Digital Age Transformation Era & Hope
(Chapter 6)
Throughout the history of the universe the rate of change, or the time from one stage of complexity to the next, shortens after each progression on an astronomical, planetary, and biological scale. At the human scale, the integration of two fundamental components of the universe (information and energy) has created the digital era. This is exponentially accelerating the rate of change, and as a result, scientific understandings and technological advancements are progressing at an astounding rate. While it once took centuries for a paradigm shift to occur, in the digital era it can happen in just a few years; and it will continue to happen much faster than we have ever witnessed before. According to previous Google CEO Eric Schmidt, we now create as much information as we created between the dawn of civilization and 2003 every two days. With the recent emergence of AI technology, we are now entering a new age of intelligence where we are seeing this process exponentially accelerating and creating a world that is increasingly interconnected, interdependent, interrelated, inseparable, as well as increasingly unpredictable, uncertain, and chaotic. All of this in combination is revealing the unsustainability of our linear model and the political, economic, and ecological systems that stem from it, indicating the emergence of a new paradigm.
Another sign of the digital era being a transformational era of emergence is the degree of separation decreasing within the human network. In the 1970s, the maximum degree of separation between humans was six degrees. Now it is only ~2.7 degrees, and this continues to lessen as the internet and social media are further connecting us via their increasingly interconnected networks. Through this process, the human network is emerging as an increasingly connected, nonlinear network.
In the emergent chaotic zone where there is no proportionality of cause and effect, the self-organizing process emerges as one small thing can cause a major effect because of the correlation of events becoming increasingly nonlinear and highly unpredictable. We can observe this within the global human network with coronavirus, how a thing we cannot even see with the naked eye can connect the whole world and cause major changes in our individual and societal behaviors, in our economics and politics, and so on. Another example is how the price of wheat has been dramatically increasing since the Ukrainian invasion, which could lead to major problems in Africa such as civil unrest and political issues, as much of Africa’s grain imports come from Ukraine and Russia. In previous years, war could take place in one region and seemingly have little or no effect on other parts of the world. Now a conflict in one region can easily cause another in a region we have otherwise categorized as “separate” from the region of direct conflict. With this we can see how our linear approximate model that we created is becoming unsustainable. And so now is the time to shift our linear habits and behaviors to strategies based in systemic and nonlinear modeling that will sync us more closely with the greater self-organizing process, in order for us to more creatively and successfully navigate this emergent process.
As the rate of change is exponentially accelerating in this emergent era, we will continue to observe chaos, unpredictability, uncertainty, and a lack of proportionality between cause and effect. And within this chaotic era, our linear thinking (a judgmental logic) becomes increasingly counterproductive due to the protective nature of linear thinking that is defensive in the face of change, unpredictability, and lack of control. Driven by fear, it leads us to direct our energy towards blame, guilt, and violence when we face the unsustainability of human behavior throughout our social, economic, political, and environmental systems. We see this in the fear that stems from having a decreased sense of control over events and their outcomes, such as how jobs, products, and industries are being eliminated as technology continues to progress. We also can see this internationally in how countries are refusing to synchronize and collaborate as a whole network, as they choose to attempt to outcompete each other by focusing on self-assertiveness, control, and domination. This linear relationship between nations is merely dividing us further and ultimately creating a global whole that is less than the sum of its parts.
The defensive nature of linear perception amplifies a narrative of hyper individualism, guiding us to view each person as alone in the world—separate from a greater system. In attempting to defend a being that perceives itself as solitary, our linear perception magnifies our failures out of fear of repeating them, and as a result emphasizes negativity, violence, and disaster through a lens that ultimately focuses on hopelessness. In this way, the tendency of linear thinking to defend linear modeling and perception brings further chaos via fear, hate, and violence of and towards all that we logically view as “separate” or “other” as it is a mindset that labels any perceived difference as a threat. This linear mindset leads us to behave with the aim of short term gain and blame as it is driven by fear, rather than focusing on finding a systemic solution for the challenges we face.
