THE GLOBAL FUTURIST

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Reality Check: The US Economy - The Global Economy

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Reality Check: The US Economy - The Global Economy

============================================================
Personal message from Douglas Castle:

The US economy has not truly "turned the corner," nor has the global economy. What we are experiencing is a confluence of excuses, explanations, cover-ups, creative accounting, deferral mechanisms and CYA* reciprocity. What we might be experiencing is more akin to an unraveling, fundamental systemic breakdown, with a good deal of Global Warming coming from the mouths of the propagandists (the usual) and the lotus-eating, street-avoiding, denial-promoting "pundits" (the delusional). As long as consumers and the Entrepreneurial Sector are strangled, there will be constrained productivity and paralytic unemployment. We do not need duct tape - we need a true paradigm shift instead of propping up an inevitably terminal status quo. -- Douglas Castle [refer to GICBC and The National Networker Companies].

faber and mish: we're doomed and washington can't do anything about it: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/faber-and-mish:-we%27re-doomed-and-washington-can%27t-do-anything-about-it-yftt_441381.html

About Douglas Castle
Douglas Castle - LinkedIn Profile
The National Networker Companies
Braintenance - Stay razor sharp.
The Internationalist Page - A world without barriers.
The Global Futurist - Revealing trends.
Taking Command! - Mastering your fate.
Follow Castle on Twitter
Follow TNNW on Twitter
Follow Braintenance on Twitter
*Subscribe (free!) for The National Networker Newsletter and the BLUE TUESDAY REPORT, and join The TNNWC GICBC at Join Us!

Friday, March 12, 2010

More Promotion with Less to Promote

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Memo: to Dick Brown of AMERICAN WORLD from Douglas Castle, Vice-Chairman of The National Networker Companies

Dated: 12 March 2010

Transmission: via group email.

------------------

To Dick Brown From Douglas Castle - -

"More Promotion, with Less to Promote."

Dick:

My compliments on your observation and insight.

The signal-to-noise ratio across all information dissemination technologies (print media being an excellent example) has declined and continues to do so. In response, print publications are competing so desperately for attention in the midst of the sensorial confusion that they are actually feeding it by trying to prevail over it -- they are decreasing content ("payload") and increasing promotion ("the vehicle to transport the payload").

Extrapolating the trend:

1. Substance is taking a back seat to form;

2. Merely "getting attention" is consuming more business dollars (in publishing, especially) than providing quality content and original, editorial information.

3. Headlines are driven more by search engine polling than by other criteria of relevance; hence pop-culture and fantasy (vicarious living and escapism amongst the less-accomplished, less-energetic, less-motivated, less-creative, and increasingly depressed populace) is displacing more cerebrally-challenging news and articulate, insightful commentary.

4. Intellectual apathy (your mind is a muscle!) is spreading as rapidly as is the average waistline measurement amongst the citizenry of industrialized nations.

5. Buzzing and rumor proliferate, while fact and analysis continue to lose credibility because of the dubious motives and financial conflicts of interest of too many of their traditional governmental and large corporate sources.

George Orwell was an optimist.

Faithfully,

Douglas

p.s. This is bad news for Society, but wonderful news for the News Release, Buzzworks and branding markets. I find myself investing hours of study in the art of yelling without having anything substantial to say. How about you?

p.p.s. If ignorance is bliss, well then, we might be headed for a millenium of Heaven on Earth.

About Douglas Castle

Douglas Castle - LinkedIn Profile

The National Networker Companies

Braintenance - Stay razor sharp.

The Internationalist Page - A world without barriers.

The Global Futurist - Revealing trends.

Taking Command! - Mastering your fate.

Follow Castle on Twitter

Follow TNNW on Twitter

--- On Fri, 3/12/10, Dick Brown <amerwld@earthlink.net> wrote:

From: Dick Brown <amerwld@earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Douglas Castle - TNNW BUZZWORKS - AUTOMATION! - REINCARNATION - EXACERBATION - and other -ATION Words.
Date: Friday, March 12, 2010, 1:44 PM

Is it too "classic" to note that nearly all real magazines have ½ of their pages dedicated to a tickler, "What's in this issue? "Section? Is this eerier?

Best!

Dick Brown, President
American World
843-237-9802

Check Out Our New Books:
“HOW TO RAISE MONEY" and
“THE PC REVOLUTION"
Now Available at: www.amerwld.com

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Advocate and Navigate - Two Key Thematic Trends which will Shape Future Careers

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Advocate and Navigate - Two Key Thematic Trends which will Shape Future Careers.

