What's New

For all the change in the world, these trends began to take hold at the beginning of the century:

The Internet became a social medium -- more people are engaged socially online, which implies not only that its a fabric of our lives, but people are learning new norms that translate to other spaces such as the enterprise. The new social fabric is what drives open source, social software, social networking, augmented reality, transparency, trust and emergent democracy.

The cost for group forming is falling dramatically -- whether starting a new company, organizing social groups or poltical activism. Patterns of organization are being redefined and will dramatically reshape the private, non-profit and public sectors.

The greatest risk to security is yourself -- risk stems not from your environment, but how you over or under-react. Terrorism, volatility and uncertainty in our turbulent world is offset by our ability to be aware and constructive, not defensive.

Global transparency -- Many put globalization in lists like these, but without transparency, arbitrage of markets and ethics corrupts all public systems. Technology has made transparency trend towards zero cost. When it comes to leaders this means more than accountability, but demands for accessibility which begets trust.

Commodization of everything -- The Net drives all goods to fungibility, prices towards zero and aggregates liquidity across boundaries. Open markets will continue to reward innovation, managing volatility, aggregation and solutions.

Context outperforms search -- As search costs decline to zero, coordination risks and information overload increase. Organization is the ultimate good people reward. Put people, places and things in context to allow forward motion.

The end of everything -- The end of work, because it invades our life so we make it play. The end of history, because the greatest debates have been won. The end of reality, because we are constructing our own now and what is human will radically change.