Yet another confirmation that we are in the beginning stages of broad based and fundamental transformations being brought about by rapid advances in communication technology…reported in another PEW release yesterday called “Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age”.
Here’s the Guardian’s story about this PEW report.
As Alvin Toffler predicted in “Future Shock” and other books as much as 50 years ago now, the pace of change effects us in hard to understand but profound ways. We are used to the ideas of “progress” and “transformations through history”, generally presented as linear timelines with one thing happening neatly after another… or in the more dynamic timelines different “fields” are presented as sort of overlapping.
But such linearity of timelines breaks down once one tries to include all the relevant and important factors from various “parts” of reality….it’s a diagram that as it gains relevancy becomes increasingly incomprehensible.
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We probably know better by now about linear models being problematic and reductionist. We know that in the “real world” it all happens in some connected way, which can’t be sorted out into a series of sequentials that explains “how the world works”. The problem is our ability to perceive the sort of complexity of “cause and effect” that is actually ongoing.
We do attempt to represent this complexity, model it, and design hypothesis to test and isolate variables, so that we can scientifically “know” the facts. This is useful and necessary, but can create the sort of hubris that thinks by doing so we truly understand change.
Our inability to think non linearly as capably as we “should”, makes it hard to see that change can be happening in so many “areas” at once, that we can only dimly be aware of all the significant events…if we can be aware of “all”….which we can’t. Today, change from communication technology is ubiquitous, and much of it is happening outside of any human ability to fully grasp the implications.
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When this sort of thing happens, future historians look back and report that if only the “people of the time had understood the changes underway, they might have been able to avoid the consequences, or make better decisions on how to adapt.” The rise and fall of civilizations, empires, and economic or technological dominance, reflects that change does occur, but is often woefully misunderstood at the time it was happening.
Which is all to say, it’s worth reading such reports as PEW and others create that attempt to shine a light on “where we are and where we are going”, despite the enormous challenge of “really knowing these things” in time to make usefully apropos choices and decisions for action. Lacking certainty, one turns to the courage to “take a leap” into the unknown, and get as much “real time/ real world” feedback as possible while doing so. (lean startup principle.)
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