The State of the Union (SOTU) address is an annual event. On the night of the event, both houses of the US Congress, President and Cabinet, military leaders, members of the Diplomatic Corps and their invited guests gather in the House Chamber for the President’s assessment of the country’s status and direction. The…

One of the things I learned as a researcher, interviewer, and forecaster was that most people who have acquired at least some knowledge of a given emerging technology aren’t looking at the horizon much. They tend to head down, perhaps working on just making the chosen…

When the performance of an employee is evaluated, ideally there are no externalities to complicate the analysis. If the employee has a computer that is constantly freezing up - or the servers in the company frequently operate slowly - the employee's performance data will reflect the functionality and effectiveness of these systems. If the company occupies a highly competitive market, declining sales data is attributable at least in part to competition rather than the behaviours of employees.…

When I returned to university to do a graduate degree, I was interested to discover how certain terms are subject to "intellectual interpretation." A word that I was asked to explain during one of my earliest classes was "ontology." Since this term was absent from my dictionary, I originally confused it with "oncology." I faintly recall that oncology involves the study of tumors. After consulting a few sources, I said that ontology is the study of how things come to exist or into being. I…