About

Tim Prosser has a B.S. in Geography from Eastern Michigan University and an M.B.A. from The University of Michigan. He is a lifetime musician and amateur radio operator (30 years, callsign KT8K (lookup)), and has a left-handed genius wife, three grown children, and three grandchildren. He spends his spare time writing songs and playing music; blogging on the future (link), business management (link), his old rock band from the 1970’s (link),and his ham radio station (link); looking for his 6th career (lately); bicycling; playing with the family cats; operating his radios and building antennas; lifting weights; working with the local amateur radio club (link); and generally absorbing as much of popular culture and the natural world as possible.

Regarding this blog, Tim writes:

I have studied and thought in depth about the future all my life. Finally, with this blog, I am getting around to publicizing some of my hopes and ideas about the future of humankind and life on the Earth, and how we get there.  This is my personal effort to inject some hope and common sense into a topic that has recently been buried in far too much political rhetoric and far too many gloomy scenarios for anyone’s comfort.

I have a history of thinking of things before I ever saw them appear in the world. For example, I was one of the kids, as a 3rd grader, who saw that the Eastern edge of the continents of the Western Hemisphere matched in outline the Western edge of the continents in the Eastern Hemisphere, years before I saw an article explaining the continental drift theory. In 1979 I dreamed of a car with the instrumentation projected on the windshield, and more than a decade later saw the idea appear in the media, first on jet fighter planes, and later on luxury cars. in the early ’90’s I described to my dentist the idea of dental floss impregnated with flouride-laden dentifrice so that the beneficial substance would be applied to the teeth in places the toothbrush and toothpaste might not reach, and a decade later it appeared on the market.  I also studied ways to enhance and capitalize on creativity as part of my MBA.

I fully realize that ideas whose time have come will appear in multiple places on the planet almost simultaneously. The sorts of ideas I mention are relatively common, that is, the state of technology easily permits them, and they seem of value in a common sense sort of way. I always remind myself, however, that tomorrow’s great ideas will usually sound crazy to us today, either because our current technology makes it impossible, or because the application and full import of the ideas doesn’t strike us as being of value in our current context. There is also the thought that, if the best ideas of the future didn’t sound crazy, we’d already be doing them.

I have tremendous respect and admiration for the people who refuse to let judgmental labels like “crazy” deter them, and who vigorously pursue their visions until they become real. I always hope, too, that those individuals are well profited at some point, though I know that is often not the case. I realize that, in this blog, I may disclose ideas that could be commercialized, and, while I would certainly like to make some money from them, and would appreciate any help to do that, I also accept the realities of the situation.

Generally I give up on trying to make money from my ideas — I have too many of them and far too little time or money — and just hope somebody will do something with them (and, hopefully, at least bring me in for some consulting). In fact, I would love to work to spur innovation and increase the idea generation rate in any organization. I would also like to help organizations better understand human nature and the science of management. These are areas in which most companies could improve, and could make major gains in increased productivity, improved quality, increased market share, and better customer retention.

I am an enthusiastic student of W. Edwards Deming and Abraham Maslow, two great thinkers whose work unfortunately seems to have fallen into disregard in the United States. They both revealed fundamental truths to us which have huge impact on the performance of organizations, though others have since tried to steal their thunder by repackaging parts of what they taught us in sometimes silly ways. In general, the organizations who paid them heed have done very well. I urge anyone interested in business or organizational success to read “Out of the Crisis” by W. Edwards Deming, and to also read his other works. I also urge the reading of “Maslow on Management” by Abraham Maslow, a book that had a significant impact on my understanding of what makes humans “tick”.

Background: I have career experience in project management (including planning of vehicle development programs in the auto industry), technical documentation and publications management (including documentation of fluid handling systems up to and including entire automotive assembly plants), computer-related hardware and software engineering (printer development for a major computer company), engineering and production management positions in the computer peripheral industry, constructing high speed computer prototypes for the image processing and automatic inspection industries, computer equipment and network maintenance (for one of the largest contiguous digital networks in the world), and electronics parts and equipment wholesaling.

last updated September 26, 2008