Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, ...]]> [Note:  This is a column reprinted from the current "Shift Age Newsletter" as it is very timely and has already received a lot of positive comment.  If you are not yet a subscriber of the newsletter, please go here and click on FREE subscription]

Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, The Globe and Mail and on CNN and other news channels.  This has now happened with the Iranian crisis.  The autocratic theocrats of Iran sent journalists packing - and beat them if they didn’t, jammed broadcast signals, and tried to shut down web sites.  They were largely successful in these efforts.  However, due to twitter, facebook, cell phone videos and email the world has been kept informed of the brutality that is going on in Iran.  Here the water metaphor is perfect as it always finds the cracks, the holes in the dyke, the weak spot in the levee, the porous part of the structure and flows through it.

I have several followers from Iran on Twitter.  I did my part by tweeting that the world was in fact watching, that their messages were getting out and that their struggles were known and supported. It was interesting how often such tweets, both mine and others, were RT (retweeted).  This is another new unique experience, people feeling participatory in a struggle half a world away through personal communications.

It is clear what lies ahead for Iran.  Autocratic governmental power and centralized authority kept in place through brutality, misinformation, xenophobia and false prophets will ultimately collapse.  This is particularly true when the educated, the young and the affluent are the ones in the streets being beaten.  As long as the current leaders are in power in Iran there will be an exodus of the best and brightest out of the country - if they are allowed to leave.  These leaders are so insular and consumed with maintaining their power that they do not realize the new reality of global electronic connectedness on a personal level.

If internal political upheaval does not bring these leaders down, the tidal waves of personal communications due to this electronic and immediate connectedness will.  The nation state structure cannot defend against it anymore.

At the beginning of the 20^th century there were dozens of car companies.  The story of the last century is one of consolidation so that by the 1990s there were only the Big Three and a few foreign companies producing vehicles in the U.S.  These companies from the last century will continue as the scale part of the business for the next 5-10 years.  They will be joined by smaller, more nimble companies that will bring innovation to the marketplace.  Tesla and Aptera, mentioned in the last column are just two examples.  There is a real possibility that there will be dozens of companies by 2015.  The new companies will not provide scale, at least initially, but they will lead the market with innovation.  Some companies may produce hundreds of vehicles, others thousands, others tens of thousands.  These companies will successfully compete with the big companies on the playing field of innovation.

Clearly the cars produced in the next 10-15 years will be generally smaller, much more fuel efficient and will use less and less gasoline.  The first stage ...]]> In the last column we looked at the general dynamics underlying the reality and need to create an automotive industry in the U.S for the 21^st century. We now take a look at what this industry might look like. An analysis of trends, developing technologies and the role that the federal government can and should play, makes it is clear that this industry will be substantially different than that of the 20^th century.

At the beginning of the 20^th century there were dozens of car companies.  The story of the last century is one of consolidation so that by the 1990s there were only the Big Three and a few foreign companies producing vehicles in the U.S.  These companies from the last century will continue as the scale part of the business for the next 5-10 years.  They will be joined by smaller, more nimble companies that will bring innovation to the marketplace.  Tesla and Aptera, mentioned in the last column are just two examples.  There is a real possibility that there will be dozens of companies by 2015.  The new companies will not provide scale, at least initially, but they will lead the market with innovation.  Some companies may produce hundreds of vehicles, others thousands, others tens of thousands.  These companies will successfully compete with the big companies on the playing field of innovation.

Clearly the cars produced in the next 10-15 years will be generally smaller, much more fuel efficient and will use less and less gasoline.  The first stage is small, internal combustion (IC) engine cars and small hybrid cars such as the Prius that utilize gasoline and electric batteries.  These will be followed by electric dominant cars that have very small IC engine used only to charge the electric batteries when the power is low.  Then there will be the pure electric plug-ins that are electric only.  These vehicles will provide 50+ miles per charge which is sufficient as half of the US public drive less than 40 miles per day.  All of these different power trains will also show up in public transportation and trucks.