Note: This article was written by Douglas Castle for publication in The Global Futurist. This article may be re-published, reproduced or otherwise transmitted without the author's or publisher's consent provided that the article is published in its unabridged entirety, with full attribution to both the author and the source, and with all hyperlinks left intact and live. If words are spelled improperly, please leave them that way - it is always deliberate (only kidding).

Dear Friends:

In the very near future, new types of entire businesses and their subsumed career paths will be concentrated in the fields (either singly or combined) of advocacy and navigation.

The first has to do with proactively representing and protecting the rights of potentially vulnerable individuals; the second has to do with finding, communicating with, coordinating and monitoring all of the parties and all of their efforts as may be required to achieve any complex and important goal.

These two categorical career "designations" address two major issues, both of which are increasing in magnitude daily (although in a world of largely decreasing expectations, people are very resigned to both of these growing problems, despite their kicking and cursing about "the System"):

We are living in an increasingly decentralized world, where there are more moving parts to virtually every social process, and more participants than ever before. With outsourcing, subcontracting and migration of businesses to cyberspace, many of the persons involved in any given process do not know eachother or communicate with eachother -- they are often functioning as a headless juggernaut, where no one person takes ultimate responsibility or internally manages a process from start to finish;

We are living in an increasingly de-personalized society, where people do not interact as emotionally, or with the same level of commitment to eachother as in earlier times. This is a function of self-defensiveness and insularity (more computer contact, less physical contact and body language exchanges). We feel, lamentably, that "every one of us much watch out for himself or herself, because others are doing the same."

Ultimately, these two new categories, used in the new senses of their respective meanings, serve as a means of re-centralizing and re-personalizing processes.

Experts are needed to advocate and navigate for us...we are an entire species trying desperately to cope with the difficulties imposed upon us by a combination of societal factors, including, but not limited to:

1. Increasingly complex technology versus an increasing percentage of older persons in the general population;

2. Increasing de-centralization compartmentalization and specialization of virtually every aspect of every service business, in both the private and public sectors -- no one individual guides a customer, consumer or client through any process from start to finish anymore;

3. Increasing subcontracting, outsourcing and offshoring, with multicultural miscommunications, reminiscent of the Tower of Babel;

4. Deterioration in customer information access, service and responsiveness due to automation and "pidgeonhole" menu choices...have you ever had a particular problem which you needed to speak with with a utilities company about, only to telephone the toll-free number and be given a choice of four options, none of which actually addressed your situation? After that, did you wait on the phone for what seemed like an eternity (not daring to hang up and lose your precious place in line) while listening to distorted and terribly over-orchestrated music with brief interruptions by some syntho-voice saying, "Please stay on the line. All of our representatives are busy serving other customers. You call will be answered in the order in which it was received. Your estimated waiting time is 20 minutes..."? Sometimes these calls add further injury to insult by adding a "canned" message saying something to the effect of, "Due to an unusually high volume of telephone calls, it might take a long time to have a representative speak with you. If you'd prefer, you can reach us at our website, at ---------------, or, if your call is not an emergency, call us at some other time?"

The patience required to deal with this type of manifest impertinence and impersonal treatment is something which I am having a difficult time cultivating.

I remember being able to call up the "operator" (a Humanoid) on the telephone to request a telephone number for a particular party. Now, I have to go online to find telephone numbers.

Simple requests for information have now become research projects, requiring a great deal of skill and determination.

4. A very low signal-to-noise ratio in the media barrage, combined with declining attention spans and impatience born of sensorial overload and obsessive multi-tasking (i.e., doing many things simultaneously without getting any single one of them completed to any reasonable standard of quality);

5. An increasingly fractionalized social structure with limited communication between components -- this means that each of us, individually has expend the effort to coordinate multiple parties as may be required in the circumstances;

6. An ever-increasing pile of convoluted and often highly confusing protocols, rules and regulations governing virtually anything which we ordinarily do in our lives. You simply cannot accomplish anything institutionally without working through a mountain of forms and other paperwork;

7. People have, to a great extent, lost touch with the notion of investing in long-term relationship-building. Our lives have largely become a staccato series of fleeting and impersonal interactions with others, with time at an ever-increasing premium. We have many "contacts" and very few functioning, responsive and compassionate relationships. We are, ironically, more isolated than ever before.

In sum, when someone about whom you care is: chronically ill; aging; dying; experiencing profound emotional problems; contending with substance abuse; in financial trouble; in legal trouble...etcetera...etcetera...you will need to find some ultimate decider and coordinator of the entire process.

You will need an ADVOCATE and a NAVIGATOR.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Take This Survey: Self-Evaluation Is Necessary For Self-Growth and Social Evolution.

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Blue Thing #1: TNNW Surveys, Analyses and Findings/ Market Research.

Why? Because people are absolutely obsessed with what other people are thinking.

