‘Nuff said.  (hat tip, Tom McMahon.)

The automobile industry has gained a tight grip on global cultures, with streets and roadways that are designed for cars and little else.

As part of my job, I come in contact with many of the people working on next-generation vehicles, engines, navigation systems, and power sources. The amount of effort going on in this area, driven largely by the desire to wean the U.S. off its reliance on oil, is truly staggering.

But so far, no real disruptive technologies or systems have made any serious inroads.

First, a few data points to consider.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the number of new automobiles produced in the world each year is now more than 60 million. And the cars are staying on the roads longer: In 2006 there were more than 251 million registered highway vehicles (passenger cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, etc.) in the United States with an overall median age of 8.9 years, a significant increase over 1990 when the median age of vehicles was 6.5 years. At the same time, the World Bank projects a growth of the global middle class from 7.9% of world population in 2000 to 16.1% in 2030, with the majority of this growth occurring in Asia.

In a 2007 report on shifting global economies, Ernst & Young concluded that, by 2050, India, Brazil, Russia, China, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey will overtake the economy of the G7 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States) in terms of GDP. Assuming these projections are close, and that the connection between increased prosperity and car ownership remains strong, it is easy to speculate that by 2050 the automobile industry will produce more than 200 million new cars each year globally and that the total number of vehicles in use will climb to over 3 billion. The number of roads and highways needed to accommodate all these cars will need to grow several fold.

What’s wrong with these numbers?

They quickly grow past the realm of reasonable. They point to unsustainable resource consumption and pollution. Hybrid cars improve efficiency and reduce reliance on oil, but serve as only an interim solution. Even plug-in hybrids will rely on batteries produced from expensive, nonrenewable materials. There will likely be a breaking point somewhere along the way where the trend line changes. But what will this breaking point look like, and what are the driving forces?

Technologies That Could Challenge the Automotive Future

• WiMAX. Often described as WiFi on steroids, WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) has the ability to blanket entire countries with a vibrant high speed wireless communications network that will enable moving vehicles to talk to each other. The highly prized freedom associated with the driving experience will be replaced with a variety of new travel experiences enabled by the WiMAX connection. WiMAX will lessen the demand for face-to-face meetings, make people more productive while traveling, and breathe life into a new breed of on-demand transportation services. Expect some form of pervasive Internet, either WiMAX or a competing system, to be in place within five years.

• Automated navigation systems. Once reliable vehicle proximity maps can be generated, much effort will be focused on removing the driver from the equation. These proximity-based signals will give rise to automated navigation systems that will guide people effortlessly along the route they choose. The 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge competition for driverless cars proved this technology is feasible, so we can expect to see automated navigation systems in production within a 10-year time frame.

• Flying delivery drones. Contrary to what many of the flying-car advocates believe, the first mass-production consumer-based flying vehicles will be unmanned delivery drones. Enabled by a vibrant wireless communications network and a newly formulated three-dimensional navigation system, flying drones will serve as the test bed for a later developing flying car industry. A key turning point will be when a major delivery service such as FedEx or UPS begins to implement flying drones into their fleet. Estimated time frame: 10 to 15 years.

Prospects for a Post-Automobile Future.

 In the near term, the automobile industry will recover next year or the year after, along with the global economy. Car companies may rise and fall but few leaders in emerging countries will want to place restrictions or in any way slow the progress they’re making by limiting access to cars. The next wave of challenges to the industry will come from U.S. and European laws and policies enacted to promote alternative forms of energy and reduce reliance on oil.

An interesting question to consider is, which country will be the first to pass a law requiring all-electric vehicles? Additional laws will be designed to limit the number of cars on any given roadway and promote the use of alternative forms of transportation.

Another wave of challenges, in the 10-year time frame, will come from disruptive technologies. Many of these technologies are already in existence but will take time to improve and gain market share. We will see some early production models of flying cars within a few short years, but the impact will be minimal. However, flying drones are already in use in specialty fields (notably the military) and will develop much more quickly than the flying cars.

Changes in the field of transportation lag significantly behind the changes we have seen in communications and Internet technology. Mechanical systems are much harder to design, test, and implement. But the demand is strong, and the coming years of experimentation will be very exciting to watch.

