Hi Harold,

In terms of the nine shifts, in the past 5 years I have gone through 8 of them. The only one that doesn't work for me personally is the fact that I have moved to the country (a small village) rather than a dense urban neighbourhood. But it is definitely not the suburbs, which Karen and I find deadly.

However, the problem with predicting the long range future is that all exponential upward curves are in danger of becoming S-curves or even sharp peaks because of the occurence of "black swans". Some of the unpredictable events that might unrail any positive view of the future include the present financial crisis going through a permanent phase change to a collapse in major systems, terrorism going nuclear, or global warming accelerating out of control. Then all projections of the effects of a technology like the Internet become not so important.

We like to think that what we are working on is significant. Survival trumps all when things are on the edge of chaos. The future is likely not going to be anything that we have imagined.