The initial limitation will be how many can be produced, the scalability of production.  The second limitation will be the US landscape which has been created on the false premise of always cheap gasoline.  In other words, unless you have a single family house with a garage, the chances are high that where you park your car does not have an electrical outlet nearby.  A significant part of our landscape, and certainly our cities will need to be rewired.  This rewiring will need to be a part of a larger, more energy efficient and technologically innovative 21^st century power grid.  The federal government will need to provide huge financial investment to rewire America, intelligently.

This wave of electric vehicles will be closely followed by the developing wave of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  These vehicles will have all the same attributes as electric ones; they will use no gasoline, they will not create greenhouse gases, they will be able to be refueled at home and they will be quiet to drive, all great attributes.  They also have the same problem that electric vehicles do, which is the lack of a national infrastructure of charging/fueling/refueling stations.  Again, it is now time for the federal government to step up and spend tens of billions of dollars, along side private investment to create the needed infrastructure to allow the automotive industry to move toward the goal of having a majority if not all Americans driving alternative fuel vehicles.

This is what the federal government has always done.  In the 1930s the government largely funded the creation of hydro-electric energy in the U.S.  In the 1950s - 1970s it funded the creation of the interstate highway system.  If President Obama and the elected politicians in Washington truly want to gain independence from foreign oil, they must invest in the 21^st century transportation infrastructure.  The investment, in relative terms, is not that great.  A $10 - 15 billion investment, a fraction of what the government has already given to GM would be enough money to establish an initial refueling infrastructure of hydrogen fueling stations that would be accessible within 2 miles anywhere in the top 100 metropolitan areas of the country.  That investment would in turn allow the private sector to both further build out this refueling infrastructure and to scale up production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, dramatically lowering the price into the realm of affordability.

So, the federal government absolutely needs to make the right policy and tax decisions in the next two years if they mean what they say.  If they do, then private industry will rapidly ramp up so that by 2015 there will not be a single IC only vehicle made in the US.  The average fleet fuel efficiency of the US automotive industry can be a 100 mpg or greater by 2020.

There is one final point that needs to be made.  If the federal government does not fully commit to this vision of the future in the next two years, there will be many hundreds of billions to be made by German, Japanese, Chinese and Korean companies as their governments have embraced this general vision and are supporting it.  Not doing what is clearly needed will mean an abdication of leadership, allowing these other countries and their automotive industries to completely eclipse the US in transportation technology and innovation for decades to come.

The future is clear and within our grasp.  The private sector is ready to provide the necessary innovation.  Are our elected officials ready to provide the long term policy and funding to create the future we all want?

The first thing to mention is that there is now a global awareness about the need to find an alternative to the gasoline internal combustion engine.  This form of power pollutes our environment, has driven CO2 to record levels in our atmosphere, and is based upon a finite fuel resource that will be gone by the end of this century.

In addition to these macro issues is the reality that combustion of any type creates heat in and of itself; that is a fundamental law of physics.  Keep this in mind as we consider such combustible alternatives to gasoline as the various types of ethanol available.  While switch grass and sugar cane ethanol may well be renewable it does generate heat, and if one is concerned about global warming, excess generation of heat by humans is an issue. The second law of thermodynamics applies here. By the way, the bandwagon of corn ethanol has clearly gone down a dead end ...]]> The US automotive industry is about to go through a historic transformation.  It is very possible that by the year 2020 we will have largely weaned ourselves off of the pure internal combustion engine.  The key is to make the right decisions about the next 12 years in the next 12 months.  To initiate a transformation of such a huge and critical industry takes planning, investment and a long term view.  Here is a very realistic view of what the US automotive and transportation industry can look like in 2015 and 2020.

The first thing to mention is that there is now a global awareness about the need to find an alternative to the gasoline internal combustion engine.  This form of power pollutes our environment, has driven CO2 to record levels in our atmosphere, and is based upon a finite fuel resource that will be gone by the end of this century.

In addition to these macro issues is the reality that combustion of any type creates heat in and of itself; that is a fundamental law of physics.  Keep this in mind as we consider such combustible alternatives to gasoline as the various types of ethanol available.  While switch grass and sugar cane ethanol may well be renewable it does generate heat, and if one is concerned about global warming, excess generation of heat by humans is an issue. The second law of thermodynamics applies here. By the way, the bandwagon of corn ethanol has clearly gone down a dead end street. Of all alternative energies being considered, corn ethanol has the worst ratio of energy units used to create energy units. In a world where starvation has been a constant, the idea of taking one of the major foodstuffs away from humans to feed automobiles is fundamentally ludicrous.

