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 w…Read More
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, reci…Read More
When it comes to our tax systems, we are living in caveman times In the movie The Day After Tomorrow, survivors stranded in a library are easily persuaded to burn the multi-volume IRS Tax Code to stay warm. In this fictional scenario, the question one might ask before securing a match: Why did we wa…Read More
Radical transformations are brewing in the world’s oldest industry Can better food create better people? Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people? This is exactly the premise that is driving many of the advances in farming today. To understand agribusiness in t…Read More
Rethinking our current systems and how to make them functional once again The panic that we hear coming from Wall Street and the halls of Washington, DC is not the typical panic associated with a recession. Instead, it is the seldom heard sounds of national systems imploding, collapsing around us. C…Read More
Ever since the people of ancient Nineveh began storing and classifying their books nearly 3,000 years ago, libraries have been hallowed and largely unchanging bastions of learning. But in the information age, libraries have been caste with a new identity, and the future is evolving into a very diffe…Read More
When policies and systems devastate innovation Cars are being abandoned in record numbers at Dubai International Airport. The dust-covered Mercedes and BMW's at the Dubai International Airport is a tell-tale reminder of what is happening there. The number of deserted cars crested the 3,000 mark in …Read More
The Virtual Country Six Possible Scenarios for the Creation of Viable Virtual Countries The Internet, while still in its infancy, has created borderless economies, that are confusing the issues of power and control, and even the sovereignty of nations. We are now entering into a new era of public po…Read More
As a public entity, libraries have been evolving. No longer are they the book-centric institutions of the mid 1900s. But the changes we’ve seen to date are only a tiny fraction of the changes we will see in the coming decades. There are no road maps that give us a clear picture of where we are hea…Read More
Global shifts will cause a new social order to emerge As I started pulling my notes together for 2009 trends, I instantly became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of changes currently in the works. The number of moving parts seems to exceed the number of stationary parts. All of our markets, systems, …Read More
