This is my thesis:
Assumptions about government, business, learning, etc. can be redefined by digital leaders. This is an opportunity to upgrade society.
Hwanhi asked whether all generations have a feeling that they are on the cusp of something big. Perhaps the excitement accompanying changes is a part of every generation growing up and trying to figure out its place in the world. She makes a good point. In just the United States, movements that redefine society seem to take hold at least every 30 years. History teachers might balk at the oversimplification of the following list of examples but here it is anyway:
1770s: American Independence
1800s: Western Expansion/Manifest Destiny
1830s: I don't know...probably something
1860s: Civil War
1900s: Modern physics develops/ beginning of atomic age
1930s: Great Depression
1960s: Cold War
1990s: Pokémon
So society makes big changes a lot. But I still feel like the digital revolution is something major. Maybe the timeline of human history is speeding up* so that the developments still make huge changes simply happen more frequently (after all, advanced technology is aiding and abetting us.) Maybe the digital revolution isn't a once-in-a-millenium opportunity, it's just the opportunity at hand. The opportunity that knocks at the door of every generation** and that people like George Washington and Rosa Parks took when they saw it. Inserting the word generation into a quote from Winston Churchill seems appropriate:
“To each [generation] there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”Hwani's question has caused me to think: perhaps this opportunity repeats itself in histroy--let's be sure not to miss our shot.
The second concern about my thesis that came to my attention today is that it's soft. It wouldn't "divide an educated audience," as Professor Burton says a good thesis should. I have to work on that.
For the intrepid blog reader who wanted to know what the astericks are all about: while I was writing this post I thought of connections to obscure ideas in modern physics. I hardly understand them but I think they are cool anyway (like girls). My apologies to David Perkins, and again, insight from people who know this stuff is welcome. Consider yourself warned that what follows is a little eccentric:
*On the subject of the rate of development increasing as the timeline of humanity goes on: the theory of the expanding universe is a possible connection. Scientists have observed that galaxies are speeding toward the edges of known space and "if the speed of the recession continues to increase outwards, it will ere long approach the speed of light, so that something must break down." (The World Treasury of and Mathematics, edited by Timothy Ferris, p. 354) Similarly, the rate at which society convulses into new iterations cannot increase forever; eventually there will be no stability at all. What might happen then?
**On the idea of something really big repeating itself every so often: Stephen Hawking and others have theorized the existance of multiple universes like bubbles floating around in many more dimensions than we are familiar with. Every so often they bump into each other causing a "big bang." So the big bang could happen all the time (on an infinite, metacosmic scale.) [See a BBC page about it.]
I am an active LDS member, so it may surprise some people that I reference the big bang in seriousness. I'm not convinced that divine creation and intelligent design necessarily exclude the existence of multiple dimensions, universes, and creative periods that could resemble a big bang to the rudimentary eyes of humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment