It is the end of November 2012. We now know who the President of the United States will be for the next four years. We know the results of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A month from now, we will know that the Mayan Prophecy did not mean that the world would end. Shortly thereafter, we will see how Congress and the President have done a partial or full ‘kick the can down the road’ with the fiscal cliff.
So… now what?
We can be sure that the media, with their ever-shorter news cycles and arrays of talking heads hyperventilating on the immediate crisis just around the corner, the current hot celebrity or murder trial, will endeavor to keep us looking both at them and the short term. We can allow ourselves to become upset over whatever the media thinks we should be upset about today, this week or this month.
But we are bigger than that. We need to be bigger than that. No great life, no great country was ever created by being obsessed with only the short term, with only what others want us to be worried about. It is time, as we individually and collectively move into 2013, to start to think about the future, the bigger picture of humanity, the large contexts that will be shaping our lives in the years and decades ahead.
Of course I would say that; I am a futurist. So, in response to endless requests over the past few years, and motivated to get as much of humanity as possible to think about the FUTURE, I have written a new book: “Entering the Shift Age.” It is about the age we are now fully in: the Shift Age. It provides thought-provoking ideas about why the massive changes we are experiencing are occurring. It looks at the major forces and trends that are and will change humanity in the years and decades ahead. It takes a look at the specific futures of many areas of society such as education, technology, big data, generations and power.
In upcoming columns, I will write about the ideas and concepts that in the book and the 12 mini-Ebooks that will be published in advance of the book for you to select and sample. The book will be published on January 1, which means it will be available for January reading as we face the New Year and the rest of our lives. Though future columns will talk about it, you can click here for more information on “Entering the Shift Age.”