| Thursday, November 10, 2011 |  |
| World Transformation |
 For around 10 years, this has been the tagline of this blog:
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up. Sounds fairly radical. But at the same time it wasn't promising anything. We might be talking about the next 100 years, and it might happen very slowly. I didn't really know when or how quickly. But everything suddenly looks quite different. Something is awakening in The People. While things are falling apart more shockingly than ever before. This might just be the beginning, and things are likely to suddenly happen very, very fast. Probably plenty of people are still able to pretend nothing is going on. They can go to work every day, stay busy, discuss politics, plan their retirement. They might wonder how things will be in 20 or 30 years, and honestly expect that everything just develops fairly linearly from here. Their investments will have grown. Cars will have more cool electronics. Everybody has solar panels on the roof and recycling is really efficient. You'll have more Terabytes in your computer. There will be some new shows on TV. I bet you'll have a hard time recognizing the world even just a year from now. Expect an accelerating stream of discontinuous changes. Stuff that nobody expected, which then leads to other things that we expected even less. But you won't just be the audience. You might be surprised to find that what you do really does make a difference, and that it isn't just a nice motivational thing to say. You certainly also have a choice. What is changing isn't just one thing, and it isn't just changing in one way. You have the option of choosing which future you're joining. And, sorry to say, if you're choosing the status quo, it might become a bit unpleasant for you. If you stay open and flexible, you might find that it will be as the tagline promises: new, open, free and exciting. It is simple enough, really. You don't have to know the outcome in advance. Just, when you have a choice in front of you, choose! The only hint you need is to choose the new, exciting thing that's emerging, not the stuff old thing that's falling apart. Be the wave, surf the wave, don't bother reinforcing the straw hut with bricks if it is going to be submerged shortly. Enjoy the ride. [ Culture | 2011-11-10 01:11 | 4 comments | PermaLink ] More > |