The two fuels that are most developed and ready to replace gasoline are electricity and hydrogen.  Both have the built in advantage of human habit.  We are all used to plugging things in, electric, and we are all used to going to fueling stations, hydrogen.  Everyone reading these words uses electricity everyday.  Few, if any of you reading these words currently use hydrogen.  This is the reason that every major car manufacturer in the world has started with electric and has announced an electric hybrid and many have also announced a pure electric plug-in. These vehicles will start rolling off production lines in 2010 and 2011.  Innovative companies such as Tesla and Aptera are already producing pure plug-in vehicles that get 200 plus miles per charge.  In the case of Tesla, production has just increased from 20 to 30 vehicles per week and they are sold out through October.

While much is known about companies planning on electric vehicles, less is known about company’s plans for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  As of right now, GM, Honda, Daimler have fuel cell cars on the road; I have driven all three of them.  In addition all the major auto companies, GM, Honda, Daimler, BMW, Ford, Toyota, Hyundai/Kia, Volkswagen, Nissan, and Chrysler have hydrogen fuel cell programs.

During the past three years I have written and spoken about 2010-2015 being the beginning of the age of the electric car.  This will be the five year period when production can and should reach a scale that will begin to noticeably affect our consumption of oil for transportation.  Aside from scaling up production, the two other issues that need to be addressed are: how is the electricity used for transportation produced and the need to rewire our electric grid for the 21^st century.  If all the electricity used to charge our cars come from dirty coal powered electric plants we have only partially solved the CO2 and climate change issues we are threatened by today.  If we do not fundamentally rewire our country, a country whose landscape has been created based upon the premise of cheap gasoline, we will not get to scale.

Think about where you live and work.  If you live and work in high rise buildings, think about where you park your cars during the day and night.  Are there conveniently located electric outlets available for charging near where you park your car?  Probably not. Could you drive between cities and get battery charges?  Absolutely not!

Hydrogen has the same current problems to resolve.  How is it produced and how do we develop an infrastructure of refueling?  The need for electricity and hydrogen to be produced cleanly and to have a refueling/recharging grid developed are the two issues that through time will need to be solved if we are to completely and systemically solve our global transportation.

Right now there is a premium in the purchase price of electric cars and hydrogen cars.  Electric hybrid and electric plug in vehicles have about a 25% or greater premium in price over similar sized internal combustion vehicles.  Hydrogen vehicles have about an 800% premium in purchase price, which is why Honda has leased its fleet of fuel cell cars in Los Angeles.  Honda currently has 10 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road in the LA area and is ramping up to 200 total in the next two years.  I say this to quiet those that ignorantly think that the hydrogen fuel cell car is decades away.  People are driving them today in the largest car market in the US.

In the next column we will look at what the automobile landscape can look like in 2010-2020 if we make intelligent decisions in the next year.  For those of you in media and advertising, consider this: in the coming decade there will be dozens of car companies manufacturing alternative energy vehicles and dozens more converting internal combustion engine vehicles into hybrids.  As the age of consolidated mass media gives way to micro media, so will the consolidated age of mass car manufacturers give way, to some great degree, to micro car manufacturing.  Welcome to the 21^st century automobile business!

More than two years ago I wrote about the electric car.  Since then, in numerous speeches I have said that 2010-2015 will be the beginning of the age of the electric car.  There have been columns about the Aptera and the Tesla as examples of companies already producing electric vehicles that have met with great consumer receptivity.  There is no question that pure plug-in and plug-in hybrids will be front and center in the automotive marketplace of the next decade.  It is important that the U.S. and other countries support the rapid development of this new form of power train vehicles.

