THE GLOBAL FUTURIST - Douglas E Castle

Regrowth And Regeneration Of Limbs - New Frontiers

2012-01-24T12:52:00.000-05:00

It is a tragedy when an individual loses a limb. Medical research has focused on the areas of robotics, prosthetics, rehabilitation and compensating devices to provide, in some fashion for these losses. We've all heard tragic stories of "phantom limb pain," months and years of therapy and destruction of lives, careers and relationships because of these losses, whether due to amputation (in the case of diabetes for example), war injuries, atrophy (muscular and neurological) and congenital deformities.

The ideal solution, of course, is to be made physically and functionally whole again. This would not be an ungainly workaround -- it would be a direct solution.
Please read the article which follows (from several weeks ago, but still desperately relevant) and continue to read my commentary for THE GLOBAL FUTURIST, which appears afterwards. An amazing future may be possible, and we should look at its possibilities and opportunities now.

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BigThink Weekly Newsletter:

How to Regrow a Limb

Megan Erickson on January 4, 2012, 12:00 AM

What's the Big Idea?

The loss of a human limb is a tragedy. We know that once they’re gone, mammalian arms and legs can't ever be restored. But if you cut off a salamander's leg - or tail - it will reappear in just a few weeks. The enigma of amphibian organ regeneration has puzzled scientists since it was first recorded by Aristotle, reaching its strangest and most scientifically-accepted heights in the 1700’s, when Voltaire decapitated a snail just to see if the head would grow back. (It did.)

Now, a new generation of longevity-seekers hopes to apply the power of amphibians like the salamander, the axlotl, and the worm to human medicine. Sonia Arrison, policy analyst and author of 100 Plus, believes that tissue engineering will revolutionize the treatment of chronic illnesses: “In the future, if we had the ability to grow a brand new heart or parts of hearts with that person’s very own adult stem cells, then when we know that they have heart disease, we could just replace the heart. All of those [costly] visits to the hospital, all of the drugs, won’t be required.” Better tools will enable us to repair people rather than just sort of patching them up for a little while until they get sicker and sicker, she says.

What's the Significance?

This idea is more practical than it sounds. Over the past few decades, scientists have begun to understand exactly how the regeneration process works in nature. When a salamander is injured, a clump of cells called a blastomea forms at the site of the wound. Like embryonic stem cells, the blastomea are especially plastic. These cells are then triggered to de-differentiate and re-initiate growth. (Debate remains over whether they're fully pluripotent, meaning that they have the ability to form any type of tissue, or whether the cellular dynamics merely have to be reprogrammed, as in recent studies by Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.)

The trick, of course, is applying this knowledge to human anatomy. Arrison explains, "Since we all evolve from the same place, humans must have a set of genes that can allow for growing back new limbs - it’s just that they’re 'turned off' right now ." If we could figure out how to turn them back on, or to add new genes based on the salamander model, then it could be possible to create new organs from scratch. In fact, one of the biggest spenders in this story is the Pentagon, which has put at least $250 million in to the search to find a way to create new human organs in the lab.

“They’re funding work in terms of growing all sort of organs - bladders and windpipes and hearts and lungs, livers," says Arrison, "but also in hopes of figuring out how to regrow arms and legs" for soldiers wounded in combat. Thanks to this influx of public money, the field has moved forward much quicker than it would have otherwise. So far, researchers have succeeded growing hearts, livers, breast tissue, and bone in the lab. The brain remains elusive - but Arrison is optimistic: "The brain is much tougher than other organs in the human body, but work is moving along."

There are, however, two things that she's worried about. The first is that technology won’t move quick enough for those alive today. "We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of reverse engineering the human code, we’ve made a lot of progress in tissue engineering and gene therapy, but it’s that we still have a ways to go." she says. The second is that, if we do see organ regeneration applied to medicine, the distribution of benefits like faster healing and increased longevity will be inequitable:

How long will the gap be between the wealthy getting it and the poor getting it? Because we’re already starting from a point of inequality. If you look around the world, life expectancy in Monaco in the South of France is around 90 years. Life expectancy in Angola is around 38 years. That’s like a 50-plus gap of an entire lifetime, really. And then within the United States, there’s a pretty decent gap as well. An Asian-American woman living in New Jersey has a life expectancy of around 91 years. A Native-American man living in South Dakota has a life expectancy of about 58 years.

There's already a fifty year difference in what it's like to be rich and poor in the world, which may or may not be alleviated by technology, she says, depending on how we choose to use it.

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Observation, Conjecture And Commentary:

Putting aside, for a moment, the issues of longevity and its correlation to wealth and exogenous environmental or situational variables, let's look at where we might start to be looking (and investing resources):

1) Studying and developing cellular plasticity - observing how certain cells, each equipped with a full complement of the organism's DNA, can assume different functions to compensate for the loss of other cellular functions;

2) Studying and developing stem cell research - where "basic cells" can be "influenced" or "instructed" to become specialized in certain ways. Either outside of the body, or appended to the body, these initially amorphous cells can "learn" to become the necessary parts or assume the needed functions;

3) Studying electromagnetic and electrochemical forces which can cause regeneration based upon (these are highly theoretical reasons) an activation of new growth from the "root" or "remnant" of an old limb, or through a stimulation of the electronic "framework" of the body as it would be if whole to create new growth through completion of the blueprint. I personally believe that the greatest possibilities lie in the notion of regeneration chambers or similar devices -- the mystery is precisely what force stimulates completion/construction of the body to duplicate its complete blueprint.

Douglas E Castle for THE GLOBAL FUTURIST

The Ever-Widening Wealth Gap

2012-01-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

"If the peasants are crying because they haven't any bread, then let them eat cake." This is a loosely translated quotation from some plutocratic, indifferent, callous, out-of-touch-with-the-common-serf, and likely French woman of great stature who should have shut up before she ultimately lost her head. Statements like the previous are almost as offensive as Leona Helmsley's infamous "Taxes are for the little people."

The perception of the pampered, rich and powerful (can't you feel my envy?), who live in a certain isolation from the trials and tribulations of the wage-earning or unemployed crowd (the masses), is quite different than that of their poorer counterparts and, in the case of politics, constituents. There are very few truly wealthy people in the world, and they are vastly outnumbered by the struggling peasants who aspire to what amounts to at least a reasonable standard of living.

The disparity in wealth and income which separates these two groups is increasing rapidly, and dramatically. The social configuration is inefficient in terms of "government by the consent of the governed," or "government representing the interests of citizenry." This is because those who attain high political office and become part of the ruling class are so much wealthier than those who elect them that they cannot possibly empathize with the issues of the voters...the unrepresented majority.

This is happening all over the world. The United States is only one example.

To bring this difference in perception into clearer focus, when a Fortune 100 Director says he's struggling to get by, he might be saying it in a fine restaurant over cocktails while his chauffeur awaits, patiently parked at the curb. Or he might complain about it at the country club or at an executive retreat. When a commoner (as I am) says I am broke, he literally is on the verge of having his home foreclosed, clunky car repossessed, and has less than $4.75 in his jeans pocket. He is truly immobilized and worried to an extent which those elected officials, sheltered as they are on Mount Olympus, cannot remotely understand or relate to.

This makes for government of the increasingly growing population of poor folks by bodies comprised of wealthy, ideologically removed, wealthy folks. They cannot represent the interests of people to whom they cannot hope to relate!

An interesting article extract follows for your review. After you've taken a good read through it, take a look at my conclusions for THE GLOBAL FUTURIST.
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The Wealth Gap Between Congress and Voters Is Growing

By Dashiell Bennett | The Atlantic Wire – Tue, Dec 27, 2011

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have separate reports today about the widening wealth gap between members of Congress and the people they represent. Almost half of all Congresspeople are millionaires and their median net worth has climbed to $913,000, compared to $100,000 for the rest of America households.

According to the Post, that number drops to $725,000 when excluding home equity (and adjusting for inflation), but the same median figure for American families is just $20,500. And that gap has only grown wider in recent years.

The biggest reason for the disparity is the sheer cost of running for office, which is both a full-time job and an expensive undertaking. The average successful House race costs $1.4 million to stage (the average Senate campaign is almost $10 million), and candidates are allowed — and often need — to donate as much as they want to their own effort.

The costs of advertising and travel make it increasingly difficult for anyone who doesn't already have money to get their name out there. There have also been concerns raised recently about the ability of politicians to profit from their position, both through contacts made and the ability to trade stock based on privileged information.

Even putting aside the questions of influence and corruption, the biggest concern is that those who elected to Congress are more out of touch with the world of their constituents than ever before. How can they be expected to look out for the interest of citizens when the biggest issues facing them — unemployment, health care, wages — are unknown to most of those who are supposed to be looking out for them? Or worse when addressing those issues directly contradicts their own interest, as when millionaires are asked to vote on a "millionaire's tax"? The biggest political movement of the last year, Occupy Wall Street, has been devoted almost exclusively to addressing the gap between rich and poor, but it's hard to see how any change becomes possible when that gap is greatest among those in a position to do something about it.

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I am predicting:

1) An increasing number of one-term politicians, and increasing legislative turnover;

2) Increasing protests and acts of rebellion (i.e., "Occupy Wall Street") on the part of the citizenry against any person or institution which represents wealth and power;

3) Increasing pressure on investigative journalists prosecutors and judges worldwide to bring investigate, isolate and punish (i.e., make examples of) many of the world's rich and powerful, rendering this latter group somewhat paranoic for the first time since the Middle Ages;

4) An exodus of the powerful from public life to private puppeteering and market manipulation;

5) Ordinary envy turning to heightened animosity, acts of rebellion, and citizen activism.

I foresee dramatic upheaval in the composition and privileges of elected officials and government in general during these next five years. In defense, I would also expect to see many politicos finding new nesting places in the military-industrial complex, where they will continue to rule, but with a great deal less transparency, and with increased power.

While the rich will always win, I envision wild, extremist political battles, and the shift into the private sector of those who are old hands at being part of the governmental elite. This could portend a new brand of medieval feudalism surfacing as the new form of government.

"Let them eat cake?" Not one of the answer choices.

Douglas E. Castle

5 Giant Industry And Techno-Trends: The Global Futurist

2011-12-28T20:44:00.000-05:00

Drawing from a variety of sources during the course of these past four weeks, I've distilled the information I've gathered regarding major trends (industries and technologies) down to my favorite five, each of which which I believe is going to be booming during the next five years, and each of which warrants careful observation, as well as some business and investment planning. But, of course, I do not offer any investment, financial, legal, health or tax advice.

One thing that all of these giant industry and technological trends have in common is that they are each already significantly underway. They are all gaining momentum. Quickly.
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1. Nanotechnology, Nanotubes And Cardiovascular Pipecleaning.

Big Think Daily Ideafeed 15 October 2011

BIOTECH REVOLUTION
Microscopic Robots in Your Bloodstream

Engineers have used carbon nanotubes to create artificial muscle that moves like an elephant's trunk, which could be used to propel microscopic nanobots through the bloodstream.

