The Critical Competency Needed for the Future – The Creative Edge As a Futurist, it’s easy to get caught up in the technology trends and breakthroughs that will mark our future lives – the amazing advances in devices and concepts, from flying taxis to cryptocurrency....
Decentralized Finance and the Future of Money As a society, we’re increasingly resisting expectations that we should abide by established norms and that we should utilize the institutions our parents and grandparents held as sacrosanct. In short, we don’t like...
With the Coming AI-Robot Jobs Armageddon, Why is this Time Different? Are computers, robots, and machines automating too many jobs out of existence. Is it accurate to describe the short-term jobs market an “AI-robot jobs Armageddon,” as some have? The future is rarely...
The Weaponization of Drones There’s no question our skies are getting crowded. In addition to their use by recreational hobbyists, drones are supporting farming, construction, real estate, deliveries, and nearly every other major industry. They’re also being used for...
The Third Thumb Project – Setting the Stage for Next Generation Humans Have you ever wanted an extra thumb on your hand? Of course not. Until not it was never an option. The Third Thumb Project is all about adding something we never knew we wanted. Dani Clode,...
Space Based Solar Power is about to Transform Life on Planet Earth U.S. government analysts have predicted that between now and 2050, energy demand worldwide will increase by almost 50%, due primarily to the use of electric cars. And by that time, renewable energy...
Rooftop Wars are Brewing as Solar Wars Heat Up Although solar power represents the fastest-growing share of new electricity capacity, it still accounts for just three percent of the total U.S. electricity generated. And only three percent of homes in the U.S. have...
Digital AI Avatars of Ourselves Today’s concept of an avatar comes from how societies and religions for centuries have portrayed the human representations of divine beings that over the course of history have walked among humans on earth. In recent times, avatars have...
How will Mobile Starlink begin to Alter the World Around Us? When Elon Musk recently announced his Starlink broadband internet service would become mobile, I began to imagine how that seemingly insignificant announcement would change the world. A Quick Refresher on...
The Coming Drone Delivery Revolution – What Comes Next? In 2015 I wrote a column talking through the issues that needed to be resolved before we would ever see a significant level of deliveries by drones. In that column, I brought up 37 issues that still needed to be...
The Emergence of Low Code and No Code Programming One of the biggest disruptive trends of this young decade you probably haven’t heard about is the shift toward the use of “no-code” and “low-code” software development platforms to create or enhance automated, online...
The Empty Pocket Lifestyle is Coming Are you carrying less plastic or paper these days? More and more, all you need when you step out the door is your handheld personal device. That’s increasingly true with driver’s licenses even, which I learned recently. Earlier...
Three Emerging Trends in the Construction Industry Challenges in the construction industry, including a declining workforce and the cost of materials, combined with some incredible technology and manufacturing breakthroughs, are changing today’s construction sites in...
SPAC is the hot new investing trend for taking a company public Record-high bitcoin prices. Meme stocks and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Investors these days seem to have an insatiable appetite for speculating in non-traditional opportunities, along with too much time...
Non Fungible Tokens Create a Hot New Market for Digital Art Investors seem starved for investment/gambling opportunities. The stock market is at record heights. Meme stocks are routinely sent soaring thanks to social media-generated hype. Cryptocurrencies are trading...
Eight Human versus Machine Competitions: Where are we Heading? How do we evaluate and communicate the evolving capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI)? One way to do it is by describing how closely AI matches up with “real” human intelligence. We can’t seem to...
From Designer Babies to Super Humans In just a few years, pregnant women will have the option of going to a geneticist to discuss certain “enhancement options” for their unborn child. With CRISPR, scientists are making tremendous strides toward being able to “edit” an...
Rethinking the Future of Economic Development in a Work-from-Home World COVID-19 has accelerated many trends – including the work-from-home movement that was already inching along pre-pandemic. As a result, and as we discussed recently, there will continue to be...
Urban Drone Air Ports: Here’s what to Expect! The now-familiar models of commercial drones first came on the scene15 years ago. It wasn’t too long until aeronautical entrepreneurs shifted their sights to scaling the technology to make these vehicles large and powerful...
Deurbanization – How Will this New Trend Affect You in the Future The longstanding trend towards urbanization – urban areas growing faster than non-urban areas – was proceeding unabated until it turned on a dime in 2020 due to the COVID epidemic. The trend for...
