If the 21st Century is going to be the bioscience century, as I believe it will, then every year will feature significant developments. However, I suspect that 2008 will, in particular, see the dawning comprehension that the tiny genetic differences between one person and another are more important than previously suspected, and are part of […] Read more

Last year, I thought that George W. Bush’s weakness would lead to three strong Democratic candidates, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, plus a designated loser for the Republicans, likely McCain, and it seems it may be turning out that way. I, like everyone else, thought that Hillary was the most likely winner because of her money, […] Read more

I’ve written and talked about “wearable computers” for more than a decade now, and they are continuing to emerge, although not quite the way I expected. What is happening is that while the original “grey brick” cellphone has morphed into the miniscule smartphone, it is, in fact, a computer that you carry on your person […] Read more

I spoke at a transportation conference in Vancouver, Canada, not long ago, and one of the things I said was that some people were still skeptical that climate change was happening. Afterwards, the conference organizer came up to me and told me that the only skeptics were in the south, the temperate zones. Everyone in […] Read more

The top story of 2008 is likely to be the American economy, plus the potential for a financial market panic that could be enormously destructive, arising out of the credit market crisis. We could be facing a full-blown panic, a run on commercial banks, and even a global recession of significant magnitude. Since no one […] Read more

November 2007 The following is a summation of a presentation I gave to the Calgary CFA Society in Canada last April. The concept of ‘the future’ is a dangerous fantasy because it implies simplicity, and this is particularly true of the future of energy. Energy is at the very center of our society, and is […] Read more

May 2007 The following article was written at the request of a Canadian education magazine. All of the details apply to the United States, except for the population projections. In 10 years’ time, U.S. schools will have roughly 2 million more students than they do today. Other than that, though, the attitudes and situations will […] Read more

June 2006 What follows is a summary of a presentation I recently made for the ‘2006 Life Sciences Industry Summit,’ co-hosted by the Long Island Life Sciences Initiative, and the Center for Biotechnology. The Life Sciences Century When we look back, later this century, we’ll identify the completion of the Human Genome Project as the […] Read more

April 2006 What follows is adapted from a presentation I gave to a joint conference on the futures of farming and alternative fuels. There is no future in traditional agriculture, and those who persist in hoping that there is will go down to defeat and bankruptcy. But there is a remarkably prosperous future for new […] Read more