2. Stem Cells, Computers and LIFE.

Researchers grow partial pituitary gland using stem cells

Japanese researchers used embryonic stem cells to grow partial pituitary glands, then transplanted the tissue in the kidneys of mice without pituitary glands. The transplanted tissue returned hormone levels to normal, according to the study published in Nature. The initiative is part of a worldwide effort to grow complete organs in a lab setting using stem cells. The Guardian (London) (12/4)...

And there's much more:

What's the Latest Development? [From BigThink's Idea Newsletter] - Computer Printer-Assisted Bone Regrowth.

3D printers have been used to create bone-like material which researchers say could aid in repairing injuries. The new material would act like scaffolding, promoting the growth of new cells and then dissolve away with no ill-effects. Professor Susmita Bose, who helped carry out the work at Washington State University, has been at work on the material for four years. A breakthrough came recently when she found a way to double the strength of the main ceramic powder—calcium phosphate—by adding silica and zinc oxide.

What's the Big Idea?

Within just a few years, doctors could use the printing technique to custom-order replacement of bone tissue. "Tests carried on immature foetal bone cells in the laboratory found that new bone cells started growing over the scaffold within the first week of it being attached." Dr. Bose predicts that within a decade or two, doctors will be able use artificial bone from 3D printers as scaffolds, along with bone growth factors, to repair anything from a broken jaw to a broken spine.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

3. Video Surveillance, Mobile Tracking and RFID

Retailers use RFID, security cameras to track buying habits
Retailers are using in-store video cameras and RFID tags to track buying habits of their customers. The data are used to improve inventory and display positions to prompt customers to buy more. "Before we were just working based on certain know-how and intuition. This is designing a retail business based on real statistics," said Montblanc brand manager Rodrigo Fajardo. Bloomberg Businessweek (12/15)

Malls use cellphone location data to track shoppers
Malls in California and Virginia have begun using cellphone signals to track the locations of shoppers. The malls use the tools to triangulate shoppers' locations based on their cellphone signals as part of a trial that runs through the end of the year. Forest City, which owns the malls, says it is not collecting any data that could identify a shopper, though experts say the data could be paired with other sources of information to target offers. Some experts, however, have raised questions about the legality of such tracking. Ars Technica (11/26)

4. An Increase In The Number Of Prisons, Prisoners, Privatization Of Facilities, And Incarceration-Related Employment - Prisons Are One Of The Largest Domestic Growth Industries In The USA.

Prison Nation

December 21, 2011 by Bob Livingston

PHOTOS.COM

There are more than 2.3 million people in American prisons.

America has come to be more like North Korea than the America our fathers grew up in. The United States is not a country descending into totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, the police state, is here.

According to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics and reported in USAToday, one in three Americans will be arrested by the time they are 23. That’s up from 22 percent of youths that age 44 years ago.

Crimes leading to arrest in this age group range from truancy and vandalism to shoplifting and underage drinking to assault and murder. Criminologist Megan Kurlychek told the newspaper that localities handled many minor offenses more informally 40 years ago than they do now.

“Society is a lot less tolerant of these teenage behaviors,” she said.

In fact, it’s not just teenage behaviors society is not tolerating. Now elementary school children are charged with sexual assault over innocent hugs and kisses and assault when they get into fights on school grounds.

And with drug laws criminalizing possession of as little marijuana as a seed or stem, it’s easy to understand why there are more than 2.3 million people in American prisons.

According to a 2008 study by the Pew Center on the States, one in 100 Americans is behind bars. For blacks, the statistics are staggering. One in 15 black men aged 18 or older is behind bars. For blacks ages 20 to 34, the number is one in nine. Black women are three times more likely to be incarcerated than white women.

America’s rate of incarceration far outpaces countries like South Africa and Iran. For every 100,000 Americans, 750 are in jail. In Germany the rate is only 93 per 100,000.

In America, people can be fined and/or imprisoned for simply taking raw milk across State lines, selling “unapproved” rabbits, or uprooting a plant or draining a pond on their own property.

Now, Congress has passed and the President has signed legislation that designates America a battlefield in the War on Terror and subjects Americans to indefinite incarceration without a hearing.

Face it: America is now a prison Nation. And with America’s penchant for militarism and her people’s fondness of orators, Herr Hitler would feel right at home. ####
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The profits and possibilities for companies in the building and management of prisons are promising. They'll be job opportunities for returning soldiers, retired law enforcement, and some local, but otherwise unskilled labor. And demand will continue to expand as the "Nation Of Regulation, Litigation And Incarceration" -- that's the United States...Land of the free/ Home of the brave -- continues to try to fuel a failing economy and an ever-increasing draconian system of punishment by A) locking up non-violent offenders and destroying families [leading to more crime] and B) giving non-productive jail-based jobs to anybody who is still outside of the prison (and is not an escapee) after the evening's lockdown.

5. Electroshock, Direct Computer-Brain Interaction And Virtual Reality To Enhance Learning Ability, Accompanied By A Renewed Interest In Subliminal Entrainment.

The following article excerpt appears courtesy of a slightly-dated but highly-relevant edition of BigThinks's Daily IdeaFeed. The article was every bit as stimulating (pun intended) as the slightly-Frakensteinian notion of using a highly-refined variant of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a controversial treatment for schizophrenia, catatonia, and some forms of severe clinical depression in order to stimulate and accelerate learning (the assimilation of knowledge) as well as recall (the ability to rapidly access the assimilated knowledge), and intelligence (the ability to use assimilated knowledge to identify and solve problems -- putting it simply):

BIOTECH REVOLUTION
Mild Electric Shocks Speed Learning

Running a mild electric current through the brain improves learning speed, according to Air Force researchers. The technique was used to teach personnel how to identify drone targets.

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Don't throw away those binaural and subliminal CDs. Keep Your Headphones. Entrainment [the creation of thoughts and emotions by inducing brain wave patterns through external means] will indeed be making a comeback, with improved targeting and precise technology. It is interesting to note that the brain tends to "pick up the rhythm' to certain patterned beats and sounds through an amazing process of mimicry. Whether this is done with headphones or electrodes, the possibilities are exciting, if not just a bit frightening. The ultimate result would be similar to Neo's crash course in, and rapid mastery of various styles of martial arts by immersion in a computer-simulated and controlled environment. Virtual reality is going to be an increasing preoccupation. Whether for education or recreation, the temptation of alternative realms is far too exciting to stay put.

Douglas E. Castle for THE GLOBAL FUTURIST

Bioenergetics - The Ultimate Power Source

2011-12-18T19:49:00.000-05:00

Living organisms consume food (as fuel) and carry on with the various tasks of living. Each living creature is a consumer and creator of bioenergy. Plant and animal bioenergetics is being looked at very seriously as a potentially limitless source of power for virtually every conceivable use. The difference between input (food) and output (work) is the magical key.

The issues surrounding its inevitable development and deployment include:

1) Obtaining it efficiently;

2) Transporting (or 'conducting') it efficiently;

3) Storing it for future use with a minimal loss or decay factor;

4) Converting it from one form to another as may be required in the circumstances;

5) Multiplying its efficiency in terms of input versus output, and perpetuating the production cycle.

Regarding this latter issue, picture the example of trying to get a hamster to cycle a wheel to the greatest number of revolutions per minute while feeding it the least expensive source of nutrition.

If you combine living creatures which are highly energetic little machines (such as microbes or even viruses) which consume waste products or pollutants for the purpose harnessing a source of energy, several perplexing problems facing us in the present and in the future could theoretically be solved (or at least mitigated) simultaneously.

The utopian picture of bioenergetics would be harnessing energetic output to produce electricity from a species of microbes which consumes oil spills and excretes (as a byproduct of the energy production process) harmless waste products that are readily biodegradable, or perhaps even useful.

I strongly believe that enterprises which invest in bioenergetics in any aspect will begin to make an appearance late in 2012 (principally as academically-sponsored start-ups and ventures), and will be very valuable in terms of profit potential and stock pricing potential by the third quarter of 2015.

The following article excerpt comes to us courtesy of SmartPlanet:

Using everyday microbes to power electrical devices

A grad student is improving technology that creates electrical fuel cells from everyday microbes like yeast. Read the full story

This field is fashionably green, ecologically unassailable, and addresses an almost unimaginably enormous demand while simultaneously solving some very serious problems. It has the ancillary sociological benefit of bringing together a merger of interests between naturalists and preservationists with the lust for innovation and profits of entrepreneurs and capital providers. Perhaps some venture capitalists, accredited angel investors and crowdfunding organizers are listening.

I would certainly hope so.

Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist

Trading Commercialization For Public Access: Crowdsourcing, Brainstorming, Collaboration

2011-12-04T08:41:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia - Apps and Icons

Crowdsourcing, Brainstorming And Collaboration: everyone seems to see the benefits to the populace as a whole when 'free' computer and mobile apps, 'open source' programs and software products are made available to the eager, ever-hungry public. The group-centered creative process is indisputably powerful -- its magic formula... limitless access to limitless numbers of limitless minds. The distribution process is hyper-efficient: all of the co-creators and their social circles will use, review and promote what's produced. Ultimately, word and utilization travel virally.

The social media and communications platforms benefiting (i.e., improving or increasing their respective use of their platforms; platforms and communications media like Twitter, Facebook, iPad, Blogger, Wordpress and others) by this seemingly endless cloudburst of apps even help to encourage ["Developers? Work with our API to develop your ingenious new applications and integrated uses for our product! Work with our development team.), advertise and promote them.

Confession: The title of this article is slightly misleading. Apologies. My trend-watchers, predictors, market prognosticators and sophisticated business audience already know that the notion of "trading" commercialization for public access is actually ephemeral. Sooner or later, the endgame is invariable the harnessing of every application, innovation and invention for a profit. It's just a matter of "How?" and "When?" And after these are answered, the question is "Who will gain and who will turn (the customerization process) from a free-user to a monthly payer or subscriber?"

Skeptics ask two questions: "Who makes a profit?" and "How do they make it?" Take a glance at the following article excerpt, which is over a month old but incredibly applicable, and then please hit the "BACK" button on the upper left-hand corner of your browser and return. We'll wait for you.

From the BigThink Daily IdeaFeed:

FREE DOWNLOAD:
Crowdsourced And Free Navigation Apps Taking Off
New, free navigation apps with an emphasis on social features and crowdsourced data are providing competition for premium providers such as TomTom, Garmin, CoPilot and Navigon.

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And now to the ever-irksome questions that are begging to be asked by business strategists, obsessive monetizers, dependent users and Global Futurists... and other persons who are considered by some to be skeptics and cynics, but whom I consider to be intelligent business pragmatists.

The process of monetization of these "open" and "free" source innovations is ongoing, but I believe that the timeframe from first release of new technology to monetization is going to be shrinking as a result of the weak global economy, the rise in the acceptability and utilization of cybercommerce, the increasing dependence on mobile devices for information and communication, and the growing population of people actively involved (either socially or commercially) in social media.

Ego gratification and the desire to share may initiate the creative processes, but real-world, real-time necessity accelerates the compulsion to convert from ego gratification and "psychic income" to creative conversion over to monetization.

WHO WILL PROFIT? AND HOW WILL THEY PROFIT?

