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Massive Change
Years ago, the idea of massive change seemed pretty farfetched. It was not,
however, that large-scale economic and social transformations were not
occurring. It was only that they were doing so at a slower pace.
In 1980, Alvin Toffler talked about massive waves of change having
transformed society through the ages. The first one began 10,000 years
ago when humans lived off the land as hunter-gatherers. It was the
early Agricultural Revolution. As it ran its course, people gradually
moved from gathering edible plants and hunting game to domesticating
animals, tilling the soil, and planting crops. They also stopped roaming the earth as nomads and began living in permanent settlements.
Toffler's second wave was the Industrial Revolution. It began only
two to three hundred years ago and brought us such things as
mechanization, the assembly line, mass production, the automobile, and
cheap consumer goods. Industrialization is largely responsible for the massive increase in wealth that we saw in the last two centuries.
The third massive wave of change, according to
Toffler, was the Information Age. We all know what this is about:
computers, video games, the Internet, the cell phone, online banking
and shopping, etc. It was also child porn, identity theft, addictions
to gaming, etc.
There is no doubt that each wave has profoundly transformed society and brought about massive change. Toffler's First Wave unravelled over a period of about 10,000 years. His second, ran for about 350 hundred years. The Third Wave is only a few decades old. Yet, it has literally transformed society and the very
ways we work and live.
Given the huge amount of resources we devote to research today and
the astounding progress that science made in the last century, things
are only likely to accelerate in the future. As such, there is an urgent need to control or channel the massive change that is currently occurring.
This is more true today than it has ever been. For the first time in
history, humans have gained the means to impact the planet globally. In
fact, we already do. A few decades ago, we developed the means to wipe
out life on earth: the nuclear arsenal. Today, the decisions that the
international community makes regarding the environment, or fails to,
will without a doubt impact the planet globally.
As the Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries
website states, "We need to evolve a global society that has the
capacity to direct and control the emerging forces in order to achieve
the most positive outcome. We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do
anything what will we do? (http://www.massivechange.com/about -- October 2, 2007).
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