|
HALF-LIVES
Wednesday Mar. 1, 2017
Morning, started early enough, it is the middle of the night.
Just as it is always morning somewhere, it is ‘middle of the night’ somewhere too.
Each energetic new day starts from this middle of the night reservoir – feels as if nature’s ink well is ready, waiting for me to dip pen and then spread my words across the page. So, what could any of us be thinking (instead of sleeping) at such a peculiar hour?
Little things, or great big things?
If there is a time for thinking about little things – seems like we can’t fit that in, between tweaks and tweets all day long – there always seems to be enough time to think about little things. For me, middle of the night is time for thinking about big things. Like a radically changed country, people using the world and their lives differently – 7 billion-power, harnessed in pursuit of a better mission, a better understanding of what humanity can be, stretched across divide separating what the world has become, leaving a path to our future we can all embrace.
Hold one now. That could never happen. Exactly! There is no way the world will change quickly. Things take so much longer – many generations in fact, for subtle changes. Take gender equality for instance. Look how far we’ve come! But seriously, look how far we have to go.
But look at how fast things change. When I was a kid, black and white TV was the new thing. We got our first one in 1958 when I was seven. Now, tourist trips around and beyond the moon are being booked. I got my first fax machine about thirty-five years ago – thermal paper on a roll! Now, by clicking my mouse I send my message from my brain to many thousands. In less than a second. From its beginning February 2004 till now Facebook has grown to 1.86 billion users. It makes zero to sixty in eight seconds seem like an ancient concept.
Where am I going with this? I’m not sure yet – but it is clear to me, more than ever, that anything we’ve ever assumed to be true is likely obsolete, we just don’t know it yet. I’m less concerned about the next new clever ‘whatever’ that will make billionaires of school boys and girls, than I am about how humans treat humans – about how we’ll function in a future where knowledge will be ‘installed’ rather than acquired, where work will be ordered rather than done, where achievement and struggle will mean very different things than they ever have.
I am looking out and seeing very little that my grandparents would recognize.
I don’t think the most important question is whether or not we are members of the human race – but whether or not we are prepared for the REAL RACE that is ahead of us. Tofler’s appreciation of this change pace was ‘tip of iceberg’ stuff.
What he failed to address is what it feel like to be riding this future-human-coaster of life.
Relevance.
Give me relevance. Give me that and I can feast forever, or at least till I am 131, because I feel like I’m only half-way there.
In time line, in real-time, I’ve only lived a half-life so far.
| 