Why? Because feedback helps us to refine our strategies and change our trajectories.

Why? Because The National Networker Companies want you and your business to know your client audience and to constantly monitor changes in their attitudes, buying habits and needs.

(cue drumroll.......)

Take TNNW SURVEY #6

(Polls open 3/9, and close on 4/15)

Click toTake Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/TNNWsurvey6

TNNW Survey #6: Take Your Own Personal "Human Asset Value" Inventory.

You bring your automobile in for an inspection to determine if it needs repairs. You check your investment portfolio to see how well your assets are performing. You review your bank statement to be certain that you can cover your bills. You appraise your property. You prepare balance sheets for your businesses. Comment: It might be a good idea to take a Personal Asset Value Inventory -- a self-appraisal -- from time to time. Start today. Invest a bit of time in taking an honest look at yourself...strong points, weak points, all points. What you reveal to yourself in this exercise might help you to make some refinements, and to better plan for a happier, more fulfilling and prosperous future.

We have not assigned "weights" or "priorities" to any factors, and there is no grading. Once the results are in, we will conduct another survey to assign weights to the various factors, so that you will have a means of rating yourself in comparison to others. But for the moment, your answers to the survey will just provide you with some food for thought...and thinking is good exercise; the more you use your mind, the stronger it becomes.

You'll be glad that you made this self-investment. And we at THE NATIONAL NETWORKER COMPANIES thank you for your participation. Now let's get on with the collaborative process of helping each other to be more successful.

It is self-evaluation time. We must do this before we can evaluate others effectively.

Please be advised that the survey contains 45 questions...so be prepared to dedicate some time to thinking about each question, and answer honestly -- never try to fool yourself.

Relax, focus and enjoy the adventure of self-discovery.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle
THE NATIONAL NETWORKER COMPANIES
####

Click toTake Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/TNNWsurvey6

Note: This Survey #6 will be closing on April 15th at 12:00 am Eastern Time. out next week. After the Survey is closed and the results have been published, if you have some of your own additional self-assessment tools or criteria to share and you would like to include them in a follow-up to the Survey, please write to us at http://bit.ly/contactTNNW , being sure to include the words “Survey #6 Suggestion” in the subject line of your correspondence. If you would like, we will give you credit for your suggested question right in the Survey itself, and when the results are published – just let us know if you’d like to be listed as a Contributor in your letter to us.

If you’d like , join The National Networker Companies for free at http://bit.ly/JoinTNNW .

Click toTake Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/TNNWsurvey6

*Follow TNNW on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TNNW_BUZZWORKS
*Published by TNNWC. All rights reserved.*Join our GICBC and receive Your TNNW Newsletter and THE BLUE TUESDAY REPORT! - Click HERE

The National Networker Companies

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Announcement: Global Edge Technologies Group LLC

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Update: Global Edge Technologies Group LLC

Please pardon us while our website at http://www.GetGlobalEdge.com is undergoing an upgrade. This process should be completed in May, 2010, and the result should be spectacular.

In the meantime, please access our official company blog at: http://GlobalEdgeTechnologies.blogspot.com.

Legal Notice: Unfortunately, due to an unresolved contractual dispute with Lightshop Design, the Malaysian manufacturer of the Speedlight Pro Kit line of products, Global Edge Technologies Group LLC will no longer distribute, support or promote any of that company’s products.

Should you wish to purchase any Speedlight Pro Kit products, go directly to: http://www.SpeedlightProKitUSA.com.

We look forward to having you come back again soon.

Douglas Castle, Managing Director

GLOBAL EDGE TECHNOLOGIES GROUP LLC

http://www.GetGlobalEdge.com

http://GlobalEdgeTechnologies.blogspot.com

douglas.castle@getglobaledge.com

1.888.317.6498

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Time is Even Shorter...Damn.

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

Time is Even Shorter...Damn.

Dear Friends:

24 hours is too short a day for me to accomplish all that I need to do. And I'll bet my pet turtle ("Lieberman") that you have felt or expressed the same sentiment many times.

Apparently, NASA physicists, as well as some geologists and other people with -ologists at the end of their professional titles are theorizing that the recent earthquake in Chile might have been severe enough to alter the Earth's magnetic polarity and rotational cycle. What this means is that the length of days may now become even shorter. Procrastinators be warned (eventually).

You might find the following to be interesting reading, courtesy of Yahoo! News:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100302/sc_space/chileearthquakemayhaveshorteneddaysonearth

I will let you in on a secret. Even if the days are shorter and my lifespan in terms of time (which has not, in itself, changed) remains as it is, I may actually live a few days longer now, at least as days are measured. And even more interesting is that this whole damn thing does absolutely nothing in terms of the infinitessimally small duration of the present, as a moment in time -- the present moment is submicroscopically fleeting, as it falls into the past and we are projected instantly into the future.