Given the crisis situations we find ourselves in relative to the state of the 20^th century automotive industry, the issue of global climate change, the soon to be permanently high price of oil and its negative effect on the global economy, it is imperative that we stand open, inquisitive and forceful in exploring all ways to replace this now broken and dangerous landscape.  For too long we have been both blindly ...]]> Regular readers of this column know that I have been a clear and forceful advocate of alternative ways to power transportation.  The internal combustion engine was invented more than a century ago.  We are now entering the decade that will take us toward the new definition of automotive transportation. We are about to define what the car of the 21^st century will be. We must, as a country be open to all forms of vehicular power.

More than two years ago I wrote about the electric car.  Since then, in numerous speeches I have said that 2010-2015 will be the beginning of the age of the electric car.  There have been columns about the Aptera and the Tesla as examples of companies already producing electric vehicles that have met with great consumer receptivity.  There is no question that pure plug-in and plug-in hybrids will be front and center in the automotive marketplace of the next decade.  It is important that the U.S. and other countries support the rapid development of this new form of power train vehicles.

Given the crisis situations we find ourselves in relative to the state of the 20^th century automotive industry, the issue of global climate change, the soon to be permanently high price of oil and its negative effect on the global economy, it is imperative that we stand open, inquisitive and forceful in exploring all ways to replace this now broken and dangerous landscape.  For too long we have been both blindly ignorant and beholden to special interests who have kept the US from increasing fuel efficiencies and investing in the essential technologies of the 21^st century.

A few months ago I spoke at the National Hydrogen Association’s annual conference.  As I wrote here, I learned much a lot about the current state of hydrogen in the marketplace.  I also wrote about the sublime experience of driving several hydrogen fuel cell cars. I came away from this learning experience absolutely convinced that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can and should be as much a part of the 21^st century automotive business as electric vehicles.

When the Big 3 flew their corporate jets to Washington last fall, I suggested that if the Federal Government wanted to bail out the 20^th century automotive industry, they should invest a similar amount of money in the 21^st century automotive industry.  Help from the federal government will speed up the essential need to wean ourselves from fossil fuel combustion.  As the government helped to fund the development of hydro electric power in the 1930s and launched the development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, so now it must invest in both battery technology and hydrogen fuel cell technology and the essential infrastructures to allow them to quickly grow to scale in the U.S.

I was therefore greatly enthused about the new commitment the Obama administration has made to alternative energy, green technology, a new 21^st century energy grid and the support of R&D for battery technology.  However, I recently learned that the administration and the Department of Energy, while planning on investing $2 billion for battery manufacturing and $400 for transportation electrification, had actually cut $143 million from the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Program and completely eliminated the federal hydrogen vehicle program!  I was and am absolutely dumbfounded by this.

I know the Obama administration has the right intention when it comes to alternative energy and freeing this country from dependence on imported oil.  They are absolutely right about support for the investment in battery technology and electric transportation. However, solving the energy and transportation crisis we are in entails the support of all promising and proven ways known to achieve our goals.  I do not want to think that the Obama administration has allowed their energy vision to be corrupted by any special interests from the electricity sector of the economy.  It must therefore be an oversight, a mistake or a case of having a major blind spot.

To put this funding cut in perspective, let me suggest what that the proposed spending cut could do if restored to the budget.  $143 million is enough to put a hydrogen station within 10 miles for every resident of the Los Angeles metro area and every 25 miles along the highways from LA to San Diego, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and Las Vegas–convenient fueling for 15 million people in one year.  Los Angeles already has the beginning of a hydrogen fueling infrastructure and Honda has a number of leased hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road there.  For the amount of money GM burns through in less than a day, we could have the largest car market in the US ready for conversion to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.  This in turn would prompt car manufacturers to start to ramp up production.

I will write on the bright future the US can have with both hydrogen fuel cell cars and electric plug-ins in my next column.  However I am so concerned that the bright future of hydrogen fuel cell cars is at critical risk due to the stunning oversight of the Obama energy plan that I called the National Hydrogen Association and asked them what can be done.  Evidently they have set up a link to connect to Congress.  Here it is: http://capwiz.com/fuelcells/home/ .  I rarely suggest readers taking action on anything.  However I am a futurist and just cannot let what must be an oversight that could cripple one of the ways to change US vehicular transportation slip by without intelligent discussion.  I am now going to let the elected officials that represent me know that they must not cut, but increase spending for the hydrogen fuel cell industry. I hope you do the same. To not do so continues the blind, mindless stupidity of our recent governmental inactivity in the area of transportation fueled by alternative energies.

