My granddaughter, Dez, and I rarely see eye to eye. But we have a relationship where we are heavily dependant upon each other

I’m a bit like film director Robert Zemeckis who co-wrote the screenplay Back to the Future. I notice those little things that have disappeared, fond memories of my chilldhood, like service stations that actually had people who provided service.

Other pieces of Americana that have disappeared include the drive-in theater. And, the barber shop is going the way of the buggy whip, too. The barber has lost business to the hair stylist, perhaps because the social setting depicted by Norman Rockwell has largely disappeared. Too, styled cuts were favored by fashion-conscious customers who were not too shy to go to a hair stylist.

I’m one of those strange guys who cuts his own hair.  When my kids were little, I tended to experiment on them in the kitchen, using techniques that I had gleaned from watching hair stylists and barbers. I won’t admit to any quality complaints. Sliding my fingers through the hair, I snipped. Easy enough, right?

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Long before the physics of nanotechnology, a dreamer’s dream sparked the world’s imagination

Known to most by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel lived a life in a magical world populated by unusual characters – characters who are not so refined that a dinner invitation he would decline, he once said with a wink, I think.

Like so many of us, I was raised with the bedtime stories of cats in hats and grinches that stole Christmas. Geisel’s imagination, it seems, had no bounds.

It should come as no surprise that on one dark evening, Geisel had an epiphany, which he put into words in a way that only the Seuss-master could produce. In 1954, he crafted Horton Hears a Who, a nothing-less-than brilliant glimpse into a world of the small. For those unfamiliar with nanotechnology, and many you are, reading about manipulating matter will take you very, very far.

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Nation-building is set to become the new extreme sport for the emerging wealthy and creative class

NOTE: The following article is a reprint of the cover article I wrote for the May/June 2009 issue of The Futurist Magazine.

On a recent trip to the Middle East, I was granted the opportunity to speak at the Leaders in Dubai Business Forum along with best-selling writer Tom Peters, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, and former McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta. Most of the speakers were addressing our depressingly screwed-up economy. I decided on a different tack and presented some thoughts on emerging new systems of government power.

One idea in particular raised a few eyebrows among the Dubai group: selling islands as autonomous countries.

Dubai and the United Arab Emirates are on the cutting edge of islandbuilding technology. Their creative approach to building Palm Island, a series of artificial islands in the Persian Gulf, along with the coming Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Deira, and The World, have become an inspiration to other countries. In Bahrain, Thailand, and the Netherlands, new islands are also springing to life.

Countries in the Middle East have a distinct advantage when it comes to island building, because the Persian Gulf is a far more stable body of water than most other oceans. The question I presented to the Dubai Leaders who were anxious about how the global economic downturn might affect their tourist industry — the question I now present to you, the reader — is simple: Is there any money in this?

There has always been profit to be made and lost in coastal real estate. But these innovations in the creation of land could lead to the creation of real estate that is unattached and unaffiliated with any existing nationstate or indigenous group — land that can be sold as an autonomous country. No such opportunity has ever before existed in human history.

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Establishing new relevancy standards amid a sea change of technology options and budget constraints

Traditionally a quiet place for lovers of books to unwind, libraries are a place for serious students to escape to, a treasure trove for aspiring writers – and even a great hiding place from bullies where a kid can find cover among a labyrinth of shelves. They always have been a refuge.
 
These days libraries are becoming something more than a place to hide out. Only recently did libraries become a bustling resource center for a growing number of jobless. People seeking work and budget-strained families seeking entertainment are now flocking to libraries as never before. That’s the good news.
 
The not-so-good news: The modern day Carnegies are in short supply because libraries are busting at their well-worn seams.
 
So what happened? Only yesterday, the tech elite were fervently forecasting the imminent doom of the library. Their contention: Libraries will become irrelevant in a modern world?
 
Predictors of doom never understood the true nature of libraries. They are more than a stack of books. The remarkable structures and modest converted buildings that are libraries, these institutions are really living, breathing organisms. Much like plants that flourish in fertile soil, water and sunshine, libraries are thriving in an information-rich environment. The newfound popularity will be more than a short-term inconvenience. Libraries are here to stay.

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Creating the Ultimate Small Storage Particle

When will we reach an endpoint? The answer (after the jump) will surprise you

“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” – Niels Bohr, recipient of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics

I’ve had this ongoing notion that researchers will soon reach the point of creating the ultimate small storage particle. In discussing this with some nanotech friends, they felt we may reach an endpoint when we get to the size of the electron. So I decided to run with that assumption and calculate out how long it would take, based on Moore’s Law, to reach a point where we are storing information on electrons.

Moore’s Law has been talked about so much in recent years that some people think it was actually a law enacted by Congress and signed by the President.

Moore’s Law is the empirical observation made in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.  He concluded that “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 24 months.” Although it is often quoted as doubling every 18 months, Intel’s official Moore’s Law page, as well as an interview with Gordon Moore himself, confirms his original thinking that it is every two years.

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