CHAPTER 2 Shifts 1–3: Technology
‘Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.'
DOROTHY, IN THE WIZARD OF OZ
In the past half-century advances in technology have created a new world with entirely different social structures. These advances are built on hundreds of years of increasingly rapid technological development since the Renaissance and the Industrial Age. Technology has radically changed the way we live, work and relate to one another. Digital nations and communities of interest are replacing geographic nations and local communities. Deepening and broadening connectivity has spawned an exponential advance in social complexity.
My concern is that our ‘choice making' capability, our moral capacity, is struggling to stay abreast of our technological capability, and it is about to fall even further behind at a time when it should be getting ahead. It is incredibly difficult for any one person or leader, or a traditional authority such as a government or religious institution, to remain current even in their chosen field, let alone other domains. It is bordering on impossible to create the time to think about, make sense of and integrate the overwhelming amount of disparate information we can now access.
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