If you think of a way to suspend time and permit me to actually savor the present moment at greater length, please ring me up.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

While Interconnectivity Grows, Loneliness Increases

Share this ARTICLE with your colleagues on LinkedIn .

While Interconnectivity Grows, Loneliness Increases

Dear Friends:

I am a user and a champion of social media, the internet, the cyberspace community and any technological mechanism or social structure which brings people together. Yet, I find that I spend more time with the operational formalities of these groups and media (such as returning emails, posting in groups, providing status updates, authoring and administering blogs and other emedia) than actually interacting interpersonally with my ever-increasing roster of self-professed friends and associates. The art of acquiring and amintaining true friendships is rapidly dying. I receive more text messages than telephone calls, and (for the time being), more emails than text messages. The warmth of someone' handshake, the sound of someone's voice, the promise of help or glimmer of compassion in another person's eyes...these are disappearing.

Even more alarmingly, the average teenager or young adult (13 years old to 25 years old) tends to text message at a rate of ten messages per hour during every waking moment of his or her young life. In actuality, these are really one-sided broadcasts, and not truly mutual communications. There is expediency without expression. There is little opportunity for depth, or active feedback. The very notion of conversation is fast becoming obsolete. The notion of friendly communion is all but gone. Our signals are becoming increasingly terse and one-sided, and the quality of our relationships is rapidly deteriorating. We are as lonely inside as loggers or country telephone linemen -- but we persist in this marathon of "connection collection" instead of bonding, which is an essential pysiological and psychological need for growth, development, education and, ultimately, a peaceful co-existence. We do much and share little. We are letting our frenetic lifestyles de-humanize us and de-civilize us. This trend is feeding the global economic recession and the global emotional depression.

As communication becomes more unilateral and discrete, we are losing conversation. We are losing the "tell" of body language and the warmth of physical closeness. The planetary signal-to-noise ratio is decreasing. This is sadly analogous to those situations where a busy work day only allows us 15 minutes for lunch, so we wolf down some fast-serve food, barely tasting it, not even digesting it properly, and ultimately winding up with headaches, ulcers and overweight.

This trend will continue until the resultant emotional and physiological health issues make existence into a complete, living hell. At that point, perhaps three, five or seven years from now, after the major pharmaceuticals companies have made an ungodly fortune on the sale of antidepressant and antianxiolytic drugs to most of the population, will someone re-invent the idea of socializing to develop relationships. And at that time, what we ordinarily did some 40 or 50 years ago will seem like a breakthrough. Further, the initiator who puts thi into action will be hailed as a genius and will be handsomely rewarded.

The following written segment was excerpted from a newsletter published by the World Future Society (http://www.wfs.org) one of the resources which I utilize in my trendspotting and forecasting activities:

==========================================
LONELINESS IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
==========================================

The average American today has only a third as many friends as 25 years
ago, and one-fourth have no close confidants at all, according to
recently released data from medical researchers. The Internet may be
largely to blame, says Michael Bugeja, author of INTERPERSONAL DIVIDE
(Oxford University Press, 2005).

Many people have a swarm of friends on Facebook, but do they ever call?
"Friending" is not the same as "befriending"--being a friend--Bugeja
notes, arguing that instead of creating a global village, the Internet
has distracted and distanced us from each other.

One impact is that lonely people have no one to turn to in hard times,
whereas during the Depression people relied on each other. Now, when
people can no longer afford the communications devices they've come to
rely on instead of people, they become truly isolated. As a result,
suicide rates may increase, even among young children, Bugeja warns.

LISTEN to the Radio Health Journal podcast:
http://www.news.iastate.edu/audio/10/bugeja.mp3

ORDER INTERPERSONAL DIVIDE by Michael Bugeja
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195173392/thefuturistbooks

#####

My colleagues and I are working aggressively on perfecting the conceptual blueprint of the Global Interworked Cooperative Business Community (GICBC) as a possible organizational solution to this increasingly-devastating socio-economic loss. I will keep you posted through The Global Futurist, The Internationalist Page, and The National Networker Newsletter.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

Pages

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Reality Check: The US Economy - The Global Economy

Friday, March 12, 2010

More Promotion with Less to Promote

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Advocate and Navigate - Two Key Thematic Trends which will Shape Future Careers

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Take This Survey: Self-Evaluation Is Necessary For Self-Growth and Social Evolution.

TNNW Survey #6: Take Your Own Personal "Human Asset Value" Inventory.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Announcement: Global Edge Technologies Group LLC

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Time is Even Shorter...Damn.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

While Interconnectivity Grows, Loneliness Increases

Blog Archive