From inside the fishbowl of this transformation - a civilizational acceleration hurtling us toward a future that feels very different and very potent - it’s difficult to understand how much we have changed. In our behaviors and expectations, we are already very different than we were just half a billion seconds (15 years) ago. In another half a billion seconds we will be almost unrecognizable. What we are becoming will be incomprehensible to the people we once were. The language of sharing and connectivity we employ today simply did not exist half a generation ago; the way we both depend upon and conform to a world of continuous connection tells us that there is no going back. Even if all the devices vanished tomorrow, they have left a permanent mark on our collective psyche. Once connected, we are not easily broken apart.
THE NEXT BILLION SECONDS
From the first two chapters/posts of a book by my friend the tech thinker Rob Tercek and Mark Pesce. They promise to do two posts a week until Dec. 20 on the impacts of our "hypernetworked" world and how those dense connections manifest in dizzyingly varied ways across the world. A very interesting start.