Traveling south on US Route 1 near my home in North Carloina I pass by Lake Jordan and experience the South in a way that very few have a chance to in today's fast-paced jet-fueled digitally networked life. Some might say rural, certainly not backwoods, but from any perspective it is a beautiful stretch of the original auto-route (c.1909) between Washington DC and Atlanta. Endless stretches of mown grass and tall southern pines. It's just one reason I moved here from the cement sprawl of Los Angeles four years ago.

A few weeks back, on one of my many flights, I had an opportunity to read Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, a publication of the National Intelligence Council (NIC).¹