Recently I was in Atlanta to address the annual breakfast gathering called “State of the Region,” which is put on by the Atlanta Regional Commission. This particular year the focus was on introducing a new regional effort called “50 Forward,” which is literally an attempt to imagine the region in the year 2060. [...]

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 [...]

This Tuesday, I attended a panel luncheon called “The Eastside’s Booming Diversity: Cultivating a Connected Community,” presented by Leadership Eastside.
The “Eastside” refers to the east side of Lake Washington (Seattle is on the west side of the lake). In addition to Futurist.com’s hometown of Kirkland, the Eastside includes 23 towns, and has a population [...]

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 [...]

As a futurist, I’m usually watching the leading edge of change: new user interfaces, new ideas, new products. But a futurist also has to think about the way the past impacts the future. About the way living history keeps the future coming a little slower.
This past week, six of us took the [...]

What do Albert Einstein and Weird Al have in common, besides the first name?
I’ll give you a hint: Pythagoras (of geometrical fame) and Pamela Anderson (of bosomy fame) share the same trait.
Stumped? Here are a few more clues. Young women are most likely to be in this group, as are U.S. west-coast dwellers. [...]

We typically talk to our computers through a set of buttons that transmit one letter of a command at a time, a mouse that can select whole words or phrases, and a smallish glass-like window where we see what we’re saying. We typically do that sitting down and a little hunched over – [...]

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 [...]

Ahh, the first day of summer – it’s time for weekends at the lake, cross-country road trips. . . and, well, hurricanes and typhoons. It’s a fitting time to think about transportation and climate change.
We all know we should carpool, walk to the grocery store, and maybe even buy a shiny new Prius. [...]