The Core

>>gold

The problem with gold.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

This lasted till 1974!

Gold jewelry was still allowed. My grandfather had two gold frames put around two gold coins that converted them into tie tacks without destroying the coins. By converting them into "jewelry" he hoped to get around the ban and confiscation.  He kept the coins/"tie tacks" as a last ditch nest egg for the family just in case the Great Depression got worse.

Gold is probably still a good choice, just don't put all your eggs in one basket.  And never, ever, underestimate the coercive power of the government.

"Oscobo"  launches as a privacy search engine for UK. 

"It offers searches based on the Bing/Yahoo back-end, returned on a purely algorithmic database and skewed only towards a UK audience."


http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2440920/a-search-engine-that-remembers-no-personal-data-or-ip-addesses-launches-in-the-uk

I'm not much for the name.

Done. Thanks.

I could see Echo turning on a light somewhere outside the house where neighbors can see it, by voice command, that signals something is wrong. Not very high tech but better than nothing.

>SMS

Yes agreed, SMS is very good option.

Rupert, I think you are on to something with motion detectors.  If motion is not detected in key rooms like bathroom or kitchen after so many hours the system sends a flag message that needs to be checked out.

Reliability of the grid will also effect adoption of residential solar in the 1st world.  If I start getting frequent blackouts or brownouts due to hackers or aging infrastructure I'm going to be looking at solar systems to smooth those out.  A decentralized grid might make a lot of sense under those circumstances.

Moving away from coal fired power plants is another factor.  My whole state is mostly powered by coal and I haven't the slightest idea what those plants will be or can be replaced with. 

>Europe

That is exactly my point.  It took hundreds of years of war and trial and error for Europe to forge a "nation state" model that has eventually brought more peace to the "tribes" of Europe than anyone ever thought possible.  The thing is Europe, or parts of Europe, managed to do this many decades before their neighbors in Africa and the Middle East.  The process is still ongoing and to their credit many European countries have found peaceful means to reorder their boundaries (ie. the peaceful divorce of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  The current question of Belgian unity now that there is no external threat from much larger neighbors.)  Africa and ME are just starting a process that that Europe has largely gotten out of the way a century or two ago.

The Enlightenment comes into play here, which at least provides those nations that have embraced it most with a framework of democracy.

World Challenges:

1. Reordering the boundaries of the old Soviet Empire.
2. Reordering the colonial boundaries in ME and Africa
3. The role of multi-national corporations eroding or usurping the power of democratic nation states
4. Rising sea levels and climate change
5. The future of the EU: will it be a trading zone or the United States of Europe?

(Ack I'm getting depressed and we haven't even got to Asia.)

>alternative energy

I say do it.  The sooner we get over our addiction to oil the better for us and the less we have to meddle in the ME.

Africa and the Middle East are in for a very hard time.  The political boundaries there make no sense, ethnically, politically, culturally, nor by tribal, clan or religious sectarian standards.  They have to Balkanize and that won't be pretty.  The longer the Super powers and great powers try to, unnaturally, keep these failed states together the longer we will prolong the conflict.  They have to find their own way.  Radical religion is mainly a symptom of these underlying problems rather than a cause.

>>shale

That might be part of it, but rivalry with Iran is the key.