Change, the only permanent
Most dominant
The most dominant factor of today in our society is the extreme speed of change.
The “Change” I am talking about is all what originates from the development in the areas technology and communication. Based on these fast/turbulent areas we have also a fast growing international, or even global, markets and competition.
Who feeds it
The speed of change has never been as high as it is now and it doesn’t show any signs to slow down. Rather the opposite! And the consequences affect our lives on all levels. On the daily basis we are offered to spend money, time and interest on new products and added App’s, services, entertainment etc. And we certainly do, don’t we? There you have the answer on the question about who
feeds it?
We all do! It’s market driven.
Turn our lives upside down
More and more young people are being hired in newly started and fast growing enterprises. Or, in some cases, they start their own business. Add to that - the fact that their occupation in many cases was not invented some five years ago.
Examples
The electronic revolution turns almost everything upside down. Are you familiar with the following examples? Do you have other examples you can write tell us about?
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A young person adapts new products and seems to know how to use them the moment s/he touches them! As a result the traditional seniority role of the master, who teaches the young inexperienced trainee, is turned upside down. This is, to me, an already existing reality. I frequently call anyone of my four grandchildren, at the age of seven to fourteen, asking for advice regarding the use of my new mobile phone.
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While in the area of mobile phones I have noticed completely new way to market and sell the ever smaller, smarter, cheaper models with amazing added functions in a shorter and shorter time span. In Sweden this situation has led to completely new market, where the customers are offered as brand new models of mobile phones, to subsidized price. And this every 12, 18 or 24th month. The time span is equal to the contracted agreement between the customer and the operator of the mobile net. In my family we now own a number of well functioning, but obsolete mobile phones that nobody use!
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Looking at the political scene, dictators around the globe are threatened by loss of control of one of their most powerful weapons - control over the communication. Today people on the streets have live contact with friends, journalists, TV-channels in almost all other countries. And they send good quality pictures of reality in no time at all
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Other example affecting us all is the time gap when looking at the battle between society and “digital crime”. Legislation and police is persistent second to the criminals. All due to the enormous speed of change and the magnitude of new areas that are involved.
Moore’s Law
You probably heard about it before, if so, allow you to read thru it once again. This is how Wikipedia presents the amazing law:
Moore's lawdescribes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.[1]This trend has continued for more than half a century and is expected to continue until 2015 or 2020 or later.[“2] ).
This exponential improvement has dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world
economy.[4] Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.[5][6]
An Osborne Executive portable computer, from 1982, and an iPhone, released 2007.
The Executive weighs 100 times as much, is nearly 500 times as large by volume, costs 10 times as much, and has 1/100th the clock frequency of the iPhone.
I get stunned each time I read about it. Imagine have which barriers the armies of scientists have teared down so far. I read about one barrier of today:
- The number of transistors (to be accurate one has switched over from number of transistors to number of calculations) on the specific area they are now down to allowed space in the same range as the size of the atoms of the material they are working with!.
- The solutions are expected to be found after switching from that two dimensions (area) thinking to three dimensions (space)!
Bye the way I get just as impressed when I hear about the amazing results the scientist’s do within the Neurological area. And that also fills me with hope for tomorrow!
By my telephone on my work desk I have a note with the following text:
- THE CALL you are expecting will come tomorrow at 10.15 a.m. Swedish time!
(Are you interested I knowing more of this and how it started? Please contact me and I will tell you!)
