This diffuse, fractured world will be run more by cities and city-states than countries. Once, Venice and Bruges formed an axis that spurred commercial expansion across Eurasia. Today, just 40 city-regions account for two thirds of the world economy and 90 percent of its innovation. The mighty Hanseatic League, a constellation of well-armed North and Baltic Sea trading hubs in the late Middle Ages, will be reborn as cities such as Hamburg and Dubai form commercial alliances and operate "free zones" across Africa like the ones Dubai Ports World is building. Add in sovereign wealth funds and private military contractors, and you have the agile geopolitical units of a neomedieval world. Even during this global financial crisis, multinational corporations heavily populate the list of the world's largest economic entities; the commercial diplomacy of emerging-market firms such as China's Haier and Mexico's Cemex has already turned North-South relations inside out faster than the nonaligned movement ever did.

Resilience, conversely, accepts that change is inevitable and in many cases out of our hands, focusing instead on the need to be able to withstand the unexpected. Greed, accident, or malice may have harmful results, but, barring something truly apocalyptic, a resilient system can absorb such results without its overall health being threatened.

shifts in online education

What do you imagine the world will look like in 2025? The FutureScapes project brings together a range of expert thinkers, designers, futurologists, writers and you - the public - to explore the opportunities and challenges of life in 2025, and to consider the potential contribution that technology and entertainment can make in shaping a better, more sustainable future.

About 20 kilometers northwest of Amarillo, Texas, beneath a geological structure called the Bush Dome, lies the world's largest repository of a substance that, sooner or later, will become more precious than gold: helium.

Scenario of a local bookstore and hints about the publishing industry in 2020.

Great summary article which covers the basics with lots of video examples.

from Global Guerrillas http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/

We Solve For X is a new project that Google has put together to help solve some of the world's greatest problems that are facing our civilization. Problems such as global warming, and other stuff of science fiction that just might be possible