1) Developers - Developers will be paid in the form of awards, contest prizes, promotion, and occasionally sales-based royalties from the benefitted platforms and media. If the developers have used open-sourcing, collaboration or crowd-sourcing they could, in theory pro-rate their benefits (both direct financial and endorsement-based) with their many collaborators as stakeholders. It is far more likely that the visionary organizers of these projects shall benefit directly and give 'thanks' to their contributors in the form of honorable mention. Exploiters often dominate and prevail. Others, less assertive merely settle for 'thanks,' laminated MVP certificates, bragging rights and other honorable discharges and trivial dismissal documents.

Some developers will be acquired, individually or corporately by the platform and media hosts in a "brain roundup" of talent and in marriages of political convenience -- i.e., to avoid IP legal battles and to avoid encouraging too much entrepreneurial independence. Picture a kinder, gentler Bill Gates, giving you a choice between a wonderful, glamorous career or an exsanguination.

Other developers will remain independent and continue to offer a free version of their innovations, but will begin developing and offer a "premium" or "professional" upgraded version of their products and services for a small recurring fee to the users. Picture charging a growing population of adherents a very small nuisance tax that is just too inexpensive to be objectionable. Heck, my subscription to Pingler only costs me $5.00 per month. I couldn't live without it. To get the Widgetbox "Pro" membership costs me, on average, $1.99 per month -- while I don't use it much, I just can't be bothered to cancel it.

2) The Platform Hosts And Media Providers - These companies will be benefitted by an increased flood of user volume to their respective platforms and media due to the convenience and an increased us of these applications, from Sudoku, to GPS restaurant locators, to mobile apps to access and support all of your social media and messaging activity. Firstly, their revenues will be increased from advertisers and commercial users due to their decreasing CPM and ever-increasing social and business audience and influence. Advertisers and promoters will be paying more to these old pros -- rates will rise.

After advertisers and commercial users are more fully trussed up and dependent, these larger hosts and providers will go after consumers (picture Bank Of America, Netflix and your beloved utilities providers raising prices to end-users directly, but with less fanfare, and engendering less hatred or mass exodus threats). Of course, once consumers begin to get used to the idea of paying a "trivial" fee for what used to be free services, those fees will never, ever be reduced --- I would predict a high likelihood that they will be increased on a regular basis thereafter.

3) Collaborators, As Teams And Individual Members - As the participants in these large, currently nameless, faceless crowds become more sophisticated with time, experience and watching the success of the early-exploiters (my projected horizon for this awakening is over the course of three years, starting toward the end of the first quarter of 2012, and slowing down toward the end of the time horizon due a flooding of the marketplace with app litter, increased competition amongst these collaborative developer teams, i.e., bidding the price of the services down in accordance with the basic Law Of Supply And Demand), and the increased acceptance of software as a service with the expansion of the Cloud.

Incidentally, "The Cloud" still scares me. This is not only in terms of the dependency on yet a new set of utilities-like companies, but also due to the increased vulnerability to data theft, and the cost of downtime and defaults, and a feeling of the backups and modifications and parallel systems which will have to be deployed by companies which wish to mitigate and contain the risks involved in this "one-size-fits-all" type of solution. Also, The Cloud sounds ominously like the title of a B-grade science fiction movie or of a lesser Stephen King short story.

Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist
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Mandarin Madness: Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

2011-11-09T20:29:00.000-05:00

As is the case in many trends and their ultimate outcomes, a strong perception of the "inevitable future" becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Put succinctly, the belief becomes the truth because our actions in response to that belief make it so. The anticipated domination of China in both the consumer and producer sectors has led to an increase in the number of students in industrialized nations who are learning to speak Mandarin. This is being encouraged by adding this language to the elective studies in high schools and colleges, and further fed by employment statisticians, economists and even professional and industry management recruiters who are preparing the next class of graduates for jobs where speaking Mandarin will give them the "edge."

It is also interesting that this phenomenon once applied to learning to speak Japanese in the late 1970s and in the 1980s in the United States, but to a smaller extent in terms of schools offering the elective and the number of students (as a percentage of total students) choosing to study.

The likely reasons that this newer wave of linguistic leaning is so much greater in proliferation and participation that the earlier one (i.e., learning to speak Japanese) are listed below:

1) The media are constantly speaking of China's inevitable rise to dominance, and the viralized potency of the new social media echoing this point did not exist during the "Japanese Period.";

2) There is less resistance to the idea than previously because their has been an increasing contingent of Asian-Americans and Asian-Europeans during the most recent 20-year span of time. This has had the secondary effect of infusing Chinese culture (and partially-Chinese offspring) into these countries with far more pervasive immigration than ever in history;

3) Unemployment is so intimidatingly high in the Western countries, that learning Mandarin is seen as a survival skill as well as a competitive advantage in accessing employment at the increased number of large firms which are multinationals and internationals. The increase in the number of major firms which are multicultural is simply the result of an increasingly globalized economy brought about through improved efficiencies in communications technology, an ever-increasing number of multi-national co-ventures;

4) University tuition has become so expensive (relative to the rise in cost of many other traditional family staples), that colleges and universities are trying to cater to the increasing market for students who want to be International Business majors. Colleges need tuition revenues from enrolled and matriculating students in order to survive in a very "dry" economy;

5) Referring back to point number 1), above, even articles like this one, with its catchy title (I am rather proud of it), are being amplified and reverberated throughout cyberspace by social media. In merely writing this article, I am contributing an increment of increased momentum and credibility to this Mandarin Madness.

An excerpt from an article which discusses this new international trendency (not a misspelling, but a Lingovation). It further validates the emerging interest in the perceived opportunities in the business of Planetary Geographical Arbitrage as it applies to both education and employment.

Remember this: "We shape the future by our reactions to anticipated visions of the future."

Douglas E Castle
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Learning Mandarin gains momentum in European, US classrooms
Gains in China's economic standing also have brought about a greater desire for children in the United States and Europe to speak Mandarin, which is supplanting Spanish and German as the second tongue of choice in some schools. More than 3% of American elementary schools offer the language, a large increase considering less than 1% did during the 1990s. "One way or another, China is the future," said Olaf Mertens, a school headmaster in Belgium. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)/Financial Times (17 Oct.)

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College Education? Inevitable "Trend-ency".

2011-11-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

An excellent presentation regarding the current status of college and post-collegiate education and an emerging trend which portends a very sensible paradigm shift. This information appears courtesy of BigThink. But first, I'll give you the Douglas E. Castle perspective regarding The Future Of College Education.

Higher education (particularly in the United States) has gotten increasingly expensive -- to the extent that the average college graduate will emerge with from the endeavor saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of inescapable debt, no assurance of employment (or of any type of employment which could possibly generate an annual income as great as a single year's college tuition and expenses), and a very limited practical skill set. The question being asked by many is "What is my ROI on my bachelors or masters degree?" The answer, generally speaking, is far too little.

Several variables combine to produce an alternative trend in education which shows some promise for the future - at least for the students as prospective graduates and members of the workforce.

The variables are: increased cost, decreased utility and improved computer/educational technology. Welcome to the growing possibility of telecommuting your way to an advanced degree.

As a trend-spotter and a Global Futurist, I anticipate the precipitous decline of many universities with extensive physical infrastructure and burdensome fixed costs, a decline in physical college attendance, and an increase in online degrees. I don't believe that this will necessarily lead to a decline in the quality or availability of education (in fact, it will be a positive game-changer for both), but I do believe it will completely change the nature of the educational experience. Dormitory life, frat parties and the social and emotional growth and development which accompanied the traditional full-time, away from home collegiate 'rites of passage' will be gone.

Sadly, I believe that this will impair the development of self-disciplinary, decision making and social adaptation and integration skills which are created as ancillary benefits of the "going away to school" adventure. This may well leave future generations of telecommuted graduates less able to be self-directed and to socialize effectively in their working environments. In a society that is becoming de-socialized and de-personalized, this sea change in the delivery of education will accelerate these negative processes, leaving graduates with "sterile degrees" and a lack of crucial personal and interpersonal survival skills. This would seem to be a tragic loss.

But then, education, and the degrees conferred, will be more accessible to a greater percentage of the qualified prospective student situation. In the simplest terms, there will be more "geeks" and theorists (without any life experience) being produced, and fewer prospective marketers, strategists, leaders and other technical professionals produced.

We will feel this shift in the change of the character of the entrants to the workforce within the next year, with the trend to increase significantly during the course of the next ten years at very least. Many non-telecommuting US students will leave the US to study abroad (another cost-saving alternative), and they will be in great demand. Employers in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the other industrialized nations, will find it very difficult to find viable, socially-adept employees to help them build and sustain their companies.

Enjoy the presentation from BigThink which follows.

Rethinking Higher Education
Adam Glick
A new online course that is currently being offered at Harvard, Yale and Bard is threatening to disrupt higher education as we know it. As tuition costs continue to skyrocket, parents and students are demanding answers to this question: what am I getting as the return on my $50 thousand annual investment that is college tuition today? Floating Univeristy offers an alternative. The best professors in the country present online lectures that students can access from anywhere. Watch »

Douglas E Castle

p.s. "Trend-ency" or its variant, "Trendency" is indeed a Lingovation

The Unnecessary Decline Of Civilization

2011-10-18T10:42:00.001-04:00

Civilization is essentially a business arrangement of convenience entered into by all parties so that each may be better benefited by the expertise, the experience and the contributions (in terms of cooperative and collaborative efforts harmoniously in synergy). A civilization is also very much like a multi-cellular organism, where each cell (i.e., participant) must be reasonably independent and self-managing, but also cooperative in terms of society's "business plan."

If the plan is unclear, if the roles of the participants are uncertain, if there are no policies (i.e., laws and parameters of conduct), or if those policies are capriciously applied without regard to balance, fairness, justice and predictability, and if incentives are not offered for doing things of benefit for society as a whole, the body of civilization disintegrates, as does any overripe, under-managed 'business' that has forgotten or chooses to ignore the reasons for which it was formed.

Every Human Being is a participant in civilization in multiple aspects and capacities.

A bloated system which ignores the notion of contribution and meritocracy, and instead embraces plutocracy, privilege and waste, will lose the faith, initiative and cooperation of its stakeholders (the participants), its employees (the participants) and its clients (the participants).

As the focus of our participants moves away from such once-thought-noble objectives as teaching and helping others; innovating and creating "new" things; gaining and maintaining a reputation for trustworthiness; self-growth; supported entrepreneurship; free and open dialogue and exchanges of ideas; a true opportunity to serve, and direct political elections based upon individual merits of candidates (and not based upon the sizes of their budgets); a streamlined government which does not itself act as an ever-growing parasite subsisting off of the contributions of the participants (hosts) and offering less and less service in exchange for more and more intrusive control at a higher and higher 'commission rate,' extorted in the form of taxes and money creation...we become increasingly (and perhaps preemptively) selfish.

The situation is exacerbated by feeble leadership, increasing inefficiencies, diminished expectations and a lack of positive reinforcement for genuine achievement. When people work for the government but the government doesn't work for the people, when greed eclipses good, when all assessment becomes subjective, the stage is set for a social decline.