What Comes After Social Media? 2030 and Beyond Can you imagine a future without social media? It’s probably just as hard for us to do that as it would have been for people 25 years ago to imagine a technology that would allow us to easily share information with the...
Housing Industry Disconnect – Today’s housing will be a poor fit for tomorrow’s customers. It’s difficult to plan for the future when certain industries, like housing, insist on living in the past. Three years ago, I was in a car accident. My knee has been...
15 Global Challenges – Changing Times, Changing Priorities It’s a funny thing about the future. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, changing the future is hard, and changing the past is even harder. Yet we can predict it, and as time moves forward and the...
The Coming Era of Super Employment Pandemic or no, technology and innovation keep marching along. That will be the key to personal financial and national macro-economic progress. Take television technology … please! Twenty-five years ago, a 32-inch television was...
2021 will be the Year of Recalibration! When we think about the years ahead, there’s the future and then there’s the future future. Let’s talk about the immediate future first. Recalibration is the Word 2021 will be a year of recalibration. As we’re gradually able to...
Creating the Every-Human Database and the God Globe I recently read an article in which the author concluded that Facebook knows as much or more about many of the people who are not on Facebook as those that are. In fact, Facebook’s ability to track the online...
Ten History-Altering Breakthroughs in 2020 In 2020, every day is a blur. We roll out of bed, grab a cup of coffee, try to make sure we’re presentable from the waist up, and check the schedule for our first Zoom call. And then we realize it’s Saturday. Similar to our...
Cultured Meats May be the Key to Pandemic-Proofing Our Future In 2017, I wrote a column titled “The Coming Meat Wars – 17 Mind-Blowing Predictions.” My second prediction on the list was that cultured meats would be available in grocery stores by 2020. That’s...
Elon Musk on Track to become the World’s First Trillionaire In 2014, I wrote a column entitled, “What Industries will produce the First Trillionaires?” and over 40,000 people stopped by to read about the 18 possible industries that, at the time, seemed to be the most...
Our Future is being formed around one simple question, “what’s missing?” There’s nothing better than having a moment of brilliance that hits you and you think, ‘YES’! In my world, we often spend time talking about epiphanies. That’s because every new...
Robotic Advances: COVID-Spurred and Otherwise It’s not surprising that the COVID pandemic has gotten us all thinking about technology that can take the human element out of day-to-day “personal” interactions. There have been some very interesting, new adaptations of...
Building a More Valuable Human How do we build a more valuable human? That’s essentially what education is all about. Each of us has only one body and one mind, and whatever we do to increase our skills and capabilities will make each of us more valuable on the world...
Will AI replace humans? Elon Musk has given us nightmarish warnings about how AI could become “an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.” And now we hear about GPT-3, created by OpenAI, a research business co-founded by Elon Musk. Since GPT-3 has been...
Our Urgent Need for Global Authorities Facebook recently announced it was expanding its hate speech policy to include content that “denies or distorts the Holocaust,” a major shift for the social media company that has repeatedly come under fire for its...
The Power of Being First Almost as much as we’re fascinated by extreme accomplishments, and seeing people make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, we live in a world that’s obsessed with groundbreaking accomplishments like being FIRST. After all, few of us...
Just-in-Case Learning versus Just-in-Time Learning If you’ve had the fortune to have a college education and you’re two or more decades removed from the experience, what do you remember about what you learned? If you’re in the hard science world, with a PhD. in...
How Do We Protect Our Growing Base of Information for All Time? Is it ever ok to let information die? In the past, a group’s stories, legends, history, and religious beliefs were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth or documented in drawings or...
Robots and automation will never fully replace humans. And that’s a good thing. Will a smile from a robot ever be as comforting as one from a mother? If a robot tells you how wonderful you are, will that ever mean as much as if your partner says it to you? Westworld...
Make Way for Mega Projects In the midst of this COVID-19 era, it’s hard not to be completely caught up in the day’s negative news. Deaths. Infection rates. Business bankruptcies. Foreclosures. For most people, the world has suddenly become a very scary place. Even...
Creating the 10-Second Brain Interface When is the last time you tried to assemble something and the instructions left out a tiny but critical piece of information for you to move from step eight to step nine? Maybe it’s an information bit buried on a screen,...
