PARDON THE DISRUPTION - CHAPTER ELEVEN

in #tecnology5 years ago (edited)

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CLOCKS

As I have witnessed evidence of the impact of Moore's Law and the disruptive technologies that appeared almost magically before us, I've become more attentive to the difference in awareness, receptivity, and ultimate acceptance of both social and – more importantly – technological differences among groups of people. The easiest to distinguish are those in more remote settings without deep knowledge of new communication tools. In many situations, this is how the elderly are viewed. It becomes extremely easy to generalize about people’s backgrounds and apply stereotypes.

Some futurists use the term "parallel universes" to describe this phenomenon of assessing the differences between two groups operating at different levels. It's my take that these groups generally get to the same place – but on very different timetables. In that this is a function of time, I chose to use the term “clocks” instead.

A recent re-read of Toffler’s classic Future Shock, first published in 1970, affirmed my thoughts about the reasons for disparities in the timing of acceptance of change among people. With the benefit of looking through a lens of over forty years’ elapsed time, it is remarkable how his takes on the rate and reasons for change acceptance have withstood the test of time. The rate of population growth and the move from agriculture to the industrial age to what came next was relatively easy to channel. But his other insights were quite prescient. In 1970, the rate at which a product concept was making it to market had been cut by 76% from previous generations; in just decades the fastest mode of travel had gone from horse to railroad to airplane. Before Moore’s Law (first elaborated in 1965) entered widespread intellectual circulation, Toffler had established a basis for its arrival.

Toffler wrote of change acceptance concepts including impermanence, transience, durational expectancy, and the acceleration of change – ideas that are perhaps even more relevant today than when he wrote about them. And because time truly is regarded differently by older people (a year as one seventieth of life for a septuagenarian versus one fifteenth for a teenager), “they seek a ‘separate peace,’ a diplomatic immunity from change.”
This picture is easy to draw: the small-town or elderly person who at best has a desktop computer gathering dust, for whom the “mobile phone” is cutting-edge technology and making telephone calls is the only use for the equipment, whose methods of news procurement haven’t changed substantially since the days of Edward R. Murrow and William Randolph Hearst, and Lord save you and if you get behind them checking in for plane flight at a major airport.

I call these places “sun dialers.”

Years ago I owned a company that did contract management and sales. Among my clients was the Greensboro Agricultural Fair, held every September for ten days in the parking lot of the Greensboro Coliseum. The fair was owned by the Hamid family, led by George Hamid. George was an intelligent, charming man, but very demanding with a terrible temper. A Princeton graduate, George had known better times in years past as the owner of the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.

George still had a good fundamental feel for what sold as entertainment, but since he was in his 70s, as many of his ideas were missing as were hitting with new audiences. In our promotional preparation for the fair in late July 1996, he seemed unusually excited about an idea he thought would work. The idea came from his wife Patricia, who had become aware of a new music and dance craze in the New York/New Jersey area. It was called the Macarena. The Maca – what? No one seemed to have heard of it in Greensboro. In those days before the ubiquity of the Internet, researching something like this was a bit more difficult than it is today. So I kept my eyes and ears open for evidence that this Macarena thing really existed and how it could be promoted.

On August 17, 1996 an unofficial Macarena dance world record was set in Yankee Stadium with 50,000 fans participating. Weeks later, over a pre-fair Labor Day weekend, the Myrtle Beach Sun-Times ran a front page entertainment headline about the Macarena craze. Two weeks later at the Greensboro Agricultural Fair, a heavily promoted Macarena dance contest was held. Thirty people showed up.

More recently, another example of a differential in the pace of community connectivity arose. To give some context, Greensboro, North Carolina is a city of 275,000 people in a county of 500,000, in a region with a population of 1.6 million, making it the largest city in the 36th largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in America. Austin, Texas is in a fast-growing region of 1.8 million people, and the city now has over 800,000 residents. The population is more concentrated than that of Greensboro, and that density certainly is a key factor in the population dynamic.

