Archive by Author
The Future of Outsourcing
Recently I had the chance to sit down with Kate Vitasek, author of the new book, Vested Outsourcing, with Mike Ledyard and Karl Manrodt. Outsourcing is a controversial but fundamental business activity – as Kate notes Peter Drucker used to say “Do what you do best and outsource the rest,” and the idea of [...]
Full StoryClimate Science Video – Is it Convincing?
As we watched the last days of the Olympics the past few days, I zeroed in on television ads sponsored by the American Oil & Gas industry – lots of these ads – and by the American coal industry. Both emphasized, with patriotic overtones, how important they are to creating jobs, and to achieving national [...]
Full StoryBack to the Future Transportation
One of the amusing, and sad, things about discussions of the future of transit in the U.S. is that it is so often discussed in one of two ways, both intended to make it seem rather outlandish. First, it is discussed as something vaguely foreign – sure, they have widespread transit in Europe, but [...]
Full StoryEnergy in a box
The Bloom Box is the talk of the day, after the break out on 60-Minutes yesterday. This is a new fuel cell approach, already in use in some larger scale test operations, such as providing 15% of EBay’s electric needs. Very encouraging, if the mass-production costs are realistic. Not a lot of technical [...]
Full StoryGlacier Retreat in Time-Lapse
Impressive time-lapse film of glacier retreat, promoting an upcoming NOVA program which aired a year ago.
Full StoryThe future of transportation
Tomorrow I have the privilege of doing the keynote speech for the opening of the 2010 Northwest Transportation Conference, being held on the campus of OSU in Corvallis, Oregon. I’ve been asked to offer “Reflections on Transportation Futures – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”
My belief is that for transportation we are at a time in [...]
A transportation vision
One of the most interesting people trying to invent the future of transportation is Dan Sturges. An original developer of the GEM electric vehicle, more recently Dan has been a leader at Intrago Mobility, which is promoting a whole-systems approach to transportation. Recently he spoke to a SMART conference, in this 10-minute overview [...]
Full StoryJob outlook improving
The U.S economy lost 20,000 jobs in January 2010, compared to a colossal loss of nearly 800,000 in January 2009. This is what progress looks like.
Full StoryWhat is Smart Growth
January was the hottest month on record (going back to 1880) in Seattle, some 7 degrees F above normal You can see the evidence in this photo of my Iris’s that I just took. Kind of messes up the notion that because it was cold on the East Coast this year that global [...]
Full StoryFuturist.com Launches New-Look Website
Today marked the successful launch of the new look for Futurist.com, my home as a futurist speaker and consultant. This new Wordpress-based theme provides a cleaner and up-to-date interface, and robust options in continuing to improve the user experience.
I am particularly pleased that we’ve been able to better organize the blog and the older [...]
