New, for the New Year

New Year --2014.  On that, most of us agree.  What the new year will hold seems to be less clear than for almost any year I can remember.

Part of that is, perhaps because I am old, the pace of change seems to be accelerating. More than ever, people expect changes.  They expect life to be different; technology is mostly responsible.  New phones, new apps, new ways to track your life.  There will be new ways that other can track your life.  New ways that we do business.  Do business with new people, new people from new places, who bring with them new ideas.

More data, new data, Big data.  New algorithms: in genetics, in demographic, in sales. Bringing good news,  New ways to track diseases, epidemics, climate change, money flows, where the crops grow, where the fish swim, how much, how many, how good.

Bringing bad news: how to blow things ups, randomly.. How to shoot the enemy, your family, random people in the street, at a mall, at school.

So many new things, even including programs that create programs and robots that build robots,

The economy: better or worse, for the few or the many.  The stock market, more up, flat down, down big, who knows?  Most people are too baffled to even try to predict.

The mid-term election?  The Middle East? Fracking?  Cities, countries, art, music, literature,biology, chemistry, astonomy, food, fun, families, casues, cures.

There will be more changes in 2014 than there were during the thousand years from 500 to 1500. But it is world wide and there is no central authority -- not that I would wish it -- so no one really has any idea how this year will play out.

Right now it seems very exciting, but also risky and confusing, with the possibility of so many unintended consequences, and so many random events that could have a major impact because we are all so much more inter-connected.

So, figure out what part you would like to have in it all, which may just be wondering who will win Dancing with the Stars, or perhaps how to suck all the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, or how to teach your kid to dance, and get to it.

Good luck!!