THE POWER OF CREATIVE THOUGHT

Ideas are what make us human. Granted, whether or not an ant or a horse or a blue whale has the ability to imagine other times and places -- let alone to use such inner visions as mental tools -- we will probably never know. However, there is little doubt that the human ability to work with concepts in the realm of the mind's eye is what has and will continue to allow us to survive, to progress, and to evolve.

"Mindsets" are ideas and possibly even entire belief systems that help us to cope with the world, to navigate complex situations, and to grasp the big picture. To put it another way, a mindset may be thought of as a mental tool that enables us to cut out all of the noise and apparent randomness of our environment, and which in doing so allows us to see the forest rather than a gathering of individual trees.

The Global Hardware Platform

The idea behind the global hardware platform is to try and think of all computers and network technologies as comprising a single, interconnected global computing machine.

The concept of the global hardware platform reminds us of our mass interdependence on the systems of the Internet. It perhaps also makes us appreciate that when we purchase a new computing device its value is increasingly likely to be depend on how effectively it will allow us to engage in data and information processing exchanges with other people, other organizations, and other computing devices. In the age of what technophilospher Timothy Leary so poetically first termed "interpersonal computing", the days of purchasing a personal computing device for standalone use look extremely numbered.

For a more detailed explanation of this future mindset tool, please see the Global Hardware Platform page.

The Second Digital Revolution

From around 1980 to the year 2000, the "First Digital Revolution" took place as a mass digitization occurred with a wide variety of media increasingly being encoded into the binary world of cyberspace. However, the idea behind today's resultant "Second Digital Revolution" is that we are now in a more mature phase of digital technology development in which the focus is far more on the "atomization" of digital content back into the real world.

The second digital revolution is firmly taking hold due to a "divergence" in the available range of digital access devices, and which are permitting ubiquitous computing to become the norm. Ten or even twenty years ago it was possible to digitize not just text, but also music and video. However, the only way to access such digitized content was by sitting at personal computer. Today of course this is no longer the case, with digital content being routinely "atomized" back into reality by a wide range of hardware devices including mobile phones, media players, ultramobile computers, and public Internet facilities such as cyber cafes. There is even now 3D printing available as the ultimate form of practical atomization.

To a large extent, the Second Digital Revolution is the human phase of digital technology development, with new methods of digital access to media, organizations and other people now being implemented according to the everyday demands of the human race. For a far more detailed explanation of the Second Digital Revolution and its development, please see the Second Digital Revolution page.

The Five Facets of Reality

The Five Facets of Reality is a conceptual framework to assist in the study of radical technological, social and cultural transition. The model divides human history into "the past", "the present" and "the future", and then seeks to explore changes in five key "facets" of human and organizational existence across these time periods.

The most fundamental concept underpinning the Five Facets model is an appreciation that whilst "reality" tends to be a very significant constraining force on human or organizational action, it is nevertheless often transitory in nature and/or no more than a mental construction whose boundaries we can choose to move beyond. By reminding us how the nature of "achievement focus", "member status", "knowledge media", "geographic span" and "productive form" changed radically from the past to the present, the Five Facets model thereby challenges us to prepare for a future that may be very different from the present.

For a more detailed explanation of this future mindset tool, please see the Five Facets of Reality page.

Crossing the Fourth Discontinuity

That idea that we are now crossing the "Fourth Discontinuity" comes from an incredible book called The Fourth Discontinuity by Bruce Mazlish, and which suggests that there is a convergence occurring between human beings and technology, and indeed between the "natural" and "artificial" world.

Mazlish identifies three previous mental barriers or "discontinuities" that the human race has had to overcome. The First Discontinuity started to be crossed when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed his theory of heliocentricity, and which stated that the Earth rotated around the Sun and not the other way around. The Second Discontinuity was then breached when Charles Darwin popularised his theories of evolution and natural selection. The Third Discontinuity then started to be dispelled when Sigmund Freud bridged the divide between our "conscious" and "subconscious", in the process highlighting human beings as psychological as well as physiological creatures.

When Copernicus helped dispel the myth that humanity is at the centre of the Universe, Darwin demonstrated how there is no "brick wall divide" between ourselves and the animal kingdom, and Freud linked our conscious and sub-conscious selves, human beings on each occasion had to accept being slightly less special and less distinct than they had previously imagined. It is similarly mentally uncomfortable for many people to accept the crossing of the Fourth Discontinuity at this point in time, with no absolute divide now existing between ourselves and artificial technology. This is not to suggest that human beings are the same as machines, but rather than there is increasingly a continuous spectrum between the two with no strict binary divide.

Mazlish's proposition that we are now crossing the Fourth Discontinuity is presented in two parts. Firstly, he states that it is no longer realistic to think of humans without machines. Secondly, he suggests that the same paradigms or concepts now explain the very workings of both human beings and many artificial mechanisms. With the development of artificial intelligence, organic biocomputers, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and xenotransplantation -- not to mention progress in life extension and the advocation of the Transhuman Agenda, both of these propositions also seem at least as reasonable (if not still as uncomfortable) as they did when Mazlish published his book back in 1993. Quite how human civilization will cope with the crossing of the Fourth Discontinuity may well be a matter of considerable technological, cultural and ethical debate. But is also a debate that no sensible business should ignore.