Our decline has already begun, and is accelerating worldwide. As a business in the macroscopic sense, civilization neither turns a profit nor justifies, by the decreasing benefits which it bestows upon its participants, its very existence.

As Futurists, we must anticipate a decline in civilization if the implicit trends referenced above are not reversed -- and momentum, combined with typical Human reactivism, are driving us to the brink of some form of neo-feudalism with large enterprises as the warlords who will command us under the guise of protection.

Be prepared. There will be mush more to discuss on the implications, timing, risk mitigation, and intelligent intervention in order to either exploit this coming era of entropy (a seemingly immoral choice), or to plan to surf the coming tsunami.

It is painful to think that this is a generalized trend...poorer service, increased institutionalized lawlessness, de-personalization, diminished expectations and standards, unproductive expenditure and profligate 'bonus entitlement', is, in a sense the triumph of Humankind's animal Nature over the spark of divinity which I believe resides in most if not all of us.

In subsequent posts, we talk about what we need to do as individuals, as families, and as businesses owners and managers.

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]

http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning.blogspot.com
http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com
http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com
http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com

Cash As A Commodity: MiniTrend

2011-10-11T07:30:00.001-04:00

When banks hold onto cash and the amount of liquidity in the economy-at-large rapidly dries up, companies historically have responded reactively (impulsively) in the short run (starting six months after a media-magnified cash crunch and continuing into a period where indications in the economy point very strongly toward general inflation. Companies hoard troves of cash out of an amalgam of fear and greed -- fear that no further credit will be available to fuel expansion or to address unexpected needs, and greed -- where cash is scarce, and asset values (exclusive of exchange-traded securities) are declining either because of a shortage of viable buyers or customers, or because of anticipated worsening in the economy.

The rating of the United States as a sovereign credit may have been downgraded, and many are speaking about the decline of the value of the dollar vis-a-vis other currencies, but this is of little real consequence within the community of dollar holders with an eye for bargains and arbitrage. You need ready cash in order to be able to secure distress-sale bargains.

Viewing cash as a commodity, which so many fail to do, makes it increase in value when it is in shorter supply, and when it can be used to purchase even more than before in terms of larger-ticket income-producing assets, equipment, et cetera.

It might be well worth your while to have a look at an article just posted on The InfoSphere Business Alerts! Blog. The article can be accessed at http://infospherebusinessalerts.blogspot.com/2011/10/companies-hoarding-cash-no-self-banking.html.

The conventional wisdom would have us believe that corporations (as investing entities) would be fleeing dollars as a store of value, and running to invest in gold, or oil stocks, or FOREX. The fact of the matter is that Corporate America knows that large reserves of cash are wonderful to have in an economy where prices of many assets, supplies and resources are temporarily depressed. Expect corporations and large organizations, both US and international, to be piling up cash reserves until the prices of assets seem to have truly "bottomed out," or after the first few months (three to six months, generally speaking) of reports of rising general inflation.

Were I to hazard a guess, I believe that corporate self-banking, especially in US Dollars, will continue for at least another year to a year-and-a-half, and that reasonably-profitable small- to mid-sized companies are already starting to follow the example of the cash collectors...companies like Apple, for example.

Ironically, this self-banking in response to the contractionary credit environment is actually helping to support and bolster the value of the US Dollar. And that, friends, readers and colleagues, is not necessarily a bad thing.

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]
InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence [http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts]

Deepening Divides: Megatrends To Watch - Part 2

2011-10-05T10:45:00.001-04:00

In mid-September, Deepening Divides: Megatrends To Watch - Part 1 was published. The article, which can be found at http://theglobalfuturist.blogspot.com/2011/09/deepening-divides-megatrends-to-watch.html addressed the nature of these social, economic, political, technological and other movements. They are not merely small waves, aberrations or market adjustments -- they are changes which take place over a rather long period of time, but which keep growing, unchecked, and ultimately lead to dramatic changes affecting all of Human civilization.

I referred to them categorically as Juggernauts. We tend to notice them, but since their effects don't seem imminent, or aren't sufficiently disturbing, we de-prioritize them -- we procrastinate until they are fully upon us. Then it becomes the traditional dance of pointing fingers, placing blame, and miserable crisis management.

The "deepening divides" are enabled, encouraged (I've personified them) and exacerbated because no one chooses to address them. When they become sufficiently intrusive, we tend to wonder, "When did this happen?" Like a tiny crack in the ice on a lake, they grow deeper and further, with unfathomably profound implications for the world and our species. I liken this to walking through the woods and hearing a slight buzzing; as I walk further, it becomes louder. Soon, I find myself stepping into a nest of bees, and I am fully ambushed by an unshakeable cloud of angry bees, stinging me until I fall over in anaphylactic shock, with my body swollen to the size of sea lion.

I brought myself right into the calamity by ignoring small but persistent signs... a gradual increase in the volume of buzzing. I was not vigilant and I failed to react quickly and pre-emptively. The greatest megatrends do not require the studies of a brilliant mind to recognize -- Futurists and journalists don't usually find them exciting or "sexy" enough to warrant serious coverage.

Some of the changes covered in the first Part of the Article are reviewed briefly below:

1) The United Nations will become increasingly irrelevant.

2) The average Human attention span will decrease very significantly.

3) Human immunological responses, resiliency and recovery abilities will wane, ushering in a decline in the general level of public health.

4) Logistics, fulfillment and transport issues will become increasingly inefficient and technologically unsuitable, e.g., outmoded, to keep pace with the increasing demands for shipments of goods intranationally and worldwide.

5) An increasing percentage of the world's population will become poor.

To the above list, I would like to add the following to our Global Futurist vision. And bear in mind that any single one of these "sleeper changes" has the power, in and of itself to radically change the way each and every one of us lives:

6) Militaries, prisons, police agencies and other less media-covered and sensationalized functions of national governments will become privatized, and a handful of giant private contractors, without binding legal or ethical sovereign allegiance will essentially control the greatest concentration of each country's weaponry, as well as the power to terminate and incarcerate individuals almost at will. As Napoleon once said, "God is always on the side of the heaviest artillery." Individuals will essentially be controlled, if not enslaved by these huge monopolies;

7) The average age of individuals will increase, and the percentage of the population being considered as elderly (as of this moment, those individuals over 70 years of age) will increase. The quality of life for these people will decline, a greater number of them will be institutionalized, and many will be kept alive due to the continued profit motive driving healthcare providers to bilk third-party payers for all sorts of life-prolonging procedures, and for purposes of scientific experimentation. The elderly will be increasingly perceived by the young to middle-aged segments of the population as being a 'drain on the economic system'. This is a mindset that leads to frightening consequences if we permit our respective imaginations to wander down their darkest corridors.

8) There will be a dramatic increase in the direct private and dynastic ownership of companies and assets, and a flight from publicly-traded securities or paper debt and currencies. Volatility and growing distrust of the capital markets is beginning to lead the flow of wealth into direct participation in managed business. The Chinese are masterful at this. The Americans are not.

Investments will be increasingly assessed (i.e., valued) based upon their ability to generate recurring income for their owners, and less for the likelihood of a market killing. The gambling portion of the public will continue to play high stakes in the stock market, while the sobered and saddened one-time speculators will rebuild and store wealth in the form of direct ownership of income-producing assets. This could fuel a longer-term (more than eight years from now) rise in the value of multifamily dwellings, farmland, operating mines, smaller businesses involved in low-tech services and product manufacturing and distribution.

Imagine: "Hey, buddy! I've got a hot tip on a company that's going private."

9) Many of the "free to user" computer, internet, communications, publishing and social media services which have become dependent upon these free services will be shocked to find that the seemingly benign geek-born monopolists (Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others), are going to start billing consumers and businesses for services in the same way as any traditional utilities companies. This will force many entrepreneurs and start-ups into bankruptcy, and will cause their larger counterparts to increase prices significantly, as they simultaneously petition the various governments involved to intervene and regulate these rapacious business giants.

Be vigilant. Anticipate changes, Prepare plans and muster the will to put them into effect. These MegaTrends will not only be game-changing -- they will be revolutionary in every sense of that term.

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]

The Future: Site Construction Advisory!

2011-10-03T21:41:00.000-04:00

Apologies, dear readers and respected colleagues! We are currently in the process of re-constructing our blog templates in order to improve your reading, learning and interactive experience at each site. We should be able to resume a normalized, more frequent posting schedule by Wednesday evening, 5th October.

Thank you in advance for reading me. And more than this, thank you for your encouragement, support, responsiveness, constructive feedback and loyalty.

Your patience is deeply appreciated.

Faithfully and with respect,
Douglas E Castle

p.s. If you would like something quite interesting to read in the meantime, I would be delighted if you would have a look at http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/2011/10/man-versus-machine.html, and let me know your thoughts.

I would also appreciate your feedback on my most recent post (today) on a blog which has been too-long neglected and is now being reconstructed and re-activated. Visit http://BloggingTipsTricksAndTools.blogspot.com. The blog title is quite misleading (and more than a bit ironic), as you'll notice.

- DC

Prediction: There's No Single Method.

2011-09-28T17:16:00.000-04:00

In my most recent post about using simple linear extrapolation as one of many possible tools which could prove useful in forecasting and preparing for certain events, I'm afraid that I made the terrible mistake (it isn't my first, and will not be my last) of failing to issue a whole roster of circumstances where this approach would not be ideal (if applicable at all), with an accompanying list of limiting parameters where this approach might certainly need to be adjusted significantly if not discarded altogether.

My intention [and perhaps the road to Hell is paved with good intentions] was to cite one very simple approach to discerning a trending pattern and where it might lead. I apparently mislead at least one reader into believing that I thought that linear extrapolation was the absolute best means to make predictions. Now, I hang my head in shame. The linear extrapolation approach to predicting the future has the following limitations, to state just several of a vast number:

1) It assumes a constant (linear) rate of growth or decline over time, which is seldom the case -- the patterns of history do not necessarily repeat themselves, rates of growth and decline are subject to variation, as are many other items. These factors may render our initial projection assumptions invalid;

2) It does not provide for changes in technology, resource availability, demand, competition, regulation, obsolescence, economic markets (fundraising, the cost of capital, the money supply, interest rates, and the like), natural disasters, amazing breakthroughs or the intervention on the part of the futurist making the prognostication in influencing the results via a mechanism correlative with the notion of a self-fulfilling prophesy;

3) It does not provide for limited markets, holding capacities, or changes in either of these.

In a comment that I received regarding my now infamous post, Xamuel (whose insightful quote is printed below, unretouched) set me straight. Both The Global Futurist and Douglas E Castle humble ourselves before you, and apologize for misleading any of our readers. We also offer our sincere thanks for having this pointed out to us and our readers. Your input, negative, positive or neutral, is welcomed and encouraged. We learn from our mistakes.
---------------

Xamuel said...: Linear extrapolation might work sometimes in, say, climatology. It's not going to predict the future worth a hill of beans, though. It completely misses any revolutionary new development-- by its very nature! Even besides that, it has a bad habit of ignoring holding capacities (say), and predicting (e.g.) that a sample of bacteria will rapidly fill up the entire universe.; September 27, 2011 5:55 PM; ---------------

Sadder still is the fact that unpredictable events happen during the course of the extrapolation period (which makes any forecast a moving target) which cause a need for us to re-evaluate our assumptions and our methods to be changed dynamically. Forecasting requires constant monitoring, adjustment and correction for the effects of reactive intervention or interference, self-fulfilling prophesies, and other recursive variables that blur the line between predicting the future and causing the future.

