a hornet’s nest of laws to contend with regarding speed, flow, and operation.

Read the rest of this entry »

A New Way to Measure the World Around Us

What is the value of being happy?

Yes, happiness means different things to different people, but even without having a common definition, happiness has become a significant focal point of study and research around the world. And working on the assumption that whatever we measure will get better, the “happiness index” will become a significant measuring stick for our progress.

Read the rest of this entry »

Planning Our Next Generation Libraries

Literacy is a learned skill involving an ability to transform characters on paper into mental concepts and images. Listening to an audio book requires a slightly different skill, but requires the ability to transform audio sounds into mental concepts and images.

The trend in the information world is to make the interface between information and our brains as seamless and as invisible as possible. However, if all we do is download tons of information into our brains, we haven’t accomplished much. Information needs to be relevant, useful, and somehow meaningful. In short, we need to experience it.

So how do we take dry, boring information and turn it into a meaningful experience?

Read the rest of this entry »

Invisible to the human eye, nano diameter needles will be shot like clusters of bullets
from great distances to “pin” people to a wall or freeze their physical movement.
Nano needles, because of their incredibly tiny diameter, will be the ultimate
non-lethal weapon, leaving no visible wounds and causing no permanent damage.

I would like to begin by saying that I am not a fan of using nanotechnology for weapons or in any way, shape or form as tools of war. However, since the military is one of the key drivers of nanotechnology, and its use in warfare will be an inevitable outcome, our awareness of the possibilities will be a first line of defense against their proliferation.

On the optimistic side, I have high hopes for nano-weapons to offer precise solutions for the bigger conflicts, eliminating some of the causes for war, and generally contributing to a safer and more stable global environment. With precision comes less loss of life, not more.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the United States was founded, only 40 percent of the people living within its boundaries spoke English as their first language. Today that number is 87%.

For most of us, English is like the air we breathe: natural, given, right.  However, language is rarely a given, a fact of which many groups are painfully aware. Language is a key battleground for national and cultural conflict.
Read the rest of this entry »

Terrafugia – Redefining the flying car

What exactly is a flying car?

My life is a bit unusual in that I often have conversations with people about the topic of flying cars. Since I was a child I dreamed about the day that we would have flying cars. But, other than the vague notion of the flying car that George Jetson drove each day to Spacely Sprockets, we have no real definition of the flying car, until now.

Read the rest of this entry »