Blog
Future Shock Then and Now
What Alvin Toffler’s iconic 1970 book got right, wrong, and missed about the world of 2025 and how his insights might help us better navigate the 21st Century. This blog post was created for a presentation scheduled for mid-November 2025 at ASPEC at Eckerd College. That puts it at the end of this year’s hurricane season. Last year at this time, the college was literally under water. The Tampa Bay had been struck by a double whammy of once-in-a-century hurricanes named Helene and...
Bob’s Forecasts for 2080
My two basic paradigms when considering the world about two generations from now are: First, any technology that produces wealth, wins wars, or confers social status will be adopted almost immediately by government and business elites regardless of current ethics, social norms, or societal disruption. Second, any process or situation that is unsustainable will stop. An old friend and distinguished futurist told me many years ago that gypsy fortune tellers make predictions using a crystal ball...