Archive for the 'Politics' Category
Arundhati Roy: The Woman of True Words
Arundhati Roy came to Seattle last night and spoke to a sold-out crowd at Town Hall. The rest of my family stayed home in an odd resonance: the family teenager was putting the finishing touches on a school project about Gandhi. If they don’t yet, schoolchildren will be studying Arundhati. For those who don’t yet [...]
Broadband: How We Thirst
As many of you know, I have other hats besides writer/speaker/futurist. I work for a city as the Chief Information Officer, or CIO. That means I’m responsible for all of the phones and computers and communications – people and budgets and decisions.
We are one of many cities competing to have Google choose our community to [...]
2010: What we could be doing
This is the third part of my futures post series for January 2010. The first one evaluated my results for 2009. The second talked about what I think will happen in 2010. This is the “what could we do” post. There are a lot of things, but I’m going to pick four.
Reform the way we [...]
An Ordinary Futurist Predicts 2010 Events
After evaluating my predictions from last year (which were in three separate posts to start with), I decided to keep it simple. Remember that futurists have no crystal ball and I can no more tell you what a stock will be on a given day than a séance leader can. We can see trends. We [...]
Testing Last Year’s Predictions
I’m not as much of a predictive futurist as some of my friends and colleagues, and I do like to play in the space once a year – right about now. I’m going to do this in three steps. Evaluate last year’s predictions, make this year’s predictions, talk about what we need to do this [...]
Kudos to the citizens (that’s us!)
I got a new ipod for Christmas with radio, which meant that while I was at the gym yesterday I watched the news.
Obama got it exactly right. He said the government needs to investigate and learn and get better. The government’s part is pretty much what you do anytime you have a failure, whether you’re [...]
We Need Healthcare Reform Now
As a futurist, I’m often asked what I think we should focus on. I typically say health care, education, broadband, and saving the world (ecology/alternate energy and lifestyle).
We have a good chance at one of them right now. We can do health care better for millions of Americans. We can help our businesses, our global [...]
Why I am Green for Iran
I bought green shirts and I am wearing them. I have turned my twitter icon temporarily green. I keep getting up from the middle of other tasks and checking on events in Iran, even though I am usually far more disciplined. But I thought I should write down some reasons since my family asked, and [...]
The Power of the Net
If you’re not on twitter watching the #iranelection or just searching for “iran” which will catch it all, you’ve missed a worldwide conversation. A worldwide emotional reaction. This morning, I feel connected to the people in Iran. I’m glad they have this tool, which was missing from Tiananmen square. It may or may not be [...]
The Futurist Reads Her Sunday Times
From time to time, people ask me what it takes to be a futurist. Really, it’s an interest in thinking about the future and a habit of keeping my eye’s open. I think there is one other bit: the desire to make the world a better place in the future.
I stay aware of what’s happening [...]