The growing popularity and diversity of food trucks in recent years has been an interesting addition to America’s food and business cultures. These mobile kitchens add accessible, eclectic food options to the neighborhoods in which they operate and are considered a feature of cool, creative-class towns and cities. The “Great Food Truck Race,” a reality show featuring eight food trucks in a cooking competition, has completed three seasons on the Food Network. Food trucks are clearly part of the national food landscape.

Greensboro is currently going through the process of considering allowing food trucks to operate in the city, particularly in the downtown area. Like many urban exploratory initiatives, this one was plagued with inadequate research, unclear process, and a lack of communication among interested parties. After two months of discussion, a pilot program was approved to measure the desirability and impact of having a small number (four or less) of food trucks operate during an extended lunch period (plus Friday nights) for a two-month period in a cordoned-off area with metered parking. Near the conclusion of the pilot period, the City Council was due to consider the future of the program and, as a part of that process, held a public comment period at a City Council meeting. Proponents urged the permanent approval of food truck operators, while opponents – largely restaurateurs and restaurant landlords who complained of lost business and a total lack of communication about the process – argued powerfully that the program be limited or even killed. On a 6-2 vote, the Council approved food truck operating rules.

Here is where the time differential appears. While Greensboro is just approving food truck operations – only on private property with restaurant proximity limitations – in its downtown area (with a prescribed review in six months), Austin’s position on food trucks is a bit different. In October 2012, Austin had 1,300 food truck permits in place. Even five years earlier, in January 2007, Austin had over 700 permits for food trucks. Clearly, Austin’s clock is ahead of Greensboro’s.

I use the Macarena and food truck stories as examples of the time differential in the spread of social phenomena. I liken it to the spread of a pandemic disease, where you can see the origins of, say, a particular strain of flu, and map how it spread. The same held true for the Macarena. By the time it was peaking in New York City, it was reaching heavy awareness in an actively visited East Coast vacation and nightlife destination like Myrtle Beach, yet remained virtually unknown in the midsized city of Greensboro. The reasons for the differences are varied: sheer size, growth, the level of advanced education, local culture, but it seems clear that mobility and communication with outside ideas are fundamental parts of the clocks differential. And technology is a large part of both the absolute differences between locales and perhaps an ever-expanding differential growth.

Let’s call places like this – those that ultimately will get current information, participate in technological developments, and become aware of new trends – “calendar turners.”

It seems most of mainstream America fits this category.

Early adopters, of course, tend to be found in fast-paced cities where sheer size, exposure to new ideas, and greater diversity of ideas provide an ideal petri dish for social and technological trends. There is something "cool" about these cities: New York, Austin, Boston, London, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris…The list goes on. Their clocks are always running ahead of the second group, their trends always a little other-worldly by comparison (until the other groups adopt those same trends.)

These "clock" examples are easy to understand in the context of social phenomena. We deal with the short-term, linear progression of news in our daily conversations. And it’s not hard to fathom, even in this day of 24/7 media dissemination, that some group would become more aware and more adoptive of ideas before another.

The same will hold true in the economy. We can pretty easily assess the impact of a particular move a company might make on its sales numbers (or those of its competition). We can even fathom the meaning of several consecutive months of up or down economic data. We are used to linear thinking in a cause-and-effect world. But sometimes it's a progression of events – many under the radar – that, combined over time, can create an industry-changing – or industry-ending – impact. And it’s generally the technologically disruptive changes that give rise to the more meaningful, even insidious, outcomes.

My conclusion is that because of the exponential growth in technology (Moore’s Law at work), technological growth takes place on a different timeline – has a different clock – than largely linear economic growth. The impact on the economy of the invisible clock is rarely noticed until the chime rings – and then it’s too late.

What throws off our ability to recognize this exponential growth in technology is the fact that there are presently at least three economic eras overlapping. Firstly, there is nearly universal acceptance of the industrial (manufacturing) economy. Next, what has developed in the last 40 years, called by different names: the service economy, the information economy, the knowledge economy. We’ll call it the information economy for this discussion’s sake. This economy incorporated computers and technology widely enough that the majority of the developed world could make a living without actually producing any tangible item. The next economy is one we see presently emerging. My good friend Rick Smyre of Communities of the Future calls this newest economy the “Creative Molecular Economy,” with a nod to the impacts of nanotechnology, genomics, and other technologies based on our increasing manipulation of molecules to create value and dominate the economic landscape.