Forecasting Simplified - Growth Rate Extrapolation

2011-09-27T11:06:00.000-04:00

In generating predictions about the future, one of the mechanical mathematical operations we often use is simple linear extrapolation. This approach is very elegant, very conservative, and is broadly applicable to a myriad of forecasting situations involving relative (differing) rates of growth. For example, if we are attempting to project what our company's gross profit margin on sales will be in three years, we might collect historical data about our price per unit sold (one variable) and about our direct cost per unit sold (the other variable).

Based upon prior data, we might determine either an average or anticipated rate of growth per year in each of these two "competing" variables. If we simply graph the respective rates of growth in each of these two competitive variables (usually I prefer to use a compound interest growth formula) we can see the difference between the two at any given time by superimposing the graphs.

For an example of this, you might wish to visit my Braintenance Blog post, located at:
http://braintenance.blogspot.com/2011/09/real-economics-lesson-growth-rates.html .

Simply hit the "BACK" button on your browser to return when you've finished.

The reason that this growth rate extrapolation so useful is its simplicity in terms of citing and illustrating trends involving two or more variables. Generally speaking, the greater the difference in annual growth rates, and the greater the passage of time, the larger will be the gap between the two. In some situations the two lines will eventually converge and cross each other -- in others, the two distance between the two lines at any given point on one axis will simply continue to increase, and never converge.

If we now enjoy a gross profit margin of 30% (for illustrative purposes), but our price per unit can only be increased by 3% annually due to competitive or economic concerns while our direct materials supplier is one of the only sources of supply accessible to us, and that company has been consistently (despite our pleas for mercy, and our whining about college tuition for the kids, confiding about Aunt Tillie's desperately-needed life saving surgery, sharing our worst fears about how we'll soon actually be losing money on our sales of our principal product, and the like) raising costs at an average of 7.5% annually, we can estimate the amount of decrease in our margin at any given time in the future during the forecast timeframe, and we can even determine at what point our gross profit margin will simply be too small to continue our manufacturing and sales of that particular product.

The notion and application of differential growth rates is one of the most crucial steps to making any predictive analysis.

This type of procedure is incredibly simple -- the greatest challenge to the prognosticator is determining which growth rates are most appropriate [and sadly, in the real world, they are seldom linear], while the greatest challenges to leadership and management are to monitor these changes and to prepare an actionable agenda to prevent the fulfillment of these prophesies.

In The Global Futurist, we paint scenarios of the future if trends or tendencies are permitted to continue along their current paths. A proactive strategist can change the future by his or her early intervention. Free will and the prospect of precipitous action are the "Human Factor Wild Cards" that can alter the sequence and path of events that lead to the future. The future is never certain, as long as 1) forecasting is not an exacting science, and as long as 2) Human Beings can choose to act upon their expectations of the future and take the initiative to change outcomes.

Douglas E Castle [http://www.linkedin.com/in/douglascastle]

http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning.blogspot.com

http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com

The Global Futurist: New Resources And Tools

2011-09-19T19:12:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers:

When you are able to find a quick moment, I would be deeply appreciative if you would be kind enough to visit the actual site for this blog, located at http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com and take some time to explore the site and look through our extensive library of links and our trends, breaking news and RSS feeds sections. It is our intention to provide excellent articles (original content which you'll not find elsewhere, but also to be a resource, research and reference center for you to bookmark as one of your favorities.

If you have additional links to resources (websites or blogs) or to RSS feeds which yoiu think would be of benefit to other of our readers and colleagues, please suggest them in a comment of this post, and I will see to it that they are given serious attention. Your input is heartily encouraged.

As always, thank you for reading me, and for your referral of this site to your friends and associates.

Faithfully,

Douglas E Castle

Deepening Divides: MegaTrends To Watch - Part 1

2011-09-14T20:23:00.000-04:00

Differential rates of growth or development between any two socio-economic variables over time, i.e., a divergence, create a growing divide - a gap - that is generally indicative of a very powerful, paradigm-shifting MegaTrend. These MegaTrends are not usually abrupt shocks to the system, but they are juggernauts, growing either steadily or at accelerating rates over time, with their influence becoming increasingly powerful over time, and affecting every significant aspect of life and commerce.

These growing waves or cracks (depending upon your perspective) are tremendous in terms of their ultimate effect, which can either take the form of a growing shift over time, or, like the stress cracks in an aging bridge, finally yield completely to the elements and the constant flow of traffic and collapse...with catastrophic results. Ironically, these trends or tendencies are almost invariably observed and noted by many futurists (including engineers, scientists, geologists, biologists, sociologists and other technical specialists who are involved in prediction and planning), well in advance of serious and irreversible harm. Equally ironic, is the propensity of business and political leaders to defer addressing these issues, postponing taking any action until tragedy is imminent.

A perfect illustrative example is the precipitous near-collapse of the world's financial markets, central banking systems and the global economy. Many saw it coming, but few failed to act. As one of my college professors once said (to a crowded lecture hall filled with somnolent students), "There's nothing wrong with selling at a profit while you know that you have one. But when people get too greedy, even if a collapse in the markets seems imminent, they continue to hold on and to continue doing what they've been doing; usually until it is too late. That's how fortunes are lost."

Speaking candidly, Global Futurists (such as many of my colleagues and myself) actually must "factor in" this typical failure to take timely action in rendering forecasts.

A number of these MegaTrends (each of which carries with it a chance of catastrophic loss and a chance of tremendous gain utilizing the leverage that comes with informational arbitrage) and their associated impacts are briefly described below. I will speak about more of them in my next installment of this article. The timeframe which I am speaking about is the next 5 to 15 years.

1) The United Nations will become increasingly irrelevant. The reasons for this, as well as the implications associated with it are discussed in my most recent article published in The Internationalist Page Blog, at:
http://theinternationalistpage.blogspot.com/2011/09/un-becoming-obsolete-irrelevant.html;

2) The average Human attention span will decrease very significantly, interfering with the ability of students to learn conceptually and contextually. Many of our greatest prospective minds will be narrowly focused on the concerns of the moment, and their areas of expertise will be limited to the utilization or creation of technology. Communications, the art of conversation, and the quality of the written and spoken word will decrease, despite an increase in the frequency of brief messaging back and forth. Non-verbal communication mechanisms and such phenomenal gifts as intuition and native ideation will atrophy as we abbreviate or eliminate virtually every aspect of Human interaction outside of the scope of the briefest frenzied signaling. De-personalized and de-socialized, our species will become an extension of the things which it has created to serve it. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Issac Asimov and a host of other futurists from various disciplines were truly prescient, as I believe we shall see during these next five or ten years;

3) Human immunological responses, resiliency and recovery abilities will wane, ushering in a decline in the general level of public health. Despite some wonderful emerging health care technologies, procedures and pharmacological treatments, we will, as a collective, be more vulnerable to diseases and to accelerated deterioration of health. Epidemiologists and experts at health care and national security command and control protocols had best make preparations for a resurgence of some 'eliminated' diseases, as well as a plethora of treatment-resistant infections and some record-breaking pandemics;

4) Logistics, fulfillment and transport issues will become increasingly inefficient and technologically unsuitable, e.g., outmoded, to keep pace with the increasing demands for shipments of goods intranationally and worldwide (and to slow the potential for unfettered economic growth) which are ordered via internet for delivery to the purchasers' homes or offices. With ordinary transportation becoming increasingly impractical, shopping trips will be taking place in cyberspace -- but the deliveries will have to take place in the real world, in real time and in accordance with the basic laws of physics. There's a serious divergence and a serious bottleneck. The costs associated with order processing, handling and shipping will skyrocket in response to the pressure imposed by increased demand, combined with with increasing government taxes and tariffs on transactions (analogous to the Value-Added Tax) and on the transportation industry. Ultimately, the purchaser will be made to pay;

5) An increasing percentage of the world's population will become poor, and the differences in living standards and amenities between the small percentage of wealthy persons to working-class (wage-earning) persons will increase to levels which have historically (albeit isolated to states and individual countries) fomented violent social upheavals and revolutions. With each economic contraction, this stratification increases. And with the adjusted increase in wages (actually a decrease in terms of purchasing power) and the increasing costs of necessities, this effect will be exacerbated and accelerated.

Remember that the future is subject to change if preventive or remedial action is taken in the present... but this would require a major change in historically-proven and deeply entrenched patterns of Human and societal behavior.

Douglas E Castle

http://Braintenance.blogspot.com

http://Links4Life.com

http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning

http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com
http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com

Increasing leverage (risk) profiles of 5 major U.S. investment banking firms from 2003 to 2007. Everyone was well aware. But greed overtook a balanced perspective of risk versus return. No one believed that the easily-predictable outcome would actually become a crushing reality.

A recursive echo:

Ironically, these trends or tendencies are almost invariably observed and noted by many futurists (including engineers, scientists, geologists, biologists, sociologists and other technical specialists who are involved in prediction and planning), well in advance of serious and irreversible harm. Equally ironic, is the propensity of business and political leaders to defer addressing these issues, postponing taking any action until tragedy is imminent. After disaster has rendered its casualties, there are accusations, recriminations and a host of plans made to prevent the recurrence of such events in the future. These plans are seldom put into place, allowing history to repeat itself at increasing amplitude.

TrendWatch: Biometrics, Cybercrime, Identity Fraud.

2011-09-09T19:10:00.000-04:00

Look for an increase in the number of firms (and their respective visibility and valuations) developing and producing biometric identification systems (facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, facial recognition voice recognition and retinal scanning) for the prevention of cybercrimes and unauthorized administrative access to information and IT systems.

Watch for an increasing trend in the portion of venture capital financing being allocated to these types of companies by private venture capital firms and governmental intelligence agencies.

Cybercrime, including sensitive data theft, IT systems security breaches, firewall penetration, backdoor computer comandeering (for espionage -- secret monitoring -- and for robotic enslavement of computers and entire networks), and identity theft all continue to rise in terms of incident frequency and severity of damage per incident on average. This is attributable to:

1) an increase in personal and business computer reliance and e-commerce, with the use of passwords, recorded credit and personal information on visited sites and;

2) a corresponding rise in the level of technological savvy (on the part of hackers, crackers, skimmers, phishers and other cyber-trained individuals and organizations internationally);

3) an increase in the access to sensitive data on a large scale by corruptible financial executives and their administrative staffs (in the private sector) and by certain computer technicians, programmers, developers and other experts (in the public sector);

4) an improved and broadened aftermarket for the ready purchase and sale of sensitive data and stores of personal financial information;

5) a perceived increase in the 'quick turn' profitability of these "black hat" activities in a difficult economy; and

6) a perceived decrease in the likelihood of being found, prosecuted and punished for the commission of these activities, though improved 'cloaking' techniques, IP routing techniques, and multi-jurisdictional organizational configurations, making enforcement more challenging due to various treaties, differences in the laws, and a lack of coordination and cooperation in any truly collaborative effort on the part of all nations.

