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Hoping you are enjoying the 21st Century and all the wonderful Nine Shift changes happening between 2000 and 2020. Here's your resolution for the new year: talk to someone over 80 about the way things used to be; and talk to someone under 30 about how they do things differently.
Photo: Looking out the kitchen window.
Over the holidays, Willie demonstrated how to fold a napkin the way he was taught this summer working at a fancy 4 star restaurant at the Grand Canyon.
Willie came home for Christmas. New look: a beard. New info: as always.
He said one of his teachers 8 years ago noted that reactionary forces seem to be the loudest and biggest right before changes happen. That is almost certainly the case with the Tea Party and others trying to hold back the 21st century.
Expect the Tea Party to gain strength, be loud, even reverse a few things. Then expect them to fade. They will. The 21st century and Knowledge Society moves on, with or without them. Photo: Our foster son Sammie, left; and Willie with Julie.
One way to be a Nine Shift fan: bring a Nine Shift speech to your area.
Pete and Danielle Hangen convinced TEDxNASA to include Nine Shift at their event last month. Thanks Pete and Danielle ! Photo: Pete and Danielle at TEDxNASA.
For the Top Events of 2010, see the next post, then tell us your top event of the year. Here’s the top 3 stories of the year for NineShift.
The Year 2010 was a banner year for NineShift, making three huge discoveries. One of them garnered national online media attention in Forbes, The Atlantic, Yahoo News, Kiplinger, Advertising Age, Chicago Tribune and at least 14 other news sources.
1.NineShift Proves Gen Y Driving Less.
The auto companies have hid the facts for several years now, but this was the year NineShift discovered the data in a new Department of Transportation survey report. Gen Y is driving 37% less than previous generations of young people, and switching to trains. As the decline began well before the recession, we now know what auto companies know: auto sales have little future in post-industrial societies like the U.S. and the Auto Age will come to a close by 2020. (See our September 25 entry for more.)
PHOTO: In between making discoveries for the Internet Age, Julie makes homemade apple butter like she did in the Agrarian Age.
The top events of 2010, as they will be for the next ten years, are all about the decline of the Industrial Age and the rise of the Internet Age or Knowledge Society. Here’s our picks for the top events of 2010. In the comments section, tell us your top event of the year.
1.Health care legislation passes. Essential for the Knowledge Society.
2.President Obama, like Pres. Taft in 1910 (see photo), does not make enough progressive changes for the 21st century, and his party falls down in the mid-term elections.
3.Tea Party tries to block the Knowledge Society and move the country back to the Industrial Age.
4.Businesses fail to invest in economic growth, stifling the economy and jobs.
5.For-profit colleges get exposed, providing more evidence and publicity about higher education’s broken financial model.
6.Supporters of cars, what young people call the ‘deathmobile,’ fight trains.
7.U.S. falls from #1 to #12 in college graduation rates, and more Americans realize the U.S. is falling as the world’s superpower.
8.Train ridership hits another record high, the fifth year of record ridership since 2005.
Now click on Comments and tell us Your pick for the top event of the 2010.
Our Biggest Lie of the Year award for 2010 goes to National Public Radio!
NPR wins for constantly repeating the mantra-lie that "Two-thirds of the economy is consumer spending." While other media also repeat this lie, NPR is supposed to be educational radio and ought to know better.
While the claim is statistically true, it is meaningless; just like it is true but meaningless that "Two-thirds of NFL football players have brown eyes." (stat courtesy of my brilliant co-author Julie Coates).
It is also a lie because the implication is that consumer spending drives the economy, which is totally false. Consumer spending is a result, not a cause. Two-thirds of the Bolivian economy is consumer spending, and one cannot find two economies more different than the U.S. and Bolivia.
THE TRUTH: Business investment drives the economy, not consumer spending. When business invests in the economy and its workers, then people will have more money to spend. British economists recognize this, unfortunately American economists are clueless.
Here's the future of the Tea Party.
The Tea Party, at its heart, is fundamentally against the Knowledge Society of the 21st Century. It is trying to move society back to the Industrial Age of the last century.
They like factories, cars, high school degrees, gas and oil, television, and so on. A Tea Party congressman even is trying to bring back the old now-outlawed energy consuming light bulbs.
They replicate the movement 100 years ago by the farmers and other people over age 40 who were trying to prevent the Industrial Age and bring back the Agrarian Age of the previous century. Farmers then shot at cars, trying to prevent them. Today some people threatened to kill Bart Stupak, the congressman whose pivotal vote got us health care legislation.
So, the Tea Party will fade from three to five years from now, between 2013 and 2015. No entity can stop the Knowledge Society and Internet Age. Change will continue. Expect the Tea Party to garner headlines, attention, maybe even influence for the next few years, and then fade beginning in 2013.
