Half of all our oxygen comes from the ocean, by a CO2-oxygen exchange cycle not as completely understood as we would like. Climate change is only one risk from excess CO2 in the air. Ocean acidification is another. It alone could be reason enough to reduce the burning...
Not only has population expanded, in industrial societies physical consumption per person expanded too. One measure of excess consumption is solid waste to landfill. In the United States daily solid waste per person rose from 2.7 pounds in 1960 to 4.7 pounds in 2005....
European colonization displaced a lot of people. The rise of industrial societies displaced a lot more. They or their descendants are still here, and displacement is still happening. For example, China's industrial rise displaced millions of people now roaming the...
To deal with Compression, working organizations need to migrate toward becoming "vigorous learning enterprises." This kind of self-learning organization has a shallow hierarchy, and much work has to be done by people working together with minimal direction. They need...
Learning in this context is self-discovery of something not known to the learner, even if well-known to others. Even in classroom teaching of well-known basics, students are frequently asked to do experiments and exercises so that they experience a modicum of...
In an individualistic society, most of us would rather be extolled for making a winning sports play than for merely making the block that set it up -- or playing the role of an opponent in practice that prepped a star player to fake her out. We struggle to value the...
A vigorous learning enterprise is not apt to be in any stable state very long, but always in some kind of transition. The changes are not likely to be confined to products, services, and processes, but include basic "business models," in today's terminology. That is,...
Click here to view the new Explorer visualization of the Compression Map shown above, which opens in a different page. Using your mouse, hover over each sphere below for a brief explanation. Clicking on a sphere opens up more spheres; and you can work your way back to...