Small businesses, healthcare providers, and governmental data respositories are the primary targets of these increasingly aggressive attacks. The ultimate victims tend to be the individuals whose identities and sensitive data are stolen and used for the commission of secondary crimes. The beneficiaries of these criminal activities are the thieves and invaders, as well as the secondary users of the stolen data.

Timeframe: Expect a dramatic increase in media coverage, advertising and investment in applied biometrics companies, many of which are currently private and closely-held, but which may be acquirable by larger, cash-rich firms, or which may be very attractive, timely candidates for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), during the next 24 months. Regardless of the vagaries of the capital markets, these companies may be very good strategic portfolio choices.

Action: Start identifying and tracking the emergence (progress) of these applied biometrics firms immediately. Expect a great deal of activity, and, hopefully, opportunity.

Douglas E Castle

http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com

http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com

http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning.blogspot.com

http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com

http://Links4Life.com

Trend-Spotting Key: Amount Of News Coverage By Category.

2011-08-31T19:18:00.003-04:00

The percentage of news and social media communications (these latter communications are actually a type of derivative news, or of news commentary) coverage dedicated to certain categories changes from day to day and year to year, depending upon several important variables. A sampling of these influential variables, in no particular order of significance, would include:

Cultural, Social, Business, Political, Economic, Technological, Medical/ Healthcare, Entertainment and other topics of interest or concern to readers, presumably because they exert an effect (real or perceived, current or anticipated) upon the readership, and the readers' appetites for information about things thought to be relevant to them will help "sell more papers." (an anachronistic but viable cliche);

Demographic changes in cultural, intellectual, academic, economic (in terms of disposable personal income and wealth) and other composition factors;

The exertion of influence, contribution of "editorial" content and advertising and amount of promotion expenditures reflecting the respective agendas and marketing efforts of business, political and social special interest groups utilizing the news media as a bullhorn for messaging;

The exertion of topical influence and directional (i.e., opinion) bias by the companies which own or control the news media;

The increase in the proliferation of international commerce, global markets, and the rise in the frequency (coupled with the precipitous decline in the costs) of worldwide social communications/conversational capabilities between individuals and organizations...

The first two and last one of the items bulleted above may be deemed, for analytic purposes, as demand-driven, while the third and fourth items may be considered supply-driven. There are, of course, areas of overlap and of autocorrelation (i.e., cause-and-effect interdependencies) between the two types of drivers.

Note: In using the term drivers, this satisfies a need for some generalization and simplification in the interest of discerning trends and making projections using this information. The distinctions used in this article are my own, but they are not arbitrary.

The other major technological/cultural variable (actually a catalyst) that is apparently too obvious to mention (but I will mention it anyway) is the dramatic increase in citizen journalism in all of its forms. Cyberspace is filled with text messages, emails, social media status updates, publicly-accessible blogs, virtual discussion forums and, of course, VoIP webcam and telephone calls. Skype, Vonage and other providers are making communication and commerce much less expensive, and much more probable between any given parties.

This phenomenon is exerting a powerful and growing influence on each and all of the five bulleted variables above.

Whether reactive or proactive, these myriad bits of information and opinion from diverse, unfettered, outspoken "citizen" sources are accelerating the "climatic" change in the composition and focus of all news media. News travels faster and further than ever before, and media reaction, in the sense of stimulus-response timing, is ever-accelerating. News moves very, very rapidly, and is more widespread and accessible than ever before.

A fine source of media coverage levels or percentages of news communications dedicated to certain topical categories is provided by The Pew Research Center's Project For Excellence In Media ("Year In The News/ State Of The Media") which can be found at http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/year-in-the-news/.

For example, if I compare three news subjects, from two different quarters of 2010 (the fourth and the second), you can see the difference in frequency percentages in three categories. These three categories were deliberately chosen just for the purpose of exaggerating this point.

These short-term variations regarding the coverage of fairly specific (or "hot") topics tend be be very substantial, but not terribly significant from a macroscopic perspective; if we really want to spot serious, meaningful trends, we need to take a look at the coverage of a larger number of generalized and more-broadly categorized topics (nothing as sensational, for example, as BP's ecological catastrophe, which represents more of an aberration than an exemplary trend variable) over longer periods of time.

This adjustment in our trend-spotting approach, i.e., 1) a larger number or matrix of categories; 2) more broadly-defined categories (to avoid the statistical and perceptual distortion associated with coverage of sensationalized items); and, 3) longer expanses of time for making our observations will tend to give us less "news spike hype" and more solid trending and tendencies.

To be continued...

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]

The Global Futurist Blog

The Internationalist Page Blog

TNNWC Management Consulting Services Website

The Significance of WikiLeaks' Recent Release of Diplomatic Cables (dissenter.firedoglake.com)
National news media? Yeah, right. (onemanandhisblog.com)
Prediction: A Paradigm Shift in Social Media Sharing (bjconquest.com)
Everyone is laughing at the Hurricane Irene Hype (seanmalstrom.wordpress.com)
R.I.P. Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times (newspaperdeathwatch.com)
Lessons in legal social media from crazy Hurricane Irene reporting (kevin.lexblog.com)
TIME Magazine Pens Five Page Spread To Convince America Ron Paul Can't Win (infowebstorm.com)
Are you being served? The decline of politics and journalism (desiremeetstruth.wordpress.com)
5 Tips for Getting Media Coverage Using Social Media (hubspot.com)
Twitter Mania - Case Study: Trend Hunter PRO 2007 Prediction (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
Scott Meis: 15 Marketing & Social Media Trends To Watch In 2011 (slideshare.net)
Why Political Coverage is Broken | Jay Rosen (pdalbury.wordpress.com)
Tweeting the Tremor: How a 5.8 Magnitude Quake Felt in 140 Characters (360i.com)
Digg Launches 'Newswire,' a Social News Curation Tool (mashable.com)
11 websites citizen journalists should know about (thenextweb.com)
An Observation on the Coverage of the S&P Downgrade (outsidethebeltway.com)
The Top 10 Internet & Search Marketing Trends for 2011 (oraclemarketing.wordpress.com)
Local TV Newscasts Expanding (nytimes.com)
New video: futurist conversations: Ross Dawson and Gerd Leonhard on the future of Twitter (mediafuturist.com)
Where to go for trusted Web coverage of the Libyan uprising (thenextweb.com)
How "Hyperlocal" News Presence May Boost Your Local Business (pamil-visions.net)
How Regator Uses Social Media To Beat CNN at Breaking News (mashable.com)
5 News Personalization Tools Bring You Only The Stories You Want (mashable.com)
top 10 bloggers of the world and their earnings..wow! (austinatibile.wordpress.com)
How we could cover storms (buzzmachine.com)
The State of the Media: Not Good (time.com)
How Non-Profit Organizations Are Bolstering Citizen Media Around the World (mashable.com)
News Values 4 Citizen Journalism (teesdiary.wordpress.com)
The Sad Decline Of Poynter Media News (lukeford.net)
The Non-Profit Newsroom is taking over (iflizwerequeen.com)
65% of adults use social media (smartbrief.com)
5 Ways Facebook Keeps Adversity And Melodrama Alive (allfacebook.com)
XYDO Brief: The News You Want (technorati.com)
Social media: The next frontier for journalism (technorati.com)
General Motors to embark on global media review (smartbrief.com)
Three Permanent Uber-Variables: Capitalism, Government And Sustainability (theglobalfuturist.blogspot.com)
5-Minute Guide to Getting a Job in Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
KnowAbout.it Filters News and Social Media Streams (nyconvergence.com)
Mediatracking.com Adds Social Media Monitoring to its Suite of Services (prweb.com)
Social Media, faster than the speed of light! (scharipaul.com)
Is journalism as we know it becoming obsolete? (gigaom.com)
What Social Media Should Be...Original | Part I (pallino1021.wordpress.com)
Grow A Global Business - Rapidly, Responsibly, Sustainably and Inexpensively - ICS (gicbc.blogspot.com)
Document: FBI Surveillance Geeks Fear, Love New Gadgets (wired.com)
Nokia-Siemens Spy Tools Aid Police Torture in Bahrain (wired.com)
Apple Shake-Up Reinforces Its Media Partner Power (wired.com)
Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine (wired.com)
Harvard is most discussed university on Web (losangeles.ibtimes.com)

10 Tech-Trends: Predictive Or Causative?

2011-08-16T12:35:00.004-04:00

A widely-read, authoritative source of information will not only provide some insight into the future, but may well strongly influence it. Forbes magazine is a wonderful example. Are these great oracles prognosticators or influencers? In anticipating or envisioning a future which is described and promoted by a powerful source, does society and its institutions unconsciously move toward making these hypothesized futurescapes and innovations come into being, as if being "directed?"

This is both a philosophical and pragmatic consideration for all global futurists, trend-watchers and planning professionals. This recursive feedback effect is a prediction algorithm nightmare! Both Heisenberg and Nostradamus must be spinning in their graves.

I am an occasional reader of Forbes, and value not so much what wisdom their excellent writers may impart in terms of futurism and prediction, but the influence which they wield in terms of the masses, the resultant "re-posting media ripple effect," and the indisputable power of the self-fulfilling prophesy which Forbes, as a well-regarded "authoritative source" imputes into the fabric from which the future is woven...

Enjoy what follows:

List outlines 10 technological advances to watch out for
Hybrid MRI/PET imaging and stem cell heart generation are among the 10 big science and technology advances that are worth paying attention to, according to this blog. The blog list also included nano batteries and paperless paper. Forbes/Neuropsyched blog (7/29)

Notwithstanding the prediction paradox discussed at the opening of my article, I found the advances cited in the above Forbes outline very much in accord with my own predictive inclinations. And I state this regardless of whether this information is predictive or causative.