Since there persists such strong (though diminishing) vestiges of the old industrial economy, our efforts at economic development naturally gravitate towards that end of the economic development spectrum. The service economy component of the information economy was equally inclusive, but at the cost of lower wages. The information economy has been responsible for both flattening the world and making international commerce more accessible to millions of people who had previously been unconnected, and yet is largely responsible for the information access disparity we have just described.

These three economies “in churn” stretch our collective focus to the point that it appears nothing is changing when, in fact, the exponential change has reached a record clip. And envisioning the future – economic or otherwise – is imminently more difficult than recapping and accepting the changes one has witnessed. The clock you have witnessed is certain; trying to project the running of the present clock into the future is another thing altogether.

Viewing things in the past tense changes how we assess them. In today’s context, they would seem woefully out of place, but viewed in their own time they seemed perfectly normal. There are things that seemed perfectly natural years ago (or that we didn't question for a variety of reasons), but when we look at them today we wonder what the hell were we thinking when we allowed them. If you try to explain the logic behind them to a kid, they’ll look at you like you were crazy to have ever taken part in these things, ever tolerated such an arcane way of living. Some of them changed for social reasons, and some were corrected with technology.

Imagine this conversation with a child or grandchild in the not so distant future:

“Yeah, Tommy things sure were different then. Tobacco use was commonplace. Most public buildings had a big-brimmed pot called a spittoon that people chewing tobacco would spit into. And they didn’t always hit it! We used to allow smoking everywhere – in offices, courtrooms, schools, airplanes, even hospitals! Everywhere! Everyone had ashtrays all over their homes. Can you believe that?”

“No way! Spitting in public?!! Smoking anywhere you want? Anytime?”

“Yep. And it gets worse. Some people weren't allowed to use a public toilet or drink from a water fountain like everyone else.”

“Why?”

“Because of the color of their skin.”

“What?!! No way!!”

“It’s true. And as recently as 2013, people were still allowed to get into a 6,000 pound vehicle, drive drunk as a skunk, and risk countless lives on the highway. Thousands of innocent victims were killed every year. And there was only a penalty if you got caught.”

“What the F?!! You allowed that? What were you thinking?!!!”

“Un huh, and people could still yack on their cell phones while they were driving, and text to their heart's content, as long as a cop (yes, a real live person actually drove around in a car enforcing speed limits and traffic laws (even stop signs and seatbelt compliance!)) didn't catch them. Thousands more died from texting-while-driving.”

“That really happened?! You’re kidding!”

“And as kids we used to stand out on the side of the street in the rain or the cold at 6:30 in the morning and wait for a huge bus built with minimal safety standards and no seat belts to take an hour-long ride to school.”

“You went to a school site every day? Really? And rode a bus? Like the one without tires at the park that kids play on? I guess the drivers were all well-trained and paid handsomely for such an important mission...”

“Oh, yeaahh, and then when everyone got concerned about us being out there in the dark too long, they even created a new time for us, called ‘Eastern Daylight Time’ so we got more daylight for our wait on the curb.”

“No way! You're making this up!”

“And school was cancelled when it snowed. No classes. No online teachers or video homework.”

“You got out of school for an entire day because of snow?! I thought you were being serious. Now I know you’re making this stuff up!”

Now, taking into account the exponential progression differential of years gone by compared with today, imagine that same conversation with your great grandparent. It probably wouldn’t be much different. The impact of clocks running at different speeds by community and certainly by technology will create an increasingly larger divergence.

Earlier we suggested the possibility of one or several corporate-backed worldwide entities drawing the allegiance of people across the globe who saw value in being a part of a multi-national “team” of other like-minded individuals. These people might find belonging to GoogleWorld to be more relevant, meaningful and even more fun than traditional national affiliations. Countries won’t give up claiming their citizens; they’ll want to control borders and passport issuance just like they have for centuries. But the whole concept of thinking, "Screw national boundaries and governments, they aren't relevant" is becoming more pervasive as the world flattens. GoogleWorld represents a corporate capitalism model; the other is characterized by individual determinism. A prime example of the individualist model is the idea of Seasteading.

