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"With little fanfare, the State Department has abandoned America.gov - an ambitious digital project launched three years ago to promote Democracy abroad - and shifted its resources to social media projects."

"Great expectations and a virtual world are among the megatrends changing the role of museums and arts organisations. The megatrends, identified by CSIRO trend analyst Stefan Hajkowicz, are a major shift in the cultural, economic, social, environmental and technological milieu that are expected to radically change the context of everything we do over the next 20 years. Some of the trends go to the very nature of why people come to museums, raising the possibility that museums, galleries and theatres could replace shops as the 'third place' where people congregate. Others will change the processes by which our organisations operate and the subjects on which we focus. Speaking at the Musuems Australia National Conference in Canberra on Shaping the Future of Museums, Dr Hajkowicz said while some changes were 'black swans' - phenomena never seen until a major change of environment - many were more like a 'kangaroo in the headlights', who sees the car coming but remains frozen. He gave the example of Eastman Kodak, which was involved in the development of the digital camera in 1975 but failed to change its business model from dependence on film and filed for bankruptcy in 2011."

" The steam engine sparked the Industrial Revolution, shifting the world from handcrafting to mass production. The assembly line and mass production transformed industry after industry and gave birth to the middle class. And cheap, standardized shipping in the 20th century catalyzed a truly global and interconnected economy."

"The 2012-2013 School of Design lecture series features a renowned group of transdisciplinary thinkers and practitioners who are working on complex social and environmental problems. This is a rare chance to hear thought leaders who are creating narratives that are shifting attitudes in our society."

shifts in online education

"Car owners invest huge amounts of time and money into an asset they barely use. Cars are driven only 8% of the time, while potential drivers walk past block after block of underutilized cars. We are here to connect the dots... to help people get around. Getaround is a social car sharing service. We enable car owners to safely rent out their underutilized cars to a community of trusted drivers. People in need of a car can rent one by the hour using the Getaround website or iPhone app. Imagine a world with fewer cars, without traffic jams, and with less pollution. We are a team of successful entrepreneurs, hackers, and business people passionate about using mobile technology to create sustainable transportation solutions. We want to empower people to travel more efficiently and cause a shift from personal to shared transport. "

Despite an uncertain global economy and a continually shifting regulatory environment, the top teams at the world's leading banks are starting to plot paths toward growth. With no proven economic model to point to, bankers are attempting to understand the many possible futures they could confront over the next decade. In the industry's first-ever interactive eBook published by Ernst & Young and Knowledge@Wharton, "Global Banking 2020: Foresight & Insights," banking leaders explore a spectrum of potential scenarios - including some extreme possibilities - that could develop in the coming decade, along with strategies to help global banks thrive.

watching great preso on post collapse USA

"We still have emissions rising and we need to get that trajectory turned around. We need to get investment shifted to clean energy sources and low emission transport," he told The Conversation. If we don't get it going this decade, you get an impossibly tough task to achieve the two degree target. It will be exceptionally costly and probably impossible to roll out infrastructure fast enough (in future)."

As he approaches the end of his tenure as president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Björn Stigson says China is embracing the green economy and leaving the West behind

"When asked by his interviewer about the "modest title" of his new book, The Future - Six Drivers of Global Change, former Vice President Al Gore replied, "Random House came up with that title." It's not an auspicious beginning to a talk about the perils of the Global Megacrisis, when you more or less say your title was chosen because the marketing team liked it best. Nevertheless, when Al Gore speaks, people listen. And hundreds of people lined up last week for his live South By Southwest (SXSW) interview with Wall Street Journal and All Things D tech reporter Walt Mossberg. It was to a sympathetic crowd that Gore laid out the tenets of his newest book, which was born in 2005 as an off-the-cuff but "adequate" answer during a post-appearance Q&A session. "

This is a book about undermining the industrial system. You can read this book online, here, right now. This is also a blog about the book, the act of writing it and getting it into the wider consciousness. The two parts of this website can be found at the top, by going to either The Blog or The Book.

Will Asia lead the world in green technologies and in the political-economic transition to sustainability? Can Asia bury past conflicts and create stronger regional institutions including perhaps, step by step, an Asian Union? In what ways could Asia's traditional cultures - Islamic, Tantric, Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist and Vedic - be resources in inventing an alternative more hybrid cultures?

Cool money graph

Because of the hectic pace of China's economic and social development, Chinese energy demand will continue to grow rapidly in next 40 years. Beijing appears determined to pursue a low-carbon development strategy, and wind energy is going to be one of the main resources for achieving China's low carbon goals.

"A generation of far-reaching social change lies ahead for Australia. There will be a serious struggle to adapt to climate change as water security becomes a critical issue for many coastal cities and for agriculture. "

Rare earth elements massively improve energy efficiency and conductivity of metals. Yet rare earth are some of the most toxic and difficult materials to mine, and most are controlled by China. This article provokes consideration of both the need for developing super-efficient electronics with the costs associated in mining, as well as geo-political factors related to minerals extraction.

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima's uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.

Another story highlighting the emergence and movement of BRIC nations