Douglas E Castle

Forbes - journalists and readers: the future of digital journalism is transaction-based (nextlevelofnews.com)
Warren Buffett's Very Strange Tax Argument - Forbes (genomega1.wordpress.com)
Forbes Family Pocketed $107 Million. Did They Screw Over Their Magazine? (mogulite.com)
Forbes: Framingham 3rd 'geekiest' US city (boston.com)
Past 'techno disasters' Matter, think tank warns nanotech supporters (foodproductiondaily.com)
The Pygmalion Effect in Everyday Life or Got to Get You out of My Life (voicesofexperience.wordpress.com)
Psychologists interrupt the miserable cycle of social insecurity (esciencenews.com)
Prophetic 101 (apoc1211.wordpress.com)
Harvard Business School Nudges Out Stanford As The Best Bang For Your Buck (businessinsider.com)
Intel uses sci-fi to understand possible tech uses (sfgate.com)
Best indicator of fire threat? Lightning (bendbulletin.com)
Sign Up for a Prediction Tournament (freakonomics.com)
Latest trends in Data Mining (binaryimmersion.wordpress.com)
National Crowdsourcing Project Designed to Better Predict World Events (prnewswire.com)
National crowdsourcing project to better predict world events (physorg.com)
World Futurist update August 2011 (empressoftheglobaluniverse.wordpress.com)
Your view of the future is shaped by the past (psychologytoday.com)
Big, Bold Predictions (behaviorgap.com)
Spy Agency's Next Top Analyst: You (wired.com)
Prediction: Science, Logic, Imagination, Intuition and C-Factors (theglobalfuturist.blogspot.com)
Lindau Nobel Meeting--The future of biomedicine (scientificamerican.com)

Future Weapons, Technology And Tactics

2011-08-12T07:13:00.000-04:00

This post is not intended to be completely humorous. It is accidentally humorous in that it speaks of typical human behavior, the unfathomable (and expensive) cost of design errors, our obsession with being the most powerful country in the world (because no country trusts any other country, right?). I've had some fun at the expense of DARPA - it would appear that they have launched another stunning white elephant. Admittedly, no new innovation is without its bugs and some need for testing and refinement.

It makes me wonder -- if all of the world's nations could invest a portion or their respective defense and weapons development budgets in a mechanism to engender international trust through some system of accountability and consequences, then perhaps we could save enough of a fortune to invest in education, entrepreneurship and building a sustainable, peaceful and prosperous civilization. We are more obsessed with the notion of developing lethal pre-emptive strike capabilities (as quickly as possible) than we are about improving the quality of life.

The saddening irony here is that without working toward a decent quality of life (a flourishing economy, ripe with innovation productivity, growth, education, an improved standard of living, better healthcare, a less toxic environment, more time for leisure and social interaction with other members of our species -- as well as with the occasional dolphin --), what are we defending?

You may read more about this at http://douglascastle1.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/americas-secret-weapon/

Douglas E Castle
Chairman
TNNWC Group, LLC

http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com and http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/douglascastle
http://www.TNNWC.com

Prediction: Science, Logic, Imagination, Intuition and C-Factors

2011-08-11T09:30:00.001-04:00

In order to predict the future and to effectively create and prepare for a futurescape, a fusion and balancing of several disciplines is necessary:

1) science and math (extrapolation of trends across a variety of sectors, and the unbiased use of all predictive systems -- some of which may seem illogical but which are none the less proven, effective predictors);

2) logical, critical thought (determining which trends to include and which are less relevant, as well as which elements are exogenous -- such as unexplainable but yet recurring "natural" waves and cycles -- and which are endogenous -- those which are cause and effect-based, and which may or may not be controllable based upon Human intervention);

3) imagination and vision (the ability to hypothesize, construct and visualize alternative futures);

4) intuition (an open-minded sensitivity or "connection" to what mystics, philosophers, theosophists and an increasing number of reluctant scientists are calling anything from the "collective consciousness" and the "Akashic records" to the "universal mind" or simply "prescience"); and

5) something I'll call the "C-Factors," categorically -- these are wild cards, natural or preternatural events and other factors which may impact us in certain seemingly unpredictable ways. Esoteric stuff, I'll admit.

Some have likened the effects of these C-Factors to those phenomena which exist by virtue of Complexity Theory (or Chaos Theory, for those from the original school of thought), where a tiny event can initiate a spiral or sequence of increasingly larger, seemingly unrelated events.

The best way to illustrate something that resembles (albeit crudely and metaphorically) this amazing type of perceptual effect would be certain giant symbols [usually carved into the Earth over many miles, or built to significant pyramid-like size and positioning] which can not be "understood" from walking around them on the ground, but which can be seen as symbols or other indicators only from a pilot's-eye view, i.e., from many miles from the Earth's surface.

This brings to mind many unexplained geological phenomena (Giza, Easter Island, "airstrips" in Peru, and countless others) which we call 'wonders' but which other sentient beings, from a much grander perspective might call 'communications' or 'language.' These C-Factors must be given attention, and from any number of different perspectives, in order to determine what they might mean, and what they might cause.

We may, as mere Human Global Futurists, be likened to mites looking at one brick in a much larger structure. We may be foolish and conceited enough to believe that our perspective is the intended or grandest perspective.

We must be aware of our inherent limitations and biases when getting down to the business of prediction and preparation.

Returning briefly to the notion of the "C-Factor", or what we might collectively refer to as the "C-Factor Phenomenon."
Here's a wild card worth taking a look at -- solar storm activity, and its short-term possible effects as anticipated by some observers of such phenomena [it is interesting to note that no speculation is offered with respect to the longer-term effects of this type of solar activity]:

Latest Crisis: Solar Storms Are Set to Hit the Earth

By

Ujala Sehgal | The Atlantic Wire – Sat, Aug 6, 2011

It certainly seems like the world has been under attack lately. Now that "Debtaggedon" is over, Reuters is reporting that there have been three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days, and that "sun storms" are set to hit the Earth. The U.S. government, which is pretty pressed for time as it is right now, is warning "users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days." Or, as National Geographic informs us: "Storms are brewing about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away, and if one of them reaches Earth, it could knock out communications, scramble GPS, and leave thousands without power for weeks to months." [click here for more] ####

Hmmm...

Douglas E Castle

The Global Futurist [http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com]
Links 4 Life Alerts! [http://Links4LifeAlerts.com]
InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence [http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com]
Business And Project Planning [http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning.blogspot.com]

Sponsored by: TNNWC Management Consulting Services

Just coincidence? Burst of solar activity (Kp index) and 18 Indonesian volcanoes move to alert status (ktwop.wordpress.com)
Positive uncertainty (nowwearesixty.wordpress.com)
Why Isn't America Innovating Like It Used To? (technologyreview.com)
It's getting tougher to predict the weather (news.nationalpost.com)
Russian scientists to explore link between Sun and natural disasters (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)
When Our Intuition Leads Us to Bad Decisions (psychcentral.com)
Confident Decision Making: Trust Your Intuition (mediumsworld.wordpress.com)
Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth (imullins89.wordpress.com)
Solar Flares May Impact GPS and Communications This Weekend (benzinga.com)

Planetary Geographical Arbitrage: The Next "Big Thing" -Trends - Lingovations

2011-08-08T11:00:00.002-04:00

International Markets are in an unprecedented state of confusion - with casualties and beneficiaries - with fiscal tragedies and investment opportunities. And it is happening rapidly, at a dizzying pace.

Foreign exchange (FOREX) rates are swinging; relative currency valuations are fluctuating; securities exchanges are pin-drop sensitive and shatteringly volatile day-to-day; commodities prices are flying madly about; international asset flight is increasing in volume; wealth is switching form (i.e., running from bonds and currencies and pouring into gold and traditional "hard assets"); sovereign debt ratings are the subject of constant scrutiny by debt-rating agencies (such as Moody's and Standard and Poor's), and by institutional and public investors; and, the disparity between the wealth, or purchasing power, of nations is varying in an undeclared aftermarket all its own --- the result of a confluence of all of these other variables.

The next "Big Thing" might be the game of Planetary Geographical Arbitrage. This is not so much a Lingovation, as it is a logical combination of terms but in an unusual new context.

Planetary Geographical Arbitrage, as I see it from the perspective of The Global Futurist and The Internationalist Page might be simplistically defined as follows:

"Planetary Geographical Arbitrage is an investment strategy whereby the currency or wealth of one country is used, by its holders, to make strategic (i.e., influential or controlling) investments in companies, securities or assets of another country, or of financial instruments which are denominated in, or tied to, the currency of another country."

For example, if Country A has a strong currency and a strong economy, its wealth holders have a window of opportunity (for some period of time, which is not certain) to purchase undervalued (ostensibly) assets which are available in a "fire sale" in a country (Country B) which has a devastated economy and a relatively weak national currency.

The possibilities and implications are tremendous in terms of the global balance of power, and the ultimate re-distribution of true wealth worldwide.

Instead of merely diversifying portfolio assets in the traditional sense, this up-and-coming generation of Planetary Geographical Arbitrageurs will actually be looking at buying, in effect, pieces of other nations if the discount is deemed steep enough. The political implications are just as mind-boggling as the macroeconomic potentials.

This topic is going to be growing bigger and bigger, as the realization of this undeclared market comes into being. Those with the vision to participate in this game will become enormously rich and influential - not only will principals (the investors) be involved, but there is a fortune waiting to made for those individuals and firms able to facilitate these mega-transactions, through brokerage, advisory, or management services.

There will certainly be a great deal to be discussed here. Please stay tuned.

Faithfully,

Douglas E Castle

Other Blogs Of Interest By The Same Author:
The Global Futurist
The Internationalist Page

Infosphere Business Alerts And Intelligence

TNNWC International Management Consulting Services (ICS)
Planetary Geographical Arbitrage

Socio-Ecomic Waves, 40-Year Business Cycles And The Pendulum Effect.

2011-08-04T13:02:00.001-04:00

This fascinating piece follows from the MondayMorningMemo, produced and published by the iconic Roy C. Williams, the self-proclaimed (and occasionally very insightful) "Wizard Of Ads." His words ring ominously true upon the ears of every true futurist, trend-watcher and socio-economic forecaster.

History, like a bad lunch, has a tendency to repeat itself. And history tends to swing from extreme to extreme (the pendulum effect) in various astonishingly predictable waves and cycles of time. These reactionary paradigm shifts are not predicated upon the extrapolation of "cause and effect" logic, but on periodicity -- certain lengths of time. Remember the movie "Groundhog Day"?

Ironically, some of these predictable swings can be foreseen by checking your calendar without even taking a look at trending news. Like the life cycle of a Human Being, it would seem that the World has a rhythm of its own. And it would seem that this rhythm is exogenously determined by a force beyond our individual or collective consciousness or abilities to control. I will leave this contemplation to the reader, as it involves issues well beyond my depth, expertise or certainty.

Douglas E Castle

http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com
http://www.TNNWC.com

You'll find Roy's treatment of this subject as fascinating as you will find it frightening......

"Let me start at the beginning:

We see the world through the lens of an entirely different set of values every 40 years. We become a different people.

We are pulled 20 years up from the tipping point to the zenith of a “We” (1923 to 1943.)
We swing 20 years down to the next tipping point (1963.) Tipping points are interesting times.

We are pulled 20 years up to the zenith of a “Me” (1963 to 1983.)

We swing 20 years down to the next tipping point (2003.)

Eighty years is a complete cycle but there are only 40 years between the extremes. (The 1943 zenith of “We” to 1983 zenith of “Me.”)

We’re nearly halfway up to the next zenith of “We" (2023.) 2011 is 1931 all over again. But instead of being gaga over a thing called “radio” we’re gaga over this thing called “online.”

A new set of values every 40 years...

On one side are the values of “We,” the team, the tribe, the group working together, staying connected.

On the other side are the values of “Me,” the individual, unique and special and possessing unlimited potential.

“Me”

1. …demands freedom of expression.
2. …applauds personal liberty.
3. …believes one man is wiser than a million men, “A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee.”
4. …wants to achieve a better life.
5. …is about big dreams.
6. …desires to be Number One. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
7. …admires individual confidence and is attracted to decisive persons.
8. …leadership is, “Look at me. Admire me. Emulate me if you can.”
9. …strengthens a society’s sense of identity as it elevates attractive heroes.

