Some readers (like Michael Barone) were skeptical when I wrote about the coming technological revolution in American medicine and hailed it as our one chance for the kind of health care Americans really want (better, cheaper and more abundant than what we now have).
But here’s a story from the New York Times that suggests that [...]

It was a quiet Tuesday today in Queens until I stumbled upon this very sleek video and the walls of Mead Manor shook with the pounding beats of what my young staffer told me was ‘electronic’ music. As my readers may know, I have been writing about the 10 global trends that will shape the [...]

Last week, I wrote about the following global trends that will be shaping our world in the coming decade; each are listed below, with links to the longer, more detailed predictions.
Interesting Times: All of these global trends will be fueled by, and responding to, the unprecedented rate of technological change. The acceleration of advancement that [...]

The list of trends that will be driving world history during the next decade looks pretty daunting; it’s even more so if you reflect that by my logic, the 2020s will be even more challenging than the 2010s and the 2030s will be more challenging still.
As I listed the trends that are likely to shape [...]

The single best description of the changes in the world system I’ve ever heard came from Henry Kissinger.  When assessing the political importance of recent events, he said sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall that “the unification of Germany is more important than the consolidation of the European Union.  The fall of the [...]

The accelerating pace of world history poses a single, common challenge to all the world’s governments, cultures, religions, businesses, civil society groups and individuals.  But if the challenge is the same, the capacity to respond is profoundly unequal.  Some governments, some people, some cultures, some businesses and even some religions and civilizations are better placed [...]

When questioned, Jesus of Nazareth had this to say on the subject of the end of the world: “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.”  (Mark 13:32)  We don’t seem to have improved on that forecast since and [...]

The vast, huddled masses of researchers and analysts in the teeming cyber-sweatshops at Mead GHQ continue presenting their list of Top Global Trends in the 2010s. For earlier posts in this series, go here, here, here and here.
God is Back, the 2009 book by John Micklethwaite and Adrian Woolridge of the Economist, points to two [...]

Between 1950 and 1989, the world was divided into clearly demarcated groups of countries.  There was the “First World” of advanced industrial democracies also known as ‘the West’: western Europe; the British and European diaspora in North America, Australia and New Zealand, Japan; the “Second World” of countries under communist rule; and the “Third World” [...]

Global Trend #4. Small ‘D’ Democratization
V.S. Naipaul wrote A Million Mutinies Now to describe India some years ago.  A book about the 2010s could be titled Seven Billion Mutinies Now.  The world population — larger, more urban, better informed than ever before, but also experiencing extraordinary levels of personal and economic insecurity — will be [...]

The look at the ten trends that will shape the new decade continues today with the next three trends on the list.  The series began on Monday with a post on the hidden force that shapes our times: the acceleration of world history.  On Tuesday I posted on economic turbulence and proliferation of disturbing new [...]

This week the team of crack researchers and analysts at the sprawling Mead GHQ are presenting our analysis of the Top Ten Trends that will affect world politics in the decade ahead.  This won’t be about individual countries, but about the big trends that will shape global politics.  We kicked the series off yesterday with [...]

Last week, I blogged about the top ten stories that are likely to shape global politics in 2010.  Starting this week, I’m going to try something more ambitious and write about the big trends that will shape the next decade.
In doing that I’ve made a conscious decision not to write about the fates of specific [...]