—by Thomas J. Frey, an award-winning former engineer and designer for IBM, and executive director and senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute. This post was adapted from his article “Disrupting the Automobile’s Future,” which appeared in the September-October 2008 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.

Barack Obama enters the presidency with greater expectations, and in a climate of greater anxiety, then any chief executive since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. This is particularly true on the economy, which, in some ways, may be in a bigger mess than in the Great Depression. While policy can certainly improve things, policymakers are operating in an arena of profound discontinuity. The best and brightest in economics helped bring us this mess. Can they lead us out of it? With that, I offer seven wild cards that will confront the Obama economic team — and the rest of us — in 2009.

1. The stimulus. So far, untold trillions (maybe $5 trillion) have been spent or committed to “rescuing” Wall Street. Behind the secretive process, the best we can guess is that the bailout has handsomely compensated the bankers, helped them buy up their competitors, and maybe (but who really knows) temporarily stopped the bleeding. This is exactly the kind of featherbedding, status-quo spending that Obama must not do in the next round of stimulus. The current climate provides the United States a rare chance to change course and build a 21st century economy, multi-modal transportation network,  superior schools and the energy and envronmental sectors to address global warming and the dangerous world of declining oil reserves. Obama, and America, may not get another chance if he succumbs to the powerful forces that will want to use federal money to keep the unsustainable on life support. (Hint: be suspicious of “roads and bridges” if the package doesn’t include big infusions to retrofit suburbia with transit).

(more…)

As I suspect is the case with many people, my interest in geology rises like magma to the surface only while driving through up-and-down country, where the Interstate has been cut through hills to reveal stripes of who-knows-what sorts of rocks, or while flying, when a slanting sun throws all kinds of bumps and dips on the land into strong relief and I wonder what lies underneath. The only time I have made any sort of study of the subject was when John McPhee was publishing his wonderfully informative and engrossing articles in The New Yorker of blessed memory, by which I mean the magazine before it was subverted by that horrible British celebrity worshipper.

If anything could stimulate me to take up geology on a more serious basis, it would be the drive that my wife and I just made once again over Christmas, from San Diego to Phoenix. There is a geology lesson, or several, waiting to be learned.

On the return trip, which is the way you want to do it, you pick up Interstate 8 in Gila Bend, home of the improbable Space Age motel (shown above right) and restaurant. My advice for the rest of Arizona is to set the cruise control to 80 and try to pay as little attention as possible, except perhaps to stop in Dateland for a date shake. It’s an annual ritual for me.

After a gas stop in Yuma, the halfway point, you pass through the Imperial dunes of California. It is here that you will realize at last why you have been passing, or sometimes stuck behind, huge pickup trucks pulling trailers laden with strange looking vehicles. This is the Mecca of dune buggy driving. Dune buggies are those little dots making tracks up and down the dunes on either side as you drive through. You’ll see colonies of RVs and campers all around; evidently the thrill is so great that a day trip hardly suffices to satisfy the avid buggyist. If you have been seeking evidence in support of McHenry’s First Law (“Eighty-eight percent of all human behavior amounts to shouting ‘Hey, look at me!’”), this is the place: Between the noise of unmufflered gasoline engines, the waving of pennants on long whips, and the leaving of ruts in the sand, this place simply screams “I’m here!”

But this is not our quest. The first-time visitor passing through the Imperial Valley and its chief metropolis, El Centro, will not realize that he is motoring along happily below sea level – as much as 55 feet below it – until, after many miles of gradual ascent, a single small roadside sign notes that you have ascended to that particular geological datum. A little farther along and he begins to notice on either hand the oddly graceful ocotillo cactus, a spray of tall, spindly stalks that, in season, bear small clusters of red flowers. Off to the right he may spy an odd jumble of white structures that he cannot quite make out. This is Plaster City, California (below). The reader is invited to pursue his own research if he is so motivated.

Plaster City, home to one of the largest gypsum plants in the U.S.

Now comes the fun part of the geology.

By the time he enters the foothills of the Jacumba Mountains our Interstate explorer will have climbed to about 1,000 feet. Over the next ten miles he will gain more than 2,000 more, through some of the strangest landscape anywhere. The mountains look like nothing so much as great piles of enormous gravel. There does not seem to be any solid ground anywhere, and there is no visible vegetation. (The notable exception being a lone and no doubt lonely palm tree, planted right next to the highway at a point just below a round observation tower on the rock above.) The driver can be forgiven if he begins to watch nervously for movement among the rocks, for they give every impression of being about to tumble at any moment – as, indeed, they are when “moment” is understood in terms of geological time. It is an utterly shattered landscape, and it excites my curiosity almost to the point of seeking a textbook in the library to explain it.