The main goal of Seasteading and creating new offshore societies is to free the entrepreneurs from archaic legal systems that they view as holding them back. When asked, the Seastead people will say they are trying to get around backward US immigration laws. By getting 200 miles offshore, they can allow for anyone with talent, determination, and a dream to enter their floating incubator of new ideas. Setting up a society outside of US jurisdiction doesn’t just do away with immigration laws. It does away with all US laws. The only legal code these seasteaders will be limited by is international law. Such micro-societies will be free to develop new social, economic, and legal systems from whole cloth. They can ride the exponential rather than being a victim of the linear. That’s the theory, anyway.

What do they do when one of their bright young minds commits rape or murder on the Seastead? The idea that will never happen is, of course, absurd. There’s no place on Earth where sooner or later human nature won’t lead someone to do something really ugly to another human being. The exponential has accelerated many things but human nature is not one of them. A new society can enshrine all the normal rule that penal codes contain, such as prohibitions against stealing and killing. That part is easy. But enforcement will present problems. Are they going to build a jail on the Seastead? What happens if someone is caught stealing another resident’s intellectual property? And when the thief denies he stole it, how will they decide what the truth is? How will they handle drug abuse and alcoholism?

The challenge is for the Seastead movement to actually create a governing body that can move fast enough to regulate an exponential without inhibiting or perverting it. Requiring all governmental decisions to be based on empirical evidence rather than anecdotes or bumper sticker slogans might be a good place to start. A traditional system of criminal laws coupled with a loose regulatory system that the residents can change as the environment changes would allow for rapid, and hopefully enlightened, legal and cultural evolution. Enforcement of the regulations is still an issue, of course – there will always be a cheater to test any set of rules. Giving each resident an equal share in all profits might reduce the incentive to steal, but not completely eliminate it. And scarcity of resources could lead to a “Lord of the Flies” scenario. The success of the Seastead movement in creating abundances would be an opportunity to see if we can get past those primitive impulses.

Allowing for immediate referendums with majority rule could allow the system to adapt in pace with an exponential, assuming everyone had access to the truth. All attempts at this kind of communal living have failed in the past, of course. The difference here is that the attempts we’re envisioning will be made during a time of abundance. Whether this will allow for success is unknown. It’s unlikely that capitalism is the final and best evolutionary rung on the ladder of economic systems. Numerous offshore societies experimenting with new systems may produce the next best system. I call this group “Atomic Clocks.” Unconstrained by the past, and not content to wait and see what happens, they are driven to actually invent the future. Unlike our sun dialers and calendar turners, this group is running on the spin of an atom.

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After a long time I visited steem but I promise I will read all your blog in few days which I missed. And great to see you active

I wondered where you went. Welcome back @sumit1998.

thanks for all this information

You are welcome. It was my hope to elevate the public discourse by explaining how many logistical fallacies are passed around as though they are insightful wisdom. Proximity does not equal causation. Just because two things happen close to one another, it does not mean one caused the other. Example: President “A” is in office when market goes up, he is economic genius. President “B” is in office when market crashes, he is an idiot. Nothing is that simple when dealing with something as complex as world markets but this is how the majority behaves.

Great going

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How is the translation coming along?

It would take too much time @clayrawlings as book is big and translation with the perfect meaning will take some efforts too. But when it will come you will feel proud for sure

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Powerful xx

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We are now living in such an age of complete bullshit I just had to try to get people to approach the big issues with an analytical framework, instead of passively listening to these partisan wingnuts. Somehow truth became a casualty in the modern era.

You're right with this book. Is it an eBook or hard-copy?

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Both. It is on Amazon Books as paperback, hardback, and Kindle download. I am putting the entire book on Steem for free.

That's awesome!.... Please try replying to the mail. Thanks

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