“We”

1. …demands conformity for the common good.
2. …applauds personal responsibility.
3. …believes a million men are wiser than one man, “Two heads are better than one.”
4. …wants to create a better world.
5. …is about small actions.
6. …desires to be a productive member of the team. “I came, I saw, I concurred.”
7. …admires individual humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons.
8. …leadership is, “This is the problem as I see it. Please consider the things I am telling you and perhaps we can solve this problem together.”
9. …strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems.

“Me” and “We” are equal-but-opposite attractions that pull our perspective one way, then the other. Western society swings like a pendulum from one set of values to the other every 40 years with the regularity of an old and reliable grandfather clock.

“Me” and “We” values are equally good, but we always take a good thing too far.

If history is to be our guide, the next 20 years will be when we move from our agreement of mutual brokenness, “I’m Not Okay – You’re Not Okay,” to embrace a self-righteous indignation, “I’m Okay – You’re Not Okay.” Sanctimonious vigilante-ism will become popular as indignant leaders demonize their enemies and rally their followers by appealing to their inborn sense of rightness and social obligation, “Let’s clean this place up and to hell with compromise. They are entirely wrong and we are entirely right. They are stupid. We are wise. They are evil. We are good.”

The last time we went through this, America formed a committee in Congress called the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938) which later watched with glee while Senator Joseph McCarthy destroyed countless careers by recklessly branding his enemies as “Communists” and creating the infamous blacklists.

This sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? I know it does. I'm writing because I want you to be able to look back and recall how absurd this all sounded when I first told you what was on the horizon if history can be trusted.

A self-righteous nut with a gun killed dozens of people in Norway and believed he was doing the right thing.

That’s the problem with self-righteous nuts; they always believe they’re doing the right thing.

Roy H. Williams
####

Observation: We cannot predict or prepare for the future without taking into account these "temporal Pendulum swings" and cycles. An accurate forecasting model or algorithm requires that these seemingly exogenously-determined or caused cycles be given inclusion and proper weighting. -- DC

The pendulum swings the other way.... (tagg-lines.com)
The pendulum of behavior (rafaelcorrales.com)
Mesmerizing Pendulum Waves (neatorama.com)
Natural Environmental Factors That Affect Business (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
You Might be a Marxist (nortonbooks.typepad.com)
Fixing the economy: we need long-term solutions (openitstrategies.com)
The Evolution Of The Tech Bubble (businessinsider.com)
Robert Teitelman: Frydman and Goldberg's Beyond Mechanical Markets (huffingtonpost.com)
An Urgent Memo to the World (thenaturaleye.wordpress.com)
Showtime: Pendulum Waves (wired.com)
Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction, By Bonnie Greer (independent.co.uk)
Terms & Parameters Involved With Solar Energy (thesolarity.wordpress.com)
Built To Last: Sustainability (douglascastle1.wordpress.com)

Six Trending Indicators at 7/20/2011 - Evaluate, Extrapolate, Forecast and Prepare.

2011-07-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

These trends and general forecasts have been collected from a variety of sources, but will impact every single aspect of how we Humans, as a species, will live - the economy, the neighborhood, the regulatory proclivities of government, healthcare, aging, housing, quality of life, prevalence of and dependence upon growing technological enhancements, sustainability, the environment, and so many other things. The excerpts presented here are just a small cross-section of what I feel may be worthy of your attention.

Remember: knowledge is power, but only if it is applied.

Remember: vision is the extrapolation of trends enhanced by intuition and imagination - to deny your vision is not only to disrespect yourself, but it is to abdicate your responsibility to yourself and Humankind to mold the future, or to proactively prepare for the future. Letting the future rule you without your ever having cast a single vote is completely leaving your destiny to chance.

6 Trending Indicators at 7/20/2011 - Evaluate, Extrapolate, Forecast and Prepare.

Some article excerpts follow, with a miniscule amount of my input. Position yourself to go through the processes of extrapolation, imagination and be open to intuition. Engage in the exercise of Futurism. You're invited. It is truly an amalgam of art, science and other "mystical processes."

Census Update: What the World Will Look like in 2050

Time.com – Thu, Jun 30, 2011

Here is the world in 2050, as imagined by the U.S. Census Bureau: India will be the most populous nation, surpassing China sometime around 2025. The U.S. will remain exactly where it is now: in third place, with a population of 423 million (up from 308 million in 2010). And declining birth rates in two of the world's most economically and politically influential countries, Japan and Russia, will cause them to fall from their current positions as the 9th and 10th most populous nations, respectively, to 16th and 17th.

The findings are the result of population estimates and projections of 228 countries compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB). MORE

Global leaders call for a major shift to decriminalize drugs

by Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – Wed, Jun 1, 2011

A slew of big-name former politicians are endorsing a report that says the war on drugs is not working and that drug enforcement policy needs to fundamentally change. The Global Commission on Drug Policy will urge a "paradigm shift" that emphasizes public health over criminalization tomorrow at a meeting in New York City, The Guardian reports.

Those backing the report include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Fed Chair Paul Volcker. Former elected leaders of Greece, Brazil and Colombia have also signed on. MORE

How to cure aging: One drug can extend life span

By Boonsri Dickinson | July 7, 2011, 9:44 AM PDT - SmartPlanet

Scientists believe they’ve found a drug that can slow down premature aging in mice and could one day be used to extend human life. This is the story of a drug called rapamycin, nicknamed the forever young drug. The key chemical in this drug was discovered in the soil on the famed, remote Easter Island, reports Technology Review.

Previously, the drug’s wonderful fountain of youth effects were seen in only in invertebrates such as fruit flies, yeast and nematode worms, where it helped cells manufacture new proteins and kept bad cells at bay. But now, the scientists are seeing that it has similar effects on the aging process in mammals. MORE

Consumers embrace mobile commerce globally: 91% in UK and 79% in Brazil have used mobile to engage in commerce

Submitted by Paul Skeldon on July 12, 2011 – Internet Retailing

Consumer engagement with mobile commerce has exploded, with as many as 91% of UK consumers having used their mobile device for commerce, to either research or purchase a product. The equivalent figure for Brazil is 79%, while the level did not dip below 72% in any of the markets surveyed.

According to figures in the Global Consumer Survey from MEF, the global community for mobile content and commerce, 82% of UK respondents access the mobile web on a daily basis, slightly less than the 84% that do so in Brazil. The high level of mobile web and commerce activity dovetail with a reduction in fixed-line internet usage: 41% of Brazilians and more than one-third (34%) of UK respondents now access the internet on their PCs less often than 18 months ago. MORE

The Mobile Way to Biz - by Romy Ribitzky Jul 12 2011 - Portfolio.Com

Carrying a smartphone and a tablet is no longer a business luxury, according to a majority of small businesses. It's a must-have for propelling companies forward, pushing revenues, and landing new clients, finds a survey from The Business Journals.

It's hard to imagine a Millennial entrepreneur or startup leader without a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device lurking near.

Just 28 years after the first IBM personal computer debuted, the business world—and especially the small- and emerging-business sectors—is embracing mobility, with 59 percent saying wireless services are essential to their business, according to a survey conducted by The Business Journals of 2,223 business owners, CEOs, and presidents of companies with fewer than 500 employees. Read MORE: http://www.portfolio.com/business-news/2011/07/12/mobile-professional-trends-for-2011#ixzz1SbJ4uEHz

FDA plans to regulate some mobile phone apps

AP – 9 hrs ago July 19th

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is taking the first steps toward regulating the rapidly expanding field of medical applications, or apps, for smart phones and other handheld devices.

With the rise of the iPhone, Android and other mobile devices has come a flood of applications designed to help people stay healthy. Industry analysts estimate there are already more than 17,000 medical applications available, ranging from calorie counters to programs that let doctors view medical scans on their phones.

The FDA says it will begin regulating a handful of these programs that pose the greatest risk if they don't work appropriately.

In a draft proposal, the agency says it will regulate applications that combine with medical devices already regulated by the agency, such as heart monitors that transmit to a smartphone. [end of article extracts]

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One hint to be offered is that at least three of the article extracts are somewhat auto-correlative; that is to say that they relate to a similar topic or topics, so when you are reviewing these bits of data, your mind will have a propensity to focus on these as being more highly significant and you may assign them higher "weights." This is a human behavioral propensity that it is important to be aware of -- sometimes it is the the data provider's way of insinuating his or he own opinion into your evaluation, and sometimes it just happens to do with the frequency of a topic in the media. Anyway, give this bias, deliberate or not, due consideration.

My observation is simply this. Doors are opening -- some of them spell opportunity, and a few of them (the ones which ominously creak as they open) would be far better slammed tightly shut and permanently sealed.

You can tell me which is which. Or perhaps there might be an opportunity (for those with comple 360-degree vision) where others see intrusion, exclusion, invasiveness, the "Nanny State," or dangerous dependencies.

Faithfully,

Douglas E Castle
http://theglobalfuturist.blogspot.com/
http://www.tnnwc.com/

Related articles - Choke Back That Nausea! Have A Look. These are additional articles regarding the above content in The Global Futurist.

Elimination of "Linguistically Isolated" as Classification by the U.S. Census Bureau (aaanet.org)
U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for July 16 (prnewswire.com)
Kauffman Foundation-Funded U.S. Census Bureau Data Highlight Importance of Business Startups to Job Creation in the U.S. (kauffman.org)
8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends (hubspot.com)
Environment Canada goes mobile with weather forecasts (theglobeandmail.com)
4 Ways In-App Purchasing Will Change Mobile (mashable.com)
Trends from the Eclipse Community Survey 2011 (ianskerrett.wordpress.com)
Apple's got its eye on mobile games (physorg.com)
Want Success in Silicon Valley? Drop Out of School (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
DRUG USERS: A vast, "untapped pool of potential clients" for the nanny state. So Glenn Greenwald j... (pajamasmedia.com)
Who's afraid of the big, bad nanny state? (thepunch.com.au)
Big tobacco takes on nanny state (news.theage.com.au)
Euro sovereign risk spreads jump wider ahead of ECB (tradingfloor.com)
Interactions of sovereign debt management with monetary conditions and financial stability (bespacific.com)
FELIX SALMON: The horrifying AAA debt-issuance chart. "Firstly, the amount of debt in the world is... (pajamasmedia.com)
The IMF wakes up (ftalphaville.ft.com)
Daily Stock Theme: Which European banks will get hurt this time? (tradingfloor.com)
Europe's sovereign-debt crisis lifts gold futures (marketwatch.com)
Can sovereign defaults tank the global economy? (curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com)
Smoke and Mirrors: The Full Implications of the U.S. National Debt (survivalblog.com)
New Minority: Census Shows Fewer Married Households (abcnews.go.com)
The Mexican-American Boom: Births Overtake Immigration - Pew Research Center (policyabcs.wordpress.com)
Births, not immigration, account for most of Hispanic growth in last decade (news.blogs.cnn.com)

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