I wish Google would stop thinking it knows what we're thinking. It doesn't. It's often ludicrously off base, and usually simply annoying. Obviously not what they were going for.

Invention still pulls modern life forward into the fast-arriving future. But invention has existed long enough to be joined by reinvention.

Here are a few questions worth debating on your next dinner party or trip to the bar.

1. "Why not us?" is one of the most powerful questions a team, person, or organization can ask.

1. Write a list. Words you put on the page or screen have the power to turn your ideas into actions.

In some ways, the YA dystopian novels of the early 21st Century can be looked upon as narrative handbooks for navigating an uncertain and murky future.

Ron Erickson is a seasoned executive with more than 30 years of experience in the high technology, telecommunications, micro-computer, and digital media industries. Mr. Erickson is also the founder of Visualant, Inc.

Because the technology allowing us to constantly update our daily behavior is so new, the long-term effects of having a continuous morphing online presence won't be known for years to come.

Reinvention is about focusing on today and tomorrow, but not so much about clinging to decisions that held you back last week or last year.

His current collection of poems, "Snake," imagines a post-apocalypse Earth long after the extinction of the human race where a character that embodies all of the feelings, thoughts and emotions of our entire civilization when it no longer exists.