Will Zoom Become the Napster of the Events Industry? The global events industry is having a bit of a “Napster moment” as we move through this pandemic, and they seem to be in denial on what to do about it. Just as revenues in the music industry peaked in the year...
Still waiting for the point-n-call and point-n-text features on my smartphone Many times I’ve driven past a store wondering if they have a certain item or what their store hours are. While I understand that it’s relatively easy to “Ask Siri” or “Hey Google,” I would...
Is Moore’s Law for Mad Science Inevitable? In 1996, Artificial Intelligence (AI) theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote: “Our sole responsibility is to produce something smarter than we are; any problems beyond that are not ours to solve.” Nearly 20 years later Yudkowsky...
On the Shoulders of Giants: Retro art and imagining future transportation As a futurist, I’ve become enamored with past visionaries and their gift for imagining the future. While some of their retro-futuristic visions may seem poorly conceived or even laughable, each...
Future of Hollywood: Post-COVID Storytelling The COVID-19 pandemic has put pop culture on hold. What we’re facing is not just a summer without popcorn blockbusters, but a fall television season with many series put on hold in mid-stream (nearly literally) and an Oscar...
Is it Possible to Pandemic Proof Our World? Given the source of COVID-19 and recent similar viral outbreaks, there’s no reason to think that another one won’t happen again – and sooner rather than later. Are we willing to do and spend what’s necessary to prevent...
Is this the end of the shopping mall? Huge shopping markets like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul were around as early as 1455. Some of the Middle Eastern Souks have been in existence even longer. A Slice of Americana By comparison, we in North American are relative...
Can Social Media Survive? Is it Worth Saving? Among most of my futurist friends, it’s common thinking that most future wars will be started as cyberwars. As we discuss this type of scenario, they begin as a series of attacks on critical infrastructure, with one...
The Future of Non-Lethal “Weapons” The first time I watched Star Trek and heard Captain Kirk calmly instruct the crew to – “Set your phasers to stun” – I wondered just how many more settings those weapons actually had. Was it just a simple two-position switch with...
Foresight Journaling: We Can Help You Unlock the Secret Truths to your Hidden Vision Decisions, Decisions Each of us is faced with a unique set of problems, circumstances, challenges and opportunities, and let’s be honest, we’re not too good at making decisions about...
Should we have the right to be invisible? We’re hearing a lot about “the right to be forgotten,” as the European Union is taking the lead in adopting policies that allow a person to request their personal information be removed from the Internet or other information...
In Search of a Social Media Truth Meter Like me, you’ve probably seen news items, blog posts, and web pages that are cringe worthy for a number of reasons – including their lack of truthfulness. If we hold a “truth meter” next to every college course,...
Four “Impossible” Situations, Four Solutions, and Ten Predictions for the Future Futurist Kevin Kelly is often quoted as saying, “The future happens very slowly, and then all at once!” This happens to be one of those “all at once” moments! We live in an incredibly...
The Drivable Office: RVs, Motorcoaches, 5th Wheels, and Campers Become the Remote Office of the Future. The coronavirus has been a catalyst for remote work and 31% of people surveyed said that COVID-19 was the trigger that allowed remote work at their company. Yes,...
During periods of great chaos, comes great opportunities! It’s as if the Yahtzee game of life was just thoroughly shaken up, and an entirely new set of rules was dumped onto the table for us to deal with. As we stare at this new rule set, yes we can spend our time...
Facebook’s New Supreme Court: One Step Closer to Becoming a Virtual Country Facebook’s announcement of their new “Supreme Court,” an announcement that was triggered by the coronavirus, represents a massive turning point in human history. While this may not be their...
All the Wrong Incentives! A complex coronavirus made worse with bad incentives! If you’re having a hard time getting an accurate picture of what’s going on with the coronavirus, you’re not alone. In a world that has become obsessed with the latest news, testing...
Contact Phobia – The growing fear of human touch and our shift towards a contactless world Over the past couple weeks we’ve been beat over the head with phrases like social distancing, wash your hands, shelter at home, wear your mask, and disinfect everything....
Never Again! 10 Future Inventions designed to identify, manage, and crush future pandemics. Most of the biggest advances in human health have happened outside the hospital. For example, the number one advance in all history has been the filtering of water supplies....
How the coronavirus will trigger a massive new underground economy How long can you survive when your money runs out? This is an important question today because many are seeing their remaining reserves dwindle and disappear altogether. In general, it’s impossible to...