By the time one reaches the 4,000-foot level the mountains have begun to look more consolidated, more properly like mountains. There is vegetation – dry, scrubby stuff at first, then stunted trees, and finally, out of the rain shadow, quite ordinary flora. The descent into San Diego is unremarkable apart from a couple of rather picturesque valleys.

Once home I am left with the same old question: What created that broken, utterly desolate scene?

As a book reviewer for several publications, I see piles of new books of all kinds every year. In the general category of reference books—books for the look-it-up-shelf, to steal a phrase from the great man of letters Gilbert Highet—here are ten published in the past year that I found room for in my own overstuffed shelves, which, since that act involves getting rid of other books to make space, is among the highest honors I can bestow. Please add your own favorites to the list.

Oxford Atlas of the World, Fifteenth Edition (Oxford University Press)

Did you know that there is but one major airport in Hungary and but one in Niger, but three on the island of Sardinia? Where is the Halaib Triangle, and why is it? Part atlas, part gazetteer, part geography textbook, the latest iteration of the Oxford Atlas of the World does a fine job of doing what such a book should do—namely, rewarding casual page-turning with sudden revelations about the world.

Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (Princeton University Press)

Intelligent children go through three phases: a fascination with dinosaurs, a fascination with insects, and a fascination with Ancient Egypt. (Other phases follow.) Paleontologists emerge from the first fascination; the second produces the likes of E. O. Wilson. As for the third, this book covers the ground—and, for that matter, the belowground, too.

Bulent Atalay, Leonardo’s Universe (National Geographic)

Another book on Leonardo da Vinci? Yes, and for good reasons: Leonardo is an inexhaustible subject, and Atalay, a physicist, brings an unusual blend of scientific and artistic perspective to bear on Leonardo’s life.

Mikael Parkvall, Limits of Language (William, James & Co.)

Logophile, linguist, lexicographer: if there’s a word lover in the house, this compendium of data—some trivial, some of central importance to the study of language—is essential.

Ruth Richardson, The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy (Oxford University Press)

Gray’s Anatomy belongs in every library, private and public. Richardson tells the unlikely story of how, a century and a half ago, that book came into being.

Charles Liu, The Handy Astronomy Answer Book (Visible Ink)

Can there conceivably be more than one universe? If you’re amenable to the view, espoused by many modern physicists, that there are at least a dozen dimensions beyond the four we usually think of, with an extra universe or two thrown into the mix, then this handy reference by American Museum of Natural History astronomer Liu will prove a pleasure.

Karen Taschek, Hanging with Bats (University of New Mexico Press)

“Bats aren’t a weird kind of bird, or flying rats, or Dracula in disguise. They are mammals, which birds are not…. Bats’ relation with Dracula and other forms of the undead is discussed later.” If that doesn’t get a kid interested in things chiropteran—well, this lively and entertaining introduction to the world of bats is as useful for adults as it is for younger readers.

Adam Victor, The Elvis Encyclopedia (Overlook Press)

Can one ever know too much about the King and his times? If you believe that the answer is no, then this sprawling, well-written tome on every aspect of the world of Elvis Presley is for you.

Gary Hartman, The History of Texas Music (Texas A&M University Press)

On the face, Hartman’s book is a specialized affair. But one look into its pages indicates how influential artists from the Lone Star State have been in every genre, from blues to Tex-Mex to rock to classical. Texas may just be one of those alternate universes I mentioned earlier. Consider just what the two Buddies, Holly and Knox, did…

Niall Fergusson, The Ascent of Money (Penguin Press)

“The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization.” So writes economic historian Fergusson at the opening of this thoroughgoing, accessible world financial history. And if the events of 2008 have taught us anything, it’s that we all need to know more about money and how it behaves.

For high-schoolers plotting their future careers, these are confusing times. Prior to the economic crisis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was pro­jecting that the U.S. economy would add 15.6 million jobs in the decade between 2006 and 2016. Those numbers may be revised downward.  Even if the global recession ends before 2010, (a best case scenario) future jobs won’t be evenly split across regions or industries.

As I originally wrote for the September-October 2008 issue of THE FUTURIST, many economic sectors, like manufacturing, will see declines in the number of new workers they take on. The U.S. labor force is likely to grow as more retirees had back to work and recent college-grads—who had been postponing the start of their careers—start looking for scarce jobs. New and returning entrants into the labor force will be forced to compete with workers overseas for the best jobs.

How does the modern college freshman navigate this uneven terrain? One strategy is to plan for a degree in an unusual field. The newest edition of They Teach That In College!? published by College & Career Press, offers a few fresh insights. The book details 96 unusual majors representing fast-growing fields with good salary prospects. “The major had to capture our imagination—in short, it had to be fun, and hopefully, interesting to our readers,” write the editors. 

Among the most eye-catching:

•           Sustainable Business. The popularity of the green movement is ­creating opportunities for more environmentally conscious capitalists. Sustainable business is defined as building and maintaining business profitability while employing practices that promote local communities and respect the environment. Interested high-school students should take classes in conventional business, environmental sciences, and biology.

•           Computer and Digital Forensics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies this as a specialization in the private detective field. While many conventional gumshoes (as they used to be called) spend long nights in seedy bars hunting down sources, or camped outside of motels to catch cheating spouses, digital forensics experts work in clean offices, retrieving and analyzing digital evidence found on cell phones, PDAs, and digital networks. BLS rates the future opportunities for qualified computer forensic investigators as “excellent.”

•           Comic Book Art. Once the refuge of awkward teenagers, the market for comic books and graphic novels in the United States has grown 12% since 2006, hitting $705 million in April 2008. The surprising success of companies like Marvel Entertainment, which owns such properties as Spiderman, X-Men, and The Hulk, shows there’s money in doodles and ink. The company’s stock price has risen from $13 per share to $34 per share in the past five years. Many publishing experts consider comics and graphic novels the key growth area for print publishers in the years ahead.

•           Nanoscience/Nanotechnolgy. Nanoscience, or the study of objects one-billionth of a meter in size, will be among the most important technological fields of the twenty-first century—of use to such industries as biotechnology, materials science, energy, and agriculture. “The field is relatively new and will grow dramatically. Consumer products containing nanotechnology are already on the market, including cosmetics, stain-resistant clothing, and batteries. As the need for alternative ­energy arises, nanotechnology will become more prevalent in solar cells,” says Alissa Agnello, an instructor of nanotechnology at Seattle Community College, which offers a nanotechnology degree.

•           Strategic Intelligence. Think Harvard is selective? The most exclusive degree-granting program in the United States, the National Defense Intelligence College’s program in strategic intelligence, is open only to members of the U.S. military or federal employees with Top Secret clearance. But if you’re qualified, there’s no faster route to a job spying on foreign governments, or as it’s more politely known, “information gathering.”

Perhaps the most practical and potentially rewarding major is the relatively new field of entrepreneurship. Starting your own company requires a working knowledge of a variety of different fields, such as accounting, economics, and advertising. But for those willing to put in the time, ­entrepreneurial success pays well. Self-employed individuals report the highest levels of job and career satisfaction. While they comprise only one-fifth of the U.S. population, the self employed make up more than 75% of U.S. millionaires. Now that’s a useful major.

—by Patrick Tucker, senior editor, THE FUTURIST

Who’s benefiting from the current economic meltdown?

Karl Marx!  Call him the “comeback kid” of the current economic coff the shelves across Germany, in record numbers; publishers cannot reissue his works fast enough, especially Das Kapital, to keep up with the demand, as German universities have made him a prime topic for studying in an attempt to understand the crisis affecting capitalist economies.

As this video explains, German scholars are quick to argue that this surge of interest in Karl Marx and Marxist theory does not signal a resurgence of Marxism, but Germany’s left-wing, socialist parties disagree and hope to “capitalize” on the situation in the next federal elections.

This guy will pay $200 for an interview with an HR manager (20 minute minimum), $400 for an interview with a Director or VP, and $800 for an interview with a President or CEO.  Here’s his website.

Posted on Chicago Boyz blog, hat tip to Nicholas Bretagna II.

It can make no possible difference to anyone, and no one has inquired into the matter, but I happen to have an opinion on the candidacy of Caroline Kennedy for the soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat representing the sovereign State of New York.

First, it is important to clear up an unfortunate confusion. It is said, by way of criticizing Ms. Kennedy and those who support her, that she lacks relevant and sufficient experience. And to demonstrate the alleged hypocrisy of some of those supporters, we are reminded that they, or some of them, took precisely that position with respect to the recent candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin for the vice presidency. The similarities in the two cases are entirely superficial.

Governor Palin stood for an office that would have placed her next in line to the presidency, and that with a president who was a good deal older than most. Was she in fact fit to be president of the United States? Let’s review: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, another Adams …

Oh, you say, the Founders. Unfair.

Yes, the Founders were a constellation of talents and intellects seldom seen in human history. But, fairly or not, to our vast and continuing glory and benefit they set a standard. Then there were Lincoln, Grant (not nearly the failure you may think), Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, the other Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and so on (I omit a few names around which uninformed controversy still whirls). Seen from that perspective, it is embarrassing even to formulate the question about Governor Palin.

The Senate is a different place from the White House, and a senator is quite a different animal from a president. The House of Representatives almost always contains a quota of oddballs of the workaday, village sort, but the Senate has been home over the years to our more prize specimens, who are given six-year terms in which to entertain us. I name but a few:

Theodore Gilmore Bilbo

Robert Carlyle Byrd

Roscoe Conkling

Jefferson Davis

Everett McKinley Dirksen

Roman Hruska

Clare Boothe Luce

Eugene Joseph McCarthy

James Strom Thurmond

The gravitas of a Founder is not a requirement, as we see. As to experience, well, everything that happens to one is experience, provided one is conscious. What is important is what one makes of it. Moreover, what counts as experience varies from state to state.

California, where the entertainment industry accounts for a large part of the state budget and an even larger part of the content of any newspaper or news broadcast, once sent song-and-dance-man George Murphy to the Senate. In just the same way, Kentucky still sends former major league pitcher Jim Bunning. Bunning threw a perfect game in 1964, and it’s very hard to see how that could be held to disqualify him for the Senate.

Colorado elected Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whose background as an Olympic judo competitor and a jewelry designer were sufficient, if humdrum, but whose name alone, would obviously have earned him the seat.

And so to Ms. Kennedy. Credentials? She knows just about everybody who has any money or any influence. What, in New York, could better constitute relevant experience?

The State of New York, so famously open that candidates for a Senate seat need not ever have lived there, is also famously the place where, if you can make it, you can make it anywhere. Ms. Kennedy has not only made it, she is it.  Surely she can hold her own in a sleepy Southern town like Washington, D.C.

“I don’t want to do anything I’m not passionate about.”

Ah, a boy after my own heart…

Jude Law (b. December 29, 1972 in London, England) is easily one of the most beautiful men to ever set foot in front of a movie camera. But there is much more to him than meets the eye.

In terms of his career, he has never had the slightest interest in trading on his breathtaking good looks. He is one of the most brilliantly gifted character actors of his generation.

The film that brought him attention initially was the sensational romantic thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. Complex, multifaceted parts of great depth followed: Cold Mountain (his second Oscar nod in 2003), the gorgeously bleak Closer (2004) and the remake of Sleuth (2007).

The only time he ever portrayed a classic playboy was in the 2004 version of the 60s hit Alfie. In the original, Michael Caine was a working class Brit whose rakish magnetism made him irresistible to the opposite sex.

In the latter motion picture, Jude’s Alfie is the ultimate narcissist - awash in acres of Paul Smith, Prada and Armani.

He’s a glamorous London player set loose on the high-toned streets of Manhattan. The world is his cookie jar. There’s always another lovely woman to chat up or some glorious new clothing to purchase. His wardrobe is as seductive as his lethal charm.

Offscreen, he has been widely celebrated for his unerring sense of style. He makes many magazines’ Best Dressed Lists with little effort. Jude has also been a spokesperson for both Dior fragrance and Dunhill, the English tailor.

There’s a casual European flair to his perfect presentation. Jude is the quintessential posh sophisticate - in the most effortless way imaginable.

Here is the delightful Mr. Law with singer Norah Jones in one of the most underrated films of the past year, My Blueberry Nights: