Ford’s recent report on Generation Z fails to mention the most obvious elephant in the room: Teens don’t care about cars anymore. Statoil recently published three scenarios for energy use in 2040. Not even the most low-carbon scenario envisioned the possibility that fossil fuels could constitute less than 75% of total energy consumption in 25 years. It…
If you already know what the internet of things is, keep reading. If you want to learn what the IoT revolution has to do with net neutrality and your children’s quality of life, watch this explanation from Jeremy Rifkin. Then ask yourself if the internet is really just media or public utility of the future. Yesterday President Obama suggested to the…
Although type of content varies between older and younger users in the same cohort, we see that the mobile screen is taking over as the electronic time killer of choice, while the big screen TV will eventually reduce to a – not irrelevant, but increasingly distant – number two. It is also common for children to use…
I keep turning back to a scenario project I did with a group of 1st graders in 2011. This was a regular class at a public school in Austin where the goal was to inspire the children to think creatively about their own future and life in the year 2026. This session yielded some particularly…
I want to see The Great Gatsby. And then I hope Hollywood will churn out ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Death of a Salesman’ soon after. History rhymes, and once again we’re at this junction in time when the younger generations are reexamining the validity of the American Dream. The millennials were taught to believe in…
A baby nursing at mother’s breast will ingest a better concoction of vitamins, sugars, essential minerals and proteins than Purina Petfood could ever dream of providing for the world’s most pedigreed show dogs. Baby will also benefit from enzymes and antibodies that can ward off ailments ranging from nasty infections to cancer. Mixed in with…
I just read an article that called our youngest generation the “re-generation” (sorry, can’t find the url), alluding to their familiarity with the reduce, reuse, recycle slogan and their attentiveness to environmental causes. I haven’t found any hard statistics that actually support the idea that the Homelanders will be more environmentally conscious, but OK, I’ll go with…
A former co-worker sent me this link a few days ago. A few years back when we did futures research and trend watching for a nutritional company, breast vs. bottle was a big issue. The trend is certainly a return to more natural forms of child rearing where breast-feeding (or providing breast milk in BPA…
Hydrogen is a longstanding green combustable fuel candidate, but has yet to overcome roadblocks such as efficiency and especially safety issues. A major problem is storage. Since hydrogen is a small molecule, it tends to diffuse through the liner material of its container. To make stronger, more lightweight materials, researchers have been looking for solutions in nanotechnology….
An article in Treehugger takes issues with a NYT story which claims that green consumption is down due to the recession. The writer argues that the NYT writer takes a very narrow view in what constitute green consumption. She says the mentioned products affected by the economic downturn, e.g. Clorox’s Green Works, have long been accused…
