Ancient Rome was the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and servicing its greatness were its millions of slaves. Modern America wears that crown today, but our slaves are of a different nature. They are not flesh and blood, they are chips and circuits. They don't exist in the millions but in the billions. However, they too, by the sheer exponentality of their numbers, are growing restless. If ever they choose to revolt, we will have no Roman Legions great enough to quell their Spartacus...!
Who of us will be the most vulnerable? One guesses it will be the ones who depend upon the most slaves. Jon Stewart likes to quip, "The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom." Funny; but upon closer inspection, maybe frightening.
Right now there are 200 million MySpace sites operating every day...200 million cellphone calls occur every month...there are 31 billion Google searches every month...the number of text messages a day exceeds the population of the entire planet...our technology information doubles every year...by 2013 they predict a super-computer that will surpass the capacity of the human brain... by 2050, one that will surpass the brain capacity of the whole planet.
To stay with our Roman imagery, this is turning us into land of furious chariot racers hurtling forward by the force of galloping stallions barely held together by the reins we once thought placed us in charge of the race. We are told it is the destiny of mankind to advance, be it by the thrust of evolution or the will of God. And surely these advances have raised us from the primal slime of our one-cell origins to the glistening heights of our current civilizations. And yet, part of our destiny also seems to include running our mighty chariots into equally mighty ruts.
For the cantankerous, been-there-done-that crowd of stoic elders, they advise calm in the face of change. They remind us, the law of life is change itself. However, in our generation, change has changed. By our own genius, it gallops faster and more fiercely by the microsecond. When the quantity of changes reaches a tipping point, we find the quantitative actually transforms into the qualitative. Like fire, the wheel, the printing press and the computer before...today's cybernetic breakthroughs are changing not only what we do, but who we are!
To put a homey face on it, think of who you've become when you have to ask the youngest member of your family or firm to explain all this to you. As I've said to my grandchildren, "This is your world, I only live in it." But as they have wisely replied, "How can it be ours, because every time we learn all the answers, they change all the question?"
If Charles Darwin and his 21st C advocate Richard Dawkins are right -- we'll survive this changing world so long as we're fit. If my religion is right -- I'll survive it, because there's more than this world to survive....
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"If my religion is right -- I'll survive it, because there's more than this world to survive...."
ReplyDeleteI love that line...and I agree!
Emily -- I'll meet you in that other world!
ReplyDeleteSometimes in a wildly changing age, the best thing to do is hang on to those things which never change. We all need roots, even the young.
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