Future Trends Report :: 8 Key Trends Affecting Our Future
If you are feeling left behind by all of the changes happening around us, you’re not alone. In this week’s Future Trend Report we are finding that there are currently nearly 90,000 local governmental entities that have sprung to life in the US. This includes counties, municipalities, and townships as well as single- purpose governments such as school districts and special districts.
We have also included articles on smart phone addiction, the Internet of the future, and how the Green Revolution is getting the “thumbs down” by investors.
The final article has to do with the “real-time web,” a term used to describe the exploding number of live social activities online, from tweets to status updates on Facebook to the sharing of news, web links, and videos on myriad other sites. It’s a whole new layer of innovation that’s opening up on the Web.
Are Local And State Governments In The U.S. Getting Too Big?
“Big Government” has been characterized by those on various sides of the political spectrum as an ever- expanding bureaucracy interfering with individual rights and limiting economic freedoms. Some also believe that small government may pose a similar threat. They charge that state and local governments are guilty of intervening too much in private citizen affairs.
Smartphoniacs: Smart Phone Addicts
Among everybody from our leaders to our teenagers, no habit is spreading faster than being connected 24/7 via a smart phone. Its penetration in the U.S. is estimated at 18%, and it seems that everywhere you turn, people are using their smart phones in new ways and in new places. Samsung recently estimated that it expects 500 million global smart-phone users by 2012. Actual phone calls are becoming extinct compared with handheld texts and email messages – whoever thought people would prefer typing to talking? But the evidence appears to say they do.
Polarization Of Society Is Upon Us
Polarization of various forms is upon us: great wealth and scarcity, fast and slow paced life options, info overload and info indigestion. Based on currently emerging trends, these forms of polarization of society: weather, behavior, work and play, will create new ideas, opportunities for businesses, choices for people and clues to how society may evolve in the 21st century.
Principles of Wikinomics May Help Solve Traffic Congestion
Traffic congestion is a worldwide headache that gets worse with each passing day. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America and its partners are seeking solutions to this problem, so they turned to VenCorps to apply the principles of Wikinomics.
Internet of the Future
The recently signed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (U.S. stimulus bill) allocates $7.2 billion to support the development of broadband capabilities across the United States. Expanded broadband will allow for a much faster and richer Internet-surfing experience, more lifelike teleconferencing, and the outsourcing of more services to the Web, according to a recent white paper from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
Could Higher Education Be The Next Bubble To Burst?
It’s every investor’s dream: buy into a theme before any one else has caught on; ride it all the way up until it gets bubbly; sell to the suckers who bought at the top. It’s like buying housing names in 2004 (as we did), only to sell and go short in 2007 (as we did). . . or oil prior to the rise to $147 (again, as we did). . . or even dot-coms before the bubble burst.
Green Revolution Gets A Thumbs Down
What’s the next big thing to drive the Silicon Valley innovation engine? Don’t count on green tech anytime soon, at least according to two prominent investors here during a panel discussion focused on “Silicon Valley in the New Millennium.”
Investors See A New Web Revolution With Real- Time Web
John Borthwick speaks softly, but he can’t hide his excitement. Co-founder and chief executive of the New York Internet media incubator betaworks, Borthwick is an investor in the microblogging phenomenon Twitter, where people exchange short public messages called tweets. Betaworks is also building or investing in at least 21 other companies mining the “real-time Web.” That’s the term coined to describe the exploding number of live social activities online, from tweets to status updates on Facebook to the sharing of news, Web links, and videos on myriad other sites. “It’s a whole new layer of innovation that’s opening up on the Web,” he says.