Finding the Opportunities and Filling the Void What things did you do last summer that you can’t do today? For most, summer was filled with outdoor activities like going to sporting events, concerts, swimming, parades, festivals, and farmers markets. Those things...
Foresight Journaling – Unlocking the secret truths to your hidden future! Let’s start by asking, “What if we had a better way of finding answers to our most pressing personal issues?” Each of us are challenged with a unique set of problems, circumstances,...
How the Coronavirus has Altered the Course of Human History A couple days ago I was contacted by Anastasia Levchenko. Chief Correspondent for the Sputnik News Agency based in Italy. She asked if I could answer a series of interview questions about the changing state...
19 Startling Covid Trends and 19 Golden Covid Opportunities Emerging from the Chaos As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once said, “You should never let a serious crisis go to waste!” We’re entering unprecedented times, and yes, the coronavirus will go down in the history...
Coping with the Exponential Speed of Panic Whether you think the coronavirus is a festering pandemic or an overhyped version of the common flu, there are many things we can learn from how the world is responding to the news of the coronavirus and what indicators may...
The Fear of Doing Nothing: Our overarching fear of getting caught with our pants down in an age of hyper-awareness In 1998-1999, the world was being gripped by fear. It wasn’t the fear of war, famine, uprisings, or a coronavirus-like pandemic, instead there was a...
Podcast College What if getting a college degree involved little more than listening to podcasts and taking tests? Podcasts can be squeezed into every crack in every day, like riding in a car, working out at the gym, going on a bike ride, or waiting at the doctors...
How many Einsteins and Mozarts are born in every million people? Can there be more? Should there be more? The world is currently undergoing a massive demographic shift, with over half of all new born babies born in six countries – Angola, Congo, Ethiopia,...
Disrupting Transactions: 7 Examples of AI Driven Smart Transactions that will Mess with your Mind The banking world is in trouble. Our entire world is primarily built around one central activity – transacting payments. Today we’re seeing an emerging breed of...
Backcasting Our Way to a Better Future: 8 Eye-Opening Scenarios How much control do we have over our future? As I have discussed in previous columns, the internal steering wheel that our subconscious relies on to guide us through our daily lives is our inner vision of...
Autonomous Car Privacy – 8 Scenarios to Explain the Enormous Complexity of this Issue Over the coming years the conversations about privacy in driverless vehicles will become a delicate balancing act between privacy, security, and convenience. Let’s consider a typical...
A Journey Inside the Mind of Futurist Thomas Frey For me, every day is a remarkable new adventure waiting to reveal itself. Whenever possible, I try to let my curiosity kick in. Will people in the future be doing the same things I’m doing today? If so, what things...
99 Unanswerable Questions and the Unintended Consequences of the Future We’re Creating If, in the future, you found yourself on a jury, and you were tasked with determining the fate of a heinous criminal (think Ted Bundy), and you had the option to either sentence him...
32 Future Accomplishments that will give you more Status and Influence than a College Degree How many famous artists or musicians do you know that have a PhD in art or music? There are indeed many well-educated artists and musicians, but virtually none were...
The future of the world is heavily dependent upon countries with the poorest education systems! Here’s why! Pay close attention to these six countries: Nigeria, Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Angola, and Pakistan. The future of our planet is happening inside these...
63 Smart City Capabilities: Here’s how they’ll change our jobs, businesses and our children On a recent trip to London, it became clear that the British people are far less sensitive to surveillance cameras than we are in the U.S. In fact, the number of cameras being...
28 Reasons why driverless tech will be the most disruptive technology in all history The impact of driverless vehicles will be profound, touching almost every aspect of our lives, and the level of disruption will be staggering. It will not only change the way we get...
Building the Brains of the Robot Every time we talk to Alexa, Siri, Google, or Cortana, we are building the brains of the robot. Whenever we speak to these devices, we are imparting tiny pieces of human intelligence, and over time, with the right kind of AI learning...
The Air Mattress on the Plane Guy, and the Future of Comfort I recently returned from a speaking engagement in South Korea, and on my trans-pacific flights between San Francisco and Seoul I tried something new – an air mattress. I had my doubts at first, but it turned...
Visiting the Future with Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute Meet Thomas Frey: futurist, speaker, and founder of the DaVinci Institute in Westminster, Colorado—and SU community member. He has spoken around the world to such audiences as NASA executives and other...
