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Flying construction robots
The construction industry is among the slowest to change among all business types. When I have worked with them anticipating longer term trends and possible disruptions to traditional ways of doing business, the topic of construction robots always comes up. Autonomous robots that scale walls and build buildings piece by piece, or even nanoscale robots [...]
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Top 10 Reasons to (not) Avoid Social Media
Tongue in cheek, Allegis Group Services recently posted the top 10 reasons that HR and other professionals in companies should avoid social media. Read the whole piece, but here are the 10 reasons… 1. You’re a Global Company That Does Not Want to Maintain a Uniform, Worldwide Corporate Culture. 2. You Want to Ensure That [...]
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Autonomous Vehicles Could be the Future
It is possible that autonomous vehicles could be the flying car of the 2030′s – I am forever answering the question “what ever happened to the flying car envisioned in the 1960′s?”. But this concept car, imagined by Charles Rattray, captures many of the concepts I first heard about when working with the U.S. Federal [...]
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A Thanksgiving Dream for the Future
Tomorrow is the traditional Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. As always the day has me thinking of things to be thankful for, as well as how I’ve contributed in the past year. And, being a futurist, I consider things I’d like to be thankful for in the future. Yesterday there appeared in the Financial [...]
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Creating the Future: Quick Overview Video with Glen Hiemstra
This week we posted a new mix of keynote speaking highlights from my work as a futurist. I think you will like it. Glen Hiemstra the Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.
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Visits from 128 Nations to Futurist.com
In the last 30 days Futurist.com received visits from people living in 128 different countries. This is slightly above our average of about 120 nations a month. Nearly 12,000 page views is good, but the global interest in the future is constantly impressive to me. If you look, we were visited by nearly every country [...]
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Making Sense of OWS
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone has an interesting analysis of Occupy Wall Street in terms of how the larger movement relates to the future. The key quote for me… We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable [...]
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How to see future trends on the Web – in Charts and Graphics
Using sophisticated graphics to illustrate complex ideas (or simple ones) on the Web is a growing trend. iChart is one of the enterprises offering “interactive web charts” that you can post, and more importantly can create to make a point on the web. For example, where are the world’s college graduates most likely to come [...]
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Retail and the Long-Term Future
Last week I had the opportunity to make several presentations at the headquarters of a large American retailer. I was tasked with making the case for the value of injecting longer-range thinking into the regular planning cycle and with sharing some thoughts about the future of retail on the five-ten year horizon. My slide show [...]
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Future of Arctic Ice – 2011 Nearly Matched All-time Low
For some years now I’ve been sure to follow the summer-time story of ice in the Arctic Ocean, as tracked by the Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. I began doing this after meeting a cold-weather engineer from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who alerted me both to the special dynamics of the [...]
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