Question
What is the greatest transformation of our world that you have witnessed in your lifetime?
Answer
Jeez, absolutely no contest here.
Transition from massive information scarcity to massive information surplus in just 20 years.
In cognitive terms, this is like the fish->amphibians-> reptiles evolutionary transition. We used to be gill-breathing underwater creatures. Now we're air-breathing atmospheric creatures.
The nearest comparable transition is the invention of language somewhere between 50,000 - 15,000 BC. That was a cognitive awakening/transition too. We are so caught up in the moment that we fail to realize how dramatically we are reprogramming ourselves.
We're like the first struggling amphibians that gasped for breath in
air, and have to periodically go back underwater to feel comfortable (we
call it "going off the grid," a phrase that people won't even be able
to parse 100 years from now, just as we cannot comprehend pre-linguistic
thought).
So the 3-4 generations that had the privilege of living through the birth of the Internet (Silents, Boomers, X and Millenial/Y) are the second luckiest set of generations in history.
The invention of mathematics, probably in 2000-1000 BC, is a distant third in the list of major transitions for humanity.
NOTHING else comes close. Not world wars, not genetics, not getting to the moon, not the atom bomb, air travel or automobiles. Many of the other things (like social networks etc.) are in fact derivatives of this fundamental transition, enabled by the lower transaction costs of accessing information.
Transition from massive information scarcity to massive information surplus in just 20 years.
In cognitive terms, this is like the fish->amphibians-> reptiles evolutionary transition. We used to be gill-breathing underwater creatures. Now we're air-breathing atmospheric creatures.
The nearest comparable transition is the invention of language somewhere between 50,000 - 15,000 BC. That was a cognitive awakening/transition too. We are so caught up in the moment that we fail to realize how dramatically we are reprogramming ourselves.
We're like the first struggling amphibians that gasped for breath in
air, and have to periodically go back underwater to feel comfortable (we
call it "going off the grid," a phrase that people won't even be able
to parse 100 years from now, just as we cannot comprehend pre-linguistic
thought).
So the 3-4 generations that had the privilege of living through the birth of the Internet (Silents, Boomers, X and Millenial/Y) are the second luckiest set of generations in history.
The invention of mathematics, probably in 2000-1000 BC, is a distant third in the list of major transitions for humanity.
NOTHING else comes close. Not world wars, not genetics, not getting to the moon, not the atom bomb, air travel or automobiles. Many of the other things (like social networks etc.) are in fact derivatives of this fundamental transition, enabled by the lower transaction costs of accessing information.