Before the iPhone, cyberspace was something you went to your desk to visit. Now cyberspace is something you carry in your pocket.

As Stewart Brand (co-founder of Emeryville's Global Business Network) likes to say, "Information lasts forever. Digital information lasts forever or for five years, whichever comes first." There are examples everywhere. The tapes from the original Viking landers that went to Mars are at (NASA's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but there is no machine that can read the tapes.

My driving style is alert. As a forecaster, I can't help but think about who else is on the road and how little attention they are paying to their driving.

Every new thing upsets people. We all know someone that has a teenage kid who sits in the room and the television is on, their iPod is on, they have the computer on and at least three other electronic devices going while they're doing their homework. It drives the dad nuts, but he can't complain because the kid's a 4.1 (GPA) student.

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present

Take cyberspace as an example. We had this wonderful utopian vision of a new home for the mind. What we've reaped isn't cyberspace. It's cyberbia. It's this vast, bland wasteland of vulgar people and trivial ideas and pictures of half-naked starlets. But despite all the uncertainty, has there ever been a more fascinating moment to be alive?

More information and more communications foster world peace and understanding. But connecting extremist nut cases together on the Web - whatever flavor extremism they are - is a really bad thing. More information may not be a good thing, either.