I’m at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers annual meeting in Portland. I’m quite impressed with the people, and with what I see many of the cities and counties here doing to keep some level of local and free press available, and to build community networks for everything from economic development to closing digital [...]

Today, the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer read, “U.S. college students buried under debt.”
Are today’s young people just buying iPods and designer flip-flops instead of saving their cash for school? Are they too busy drinking five-dollar microbrews to get part-time jobs to pay for tuition? Let’s look at the numbers . . [...]

By the time Friday morning is over, I’ll have given two speeches in a week. Now, since I’m so busy, I only give about five keynotes a year, so this is pretty unusual. As different as the two industries I’m speaking to (restaurants and architects) are, I noticed a really pleasing similarity.
The Oregon [...]

The blog today is about the future of housing in America. I have just finished a keynote speech to the annual Washington Housing Conference, in Spokane, Washington. The speech is viewable online in WMV at TVW.
The PowerPoint slide program is here:
The Future of Housing and the Mortgage Crisis
view presentation (tags: hiemstra futurist keynote [...]

The topic today is the future of something called EHS Auditing, or environmental, health and safety auditing.
I am on my way to Philadelphia for the 25th Anniversary meeting of the Auditing Roundtable, where I will provide a keynote speech looking at the future of this unique association. Following my talk, Roundtable members will discuss [...]

Brenda’s previous blog rings true, and rather than adding a comment, let me add this way. The two major computing input forms, the qwerty keyboard and the mouse have been around since 1873 and 1981 respectively. Amazingly little has changed. Until now.
About five years ago at the University of Washington Human Interface [...]

In America, we are used to thinking of a balance of three powers: the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. These are directly government, but if you think of government as power, think again. There are at least two other forces that matter as much.
Corporate influence is of particular [...]

There has been some recent and dramatic news on the subject of Peak Oil. Essentially, groups of scientists are beginning to more openly challenge the conventional industry assurances that oil has decades, and not years to run before a peak is reached.
This is critical, because the consequences of overestimating how long it will be [...]

Glen Hiemstra (that’s me) is among a few featured experts in a current article at MSNBC. In a story by Allison Linn, entitled “Big business in seeing the future of business,” I make comments on global warming and the future of autos. It is an extensive and interesting article, and good company to [...]

Our most recent question about the future is from Deb Palmer, of Washington State Dept of Natural Resources, who asks: “I’d be interested on your thoughts about the workforce—we’re starting to see shortages in some fields. The predictions are that the median age of the middle-class worker will continue to rise. What [...]