The Future Is Now: How Real-Time Information and Social Network-Empowerment are at a Transformational Tipping Point

Apr 26, 2010

Both William Gibson, the writer who coined the term “cyberspace” and created an iconography for the information age, and the futurist writer Alvin Toffler, whose writings anticipated the digital revolution, predicted the chaotic and rapid acceleration of the Internet before it actually happened in the 1990s. Today, communication and information technologies are accelerating so rapidly that individuals, crowds and social networks have been empowered like never before in our history. And yet, established business models and global economies have suffered the consequences of refusing to alter their practices. We seem to be at a critical juncture, a tipping point, recalling the chilling work of archaeologist Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies, who warned that societies don’t collapse because they lack sophistication — they collapse because they’re sophisticated and unable to alter their behavior. What brought about this sudden acceleration of change? And, if we’d known back in 1998 what changes in web and mobile technology would have on our businesses and lifestyles, would we have been so slow to embrace the digital revolution?

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Tags: Final Presentation, Real Time