- TIME COMPRESSION
- It's normal for a person to
think that they are special or unique. This is probably more true when we reflect on
our essence in the early years of our youth. As we get older, we tend to see that we
are less unique and that the things we experience and the things we have accomplished are
things experienced and accomplished by others before us and likely will be again by those
after us.
- Similarly, we tend to
collectively think of our generation as being unique or special. It is likely true
that every generation throughout history has thought of their particular world community,
as it existed in time and space) as special and unique. History is filled with each
generation proudly proclaiming its special qualities, whether it was the generation of
World War I, the generation of the invention of the wheel, the time of the advent of
agriculture, the time of great civilizations like the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Romans,
and so forth.
- Well, where do we stand in all
this? Are we truly a unique generation? There is the tendency to think that we are
because many unique things have indeed occurred in the 20th century but it could be argued
that special things have occurred in each century that has gone before us as well.
- It is likely that we as people
are not unique, instead it can be argued we simply exist during a unique period in the
river of human life on the planet.
- The uniqueness is a result
primarily of the technological age which began with the Industrial Revolution about 200
years ago. The use of machines to enhance human capabilities
and their speed of accomplishment sets us apart from all other times in history. It is
primarily speed that we are taking about here, and not quality of action.
- Earth is estimated by
traditional geologic reasoning to be about 4-1/2 billion years old. From there it is
argued life began about 3-1/2 billion years ago. Agriculture is known to have begun about
10,000 years ago and, as I said, the Industrial Revolution began about 200 years ago.
If we consider the time since the industrial Revolution as the time when human
capabilities for affecting our environment became really profound. If we take this 200
years as the time from which the foods we have been consuming have been altered through
various processing methods and compare this to the time that life was supposed to have
been on the Earth, one can understand the unique position we are presently in. I
have talked about this before in terms of how our ¼ genetic make-up expects to be eating
whole fresh raw natural foods and to be born into a world that is natural, as
defined prior to the time we have been able to significantly alter such things as the
oxygen content in the air, the chemical composition of water, the nutrient content of
foods and the exposure to natural light. Lets take 3.5 billion years, or the number
of years estimated that life has been on this planet to equal a distance compared to 1
inch as the distance since the Industrial Revolution began about 200 hundred years ago.
This will provide an interesting perspective of our position. By using
algebra, one inch is to 200 as X inches is to 3-1/2 billion, it can be determined that
there are 1.75 x 10 to the 7th inches which equals the 3-1/2 billion years. One mile
is 63,360 inches so if we divide that into the number of inches in 3-1/2 billion years,
the 1.75 x 10 to the 7th) we come up with 276 miles. In other words, if one inch
equals the time since the Industrial Revolution, the time during which we have been
subjected to an altered environment, 276 miles would represent the amount of time that our
ancestry was not exposed to such natural pristine environment. Some differ with this
geologic time table like the clergyman Ursher who argued creation began at 6:00 p.m. or
something like that in 4004 BC The comparison is still remarkable even then with the
last 200 years.
- Let me talk about our
uniqueness in another way and that is the shear quantity of knowledge and information that
has accumulated. If we go from the Bronze Age, which some would argue was centered
in the area of Thailand, to the Age of Agriculture and the time of the God/Kings, and
finally up to the Industrial Revolution we find very little difference in the amount
of knowledge that was held by the world community. For example, if we consider all
knowledge that was held up to the year 1 AD as what we shall call one smart unit, we find
that this amount of world knowledge did not change appreciably until about the year 1500
when it doubled. So there were two smart units by the year 1500. At the time
of 1 AD or one smart unit, about four elements were known whereas in 1500 eleven elements
were known. Then from 1500 to 1750 the smart units doubled again so that there were
four smart units in 1750. We're now entering into the time of the Watt steam engine,
Lavoisier subscription of the elements, and the full swing of the Industrial Revolution.
So by the year 1900 another doubling has occurred resulting in eight smart units.
- Now changes really begin to
happen as we enter into the information revolution, rather then the power machine and
technology revolution, particularly beginning in about 1950. In 1950
there was another doubling of 16 smart units. The rate of information increase can
be measured by many different methods such as the number of publications per year, patents
per year and other criteria. To give a specific example, there were about 18,000
medical articles in 1879, that is total articles to that date. At the present there
are 250,000 articles published each year. Back to our smart units we continue
through the years, in 1950 there were 16 smart units, 1960 – 32, 1967 with another
doubling to 64 smart units, 1973 another doubling to 128 smart units, and now it’s
estimated that there is a doubling in smart units every year. When you consider that
the total smart units up to 1 AD was 1and there were 128 in 1973 and these are doubling
yearly now the incredible rate of information increase becomes apparent.
- What does all of this mean? It
speaks to the fact that we do indeed live in a unique time of information glut. The
skeptical capability of human action is without equal in history. When we understand
this logarithmic rate of accelerated capacity, it becomes important to understand that
management is critical. We are in an age, however, of quantity not quality.
Even though information escalates at bewildering rates, applications of this
knowledge do not seem well formulated. They often do not seem even as sound as ideas
held by ancient peoples. This is becoming particularly apparent as we face
environmental crises which are a result of quantity capabilities and not quality
considerations.
- For example here are the 1879
words of Chief, Seattle:
-
- QUOTE FROM LIPIDS BOOK
- His wisdom is obviously
not something we have applied. Only now are we starting to come back to it. It is a
recrudescence even though we claim it to be new wisdom we have learned from some sort of
new scientific investigation. In other words, the technology to detect atmospheric
ozone holes or the like has not created our ecological concepts as we might be lead to
believe.
- Most systems of thought
governing human action such as current political views are not something born out of the
wealth of information accumulating in our age, but rather old political theories that have
been around for centuries and have not been updated by current knowledge. Thus, we are in
a unique position of being great knowledge and data accumulators but not very good at
synthesizing this material into sasutary codes of conduct that not only bring peace and
health to us now, but fiduciary protect future generations.
- However, things are
changing. Some are being moved by new information that is
compelling in its logic for changing our ways of doing things. Others,
unfortunately the majority, and u
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