Update July 19, 2024: since I posted this in 2019, surviving author Neil Howe launched a follow up book last year titled The fourth Turning is Here. The number of visits to this original post has ramped considerably, signaling a resonance with the books message. As a result, I recently posted additional thoughts on the topic here.
I just finished a book titled The Fourth Turning. I wasn’t sure I wanted to invest the cycles, but given my year-long focus on the past, I thought I’d give it a go – and I’m glad I did. In my continued efforts to reimagine the future, books such as this provide a richness of historical perspective. Although history was a key aspect of the book, I was more intrigued by the focus on generations, archetypes, and the cycles of our history (which last the length of a long human life). What intrigued me as a Futurist is the claim by the books authors that our past can indeed predict our future – it’s a compelling argument when viewed through the lens of these historical cycles.
So add another book to my Book Library. It was written in 1997 and accurately predicted some of the events that occurred in what the book refers to as a period of unraveling. If the cycle which has repeated itself six times was to do so again, we would have entered a crisis period somewhere prior to 2010 (great recession anyone). The crisis period would last one generation – moving towards a resolution that dramatically alters the social order by the late 2020s. Here is how the cycle is described by the book abstract.
(more…)
Artificial Intelligence is expected to handle many things in the future; is predicting that future one of them? In a recent 
Mr. Baldwin introduces the Globotics Transformation as the third great economic transformation to shape our societies over the past three centuries. As he describes, the first was known as the Great Transformation started in the early 1700s, and it switched societies from agriculture to industrial and from rural to urban. The second started in the early 1970s, shifting the focus from industry to services – the Services Transformation. I take a different view of transformation in the context of 
the book chronicles the journey of capitalism towards the dominant economic system in the world. A major focus of the book is the comparison of Liberal Capitalism in the west yo Political Capitalism exemplified by China. Another book that instructs from a historical context – providing possible 
The truth is that millennials are likely the generation tasked with solving this broad set of societal challenges. This recent 
and my hope is we can 
Inside the Next Transition 