The first great break in historic continuity was the shift from barbarism to civilization. Last 50,000 years if man’s existence will equal 800 lifetime of which 650 were spent in caves. The nearest historic paralled today is not the industrial revolution but bigger, deeper and more important, rather the invention of agriculture in the Neolithic age. With the effect of technology, automation by itself represents the greatest change in the whole history of mankind.
Today agriculture, the original basis of civilization has lost its dominance; even the non-farm labor forces ceased to wear the blue collar of factory or manual labor, and are outnumbered by the so called white-collar occupation. The world’s first service economy was born in about 1956.
No longer resources limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources, most revolutionary change man has made. There is astonishing expansion of the scale and scope of change. The boundaries have burst. The network of social ties is so tightly woven that the consequences of contemporary events radiate instantaneously around the world. We are caught in time skip. How do we adapt or alter these imperatives? To understand this, we must focus on the twin forces of acceleration and transience.
ACCELERATION: Today new ideas are put to work more quickly. Discovery, Application, Impact, Discovery – Is a chain reaction. A long sharply rising curve of acceleration in human social development. This mandates us having to cope with faster flows, and novel situations. Once must become more adaptable and capable than even before.
TRANSIENCE: The concept of transience provides a long-missing link between sociological theories of change and the psychology of individual human being. Transience is the new ‘temporariness’ in everyday life. It results in a mood, a feeling of impermanence. Things, places, people organizations and ideas plus time are the basic components of all situations. It is the individual’s distinctive relationship to each of these components that structures the situation.
Pace of life draws a line through humanity, dividing us, triggering bitter misunderstanding between parent and child, between Madison Avenue and Main street, between men and women, between American and European, between east and west.
Part Two: Transience:
Things: The Throw away society: We are moving swiftly into the era of the temporary product, made by temporary methods, to serve temporary needs. Turnover of things in our lives grows frenetic. We face a rising flood of throw-away items, impermanent architecture, mobile and modular products, rented goods and commodities designed for almost instant death. From all these directions, strong pressures converge toward the same end: the inescapable ephemeralization of the man-thing relationship. Foreshortening of our ties with physical environment, stepped up turnover of things, viz The paper wedding gown, the missing supermarket, the economics of impermanence, the portable playground, the modular ‘fun palace’, the rental revolution, temporary needs and the Fax machine.
Places: The New Nomads : Distance means less now. Man’s relationship with places are numerous, fragile and temporary. There is a joke saying IBM means I’ve been moved. The economy demands mobility. Disruption might be agonizing for some. Commitments are shifting from place-related social structure to those that are mobile, fluid and place-less thus bringing about a demise of Geography and place relationship.
People: The Modular Man : We form limited involvement relationships with most of the people around us. It gives a sense of freedom without responsibility; creating disposable person: The Modular Man. Rather than entangling ourselves with the whole man, we plug into a module of his personality. The decline in the average duration of human relationships is a likely corollary of the increase in the number of such relationships. We will have just a handful of Long-duration relationships that of immediate family if not lifelong cause of guilt attached with break off. Then there are medium and short duration relationships, Monday to Friday friends, renting persons. We need to learn the art of How to lose friends, how many to keep. Is Fort Lauderdale the future?
Organization: The coming Ad-Hocracy : We are witnessing the arrival of a new organizational system that will increasingly challenge, and ultimately supplant bureaucracy. This is “Ad-hocracy”. Here man will find himself liberated, a stranger in a new free-form world of kinetic organizations. Organisational structures spring up and then disappear. People instead of filling fixed slots move back and forth at a high rate of speed. This process alters loyalties of people involved, shakes up lines of authority and accelerates the rate at which individuals are forced to adapt to change. There is a shift from vertical to lateral communication, resulting in speedier communication. Skills in human interactions will become more important, due to the growing needs for collaboration in complex tasks, there will be a concomitant reduction in group cohesiveness…, develop quick and intense relationships on the job and earn to bear the loss of more enduring work relationships. Need is adventurous souls, hungry for novelty…not at all alarmed at change. So today we find, people commited to their career, and own self fulfillment; and organisations have Associative man coping with rapid change.
Information: The Kinetic Image : The entire knowledge system is undergoing violent upheaval. We need to form and forget our images of reality at a greater pace. Man’s potential for re-education are unlimited. We need to learn, unlearn and relearn. Transience both internal and external, demand a new level of adaptability.
Part Three: Novelty
The future will unfold an unending succession of bizarre incidents, sensational discoveries, implausible conflicts and wildly novel dilemmas. It will erase hunger, diseases, ignorance and brutality. It will radiate new opportunities for personal growth, adventure and delight; vividly colorful and amazingly open to individuality. The problem is whether we can survive freedom. People will start mining and owning parts of ocean, cloning of people etc. being the scientific Trajectory.
The Experience Makers Super Industrial revolution will not only challenge the means of economic activity but also the ends as well. Not merely the “how” of production but the “why”, thus transforming the very purpose of economic activity. It will lead to psychologization – of all production, beginning with manufacture. After service, we need to improve physical environment and quality of life. We will manufacture, Human experience.
The Fractured Family Family is racing towards oblivion; it may break up, shatter, only to come together in weird and novel way. We have moved from traditional joint families to nuclear families to free to function individuals. There would be new birth technologies, communal or corporate families, Bio or Pro parents, Trial or Temporary marriages,. The family cycle has been one of the sanity-preserving constants in human existance, this too is breaking/changing.
Part Four: Diversity
The origins of overchoice It was expected that with standardization man will progressively lose his freedom of choice eg Hiltonization of hotels, Standard coca-cola everywhere, but the super-industrial dilemma is overchoice. Automated equipment’s permits mass production in short run. A good deal of education will happen at home at the choice of hours. Material, cultural and social choices are expanding, turning into overchoices and unfreedom.
A surfeit of subcults Subcults multiply at an every accelerating rate, and in turn die off to make room for still more and newer subcults.
A diversity of lifestyles Faced with colliding value systems, confronted with a blinding array of new consumer goods, services, educational, occupational and recreational options, the people of the future are driven to make choices in a new way. They begin to “Consume” life styles the way people of an earlier, less choice -choked time consumed ordinary products.
It is the final convergence of transience, novelty and diversity, that sets the stage for the historic crisis of adaptation.
Part Five: The Limits of Adaptability
The Physical dimension Those who can adapt can survive. We are a biosystem with limited capacity for change.
The Psychological dimension Responses to widespread, high speed change are outright denial, specialism or obsessive reversion.
Part Six: Strategies for survival
Coping with Tomorrow Could be direct coping, creating a personal stability zone by not mixing too many changes together, crisis counselling,
Education in the Future Tense Expand adaptive capacities. Once must learn to anticipate the direction and rate of change; make assumptions about the future. Consistent direction and a logical starting point is needed. Include in curriculum only what is needed for future. Identify data and skill needed in three crucial area Learning, relating and choosing.
Taming Technology
The strategy of Social Futurism We need to revolutionaries the way we create social goals
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