Next week, a clear vision of how we can, by 2020 dramatically change what transportation in the US can be.

The image is one that anyone over the age of 35 can remember as it flashed around the world and represented the individual facing down superior force in a literal stand for freedom.  It was this image that gave the communist Chinese government its first taste of international outrage as it was slowly moving toward a more open, capitalistic society. It was a government and a country unused to global scrutiny. While the crack down on protestors continued, it was done quietly and out of camera range of foreigners and journalists.  A single image had flashed around the world and had left an indelible mark on human consciousness.

One of the dynamics that led this single man to stand in front of the tanks was the impact of technology.  When the government moved to end the demonstrations, it blocked all know communications channels, isolating the demonstrators. International TV and radio was jammed so the demonstrators had no idea whether there was support for them around the world. One thing the government missed was the new communications technology called the fax machine.  Evidently in offices near Tiananmen Square and in universities ...]]> It was 20 years ago this week that the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square turned violent.  After days of open demonstrations, the Chinese government had had enough and sent in the army.  This led to one of the most iconic visual images of protest in recent decades: a single man standing right in front of four tanks, daring them to run him over.

The image is one that anyone over the age of 35 can remember as it flashed around the world and represented the individual facing down superior force in a literal stand for freedom.  It was this image that gave the communist Chinese government its first taste of international outrage as it was slowly moving toward a more open, capitalistic society. It was a government and a country unused to global scrutiny. While the crack down on protestors continued, it was done quietly and out of camera range of foreigners and journalists.  A single image had flashed around the world and had left an indelible mark on human consciousness.

One of the dynamics that led this single man to stand in front of the tanks was the impact of technology.  When the government moved to end the demonstrations, it blocked all know communications channels, isolating the demonstrators. International TV and radio was jammed so the demonstrators had no idea whether there was support for them around the world. One thing the government missed was the new communications technology called the fax machine.  Evidently in offices near Tiananmen Square and in universities there were fax machines.  They were used by demonstrators to get the word out to the world.  Much more importantly, the world responded, sending faxes by the hundreds, letting the demonstrators know that the whole world was watching.  This is what gave the demonstrators strength.  This is what emboldened the young man to stand in front of the tanks.

Fax technology was just a few years old in 1989.  The fax machine first entered the office in the mid 1980s and didn’t make it into the home until the 1990s.  It was this brand new technology of sending documents through phone lines that fueled the demonstrations. There were only a few million cell phones in the world in 1989, and certainly none available for the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. So it was the fax machine, using land lines that kept hope alive in Beijing.

What is striking is how much transformation in communications technology humanity has experienced in the 20 years since 1989.  In 1995 there were 89 million cell phone subscribers in the world, in 2005 there were 2 billion, and today there are 4 billion!  In 1995, the year the first commercial browser came to market, there were some 45 million people using the Internet.  By 2005 that number had crossed 1 billion and there are close to 2 billion today.  Cable and satellite TV was still in early stage growth in 1989, today they are global in reach.  In 1989, the few laptops in the world were large, bulky and heavy and there weren’t very many of them.

Humanity is more globally connected than it has ever been.  Terrorist attacks are caught on cell phone cameras and telecast to the world. Network news anchors speak live via videophone to correspondents anywhere in the world.  Internet services such as Skype allow us all to cheaply communicate globally via video.  Bandwidth expansion and data compression are such that  a month’s worth of videos from YouTube equals what coursed through the Internet the entire year of 2000.  We are constantly connected.

Communications technology may now provide us with more information than can possibly be absorbed and digested.  The electronic feed trough of information is always on, and this can feel overwhelming.  We move from the delight in access and availability to the desire to totally unplug.  The good news for freedom and openness is that, with each technological step forward, barriers fall, dictators’ control lessens, ignorance decreases and people can take ever more informed actions.

The fax technology of 1989 provided the demonstrators with the knowledge that the whole world was watching, allowing one man to take an informed action that single handedly stopped a phalanx of tanks.  That was 20 years ago this week.  How far we have travelled since then..