Circadian Time: Unlocking Our Inner Superman The time gods are insisting on your attention. Every wall clock, alarm clock, and wristwatch has a way of demanding you pay attention. No, they don’t shout orders, or poke you if you ignore them, but their relentless...
Fractal Organizations: Defining a New Era of Global Governance Large tech companies now wield more clout than most countries. This becomes a critical issue when the needs of a country and the needs of a business collide. A prime example is when Facebook was caught...
Megaprojects: Four Bridge-Tunnel Projects that will Rewrite the Future of Humanity On October 24, 2018 the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge was opened to the public. This 34-mile long bridge-tunnel system, consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea...
Understanding the Future of Korea – Interview with EDaily In June 2015, I was asked to be one of the featured speakers at the EDAILY 6th Annual World Strategy Forum along with Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales and Nobel Economist, Thomas Sargent. The theme of this event...
The Future of the Cultured Meats Industry in 2040 Since I do many talks on the future of agriculture, I was recently interviewed by the Feedinfo News Service as part of their 20th Anniversary Edition. In this interview they asked me to help them think through what the...
31 Ways AI Will Affect the Future of Entertainment Our present is becoming a more distant past every day. For most of us, AI is the magical genie in some invisible box that is redefining a new state of normal for us on a daily basis. AI is not something that we can...
City of the Future: Seven new facilities that will redefine the communities we live in Great communities are founded on great ideas. At the same time, our most admired communities become a magnet, attracting the brightest minds. The relational effect is clear: Bright...
88 Mind-Bending Examples of How 5G will affect our Daily Lives The race to 5G is heating up. Telecom companies are racing against other telecom companies, cities competing with other cities, and even countries are battling against other countries in a rush to be the...
Do we have a fake people problem? If you recently lost your job, I encourage you to blame this young lady. Contrary to first impressions, this isn’t a real person at all. She is nothing more than an AI generated random human face. In the past we’ve run into...
Are certifications more valuable than college degrees? For those of you who haven’t noticed the shifting winds of higher education, certifications have been secretly creating an entire new industry that is layered between colleges and employers. While they don’t...
Understanding the future through the eyes of a child: 29 insane predictions and why it matters? Last week my grandson Raymund turned 5 years old, and it caused me to think about the kind of world he’ll be entering into. The workforce of tomorrow will need to be...
Perfectly Human: The inconsistent exception to every rule At a past DaVinci Institute mastermind group we tackled the question, “Is the intelligence of nature greater than the intelligence of humans?”After pondering this question, the responses were a mixture of...
The 2,000-Year Test A couple years ago my wife and I visited the beautiful Spanish city of Segovia located in the center of Spain about an hour northwest of Madrid. At the heart of the city, nestled close to its historic shopping district, are the iconic aqueducts...
34 Looming Issues between Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage and protect human ingenuity. For this reason, intellectual property has become a continually evolving form of public policy where...
How long before we reach peak ecommerce? Retail is rapidly evolving and many of yesterday’s storefronts no longer exist. Gone are the Woolco’s, Radio Shacks, Gottschalks, Casual Corners, Ben Franklins, Mervyn’s, Montgomery Wards, and Miller Outposts of a bygone...
Five Scenarios for a Techno-Apocalypse Over the past couple decades we’ve seen a number of spectacular tech failures. It’s easy to list things like MySpace, Google Glass, Pebble Watch, TiVo, Iridium, Napster, and even AOL as major business failures, but in each case...
The Power of Predictions: Fine Art of Creating Viral Predictions When is the last time you made a prediction that people paid attention to? Like many things in life, there are a number of methods and techniques that can be used, but the thought processes involved in...
The Coming Driverless Mobile Office Era: Seventeen Mind-Bending Examples Coworking spaces like WeWork may soon have a new kid on the block to worry about. Driverless technology will invariably open the door to a whole new era of non-commuting vehicles, and one of the...
Approaching the “empty pockets” lifestyle Throughout history people have been burdened by all the things they’ve had to carry with them, typically in their pockets, wallets, or purses. In the past, leaving the house was a checklist exercise for remembering all the...
Driverless cars, the hardest design problem yet to be solved is one that you’ll never guess For car designers, the rapidly approaching driverless era is giving them an entirely new set of design challenges to deal with. Over the past 120 years, cars have been designed...
