The information age has so far produced to the gelded age. All this talk about systems has had me researching and thinking about how we got into this mess. After listening to a summary of one of Peter Drucker's final books "Managing in the Next Society", I think I have discovered a large piece of how we got into this shape. The information age has brought great change. It may be one of the greatest changes since the industrial revolution. Here is the problem, it has only changed the previous system. It is yet to become the information revolution.
Think about it, the information age has routinized every area of business, government, and our lives. You can now have a software program to do everything you were already doing. It does it faster, cheaper, and with more efficiency. We have developed routines that will do everything for us. However, we are just now starting to see on the horizon the real effects of the information age.
Up to this point, every routine has gelded us. (For those of you unfamiliar with this word, it is the word for castrating a horse). I know this has a certain comedic value, but I really want you to think about it. What does routine do to us? It limits us to repetitive tasks and an "in stone" way of doing things. We no longer are able to reproduce, instead we create clones. Pardon the expressive reference, but the information age to this point has taken away our ability to have intercourse. Instead, we have an "enter" course that merely allows us to hit enter and it repeats. The power of reproduction is the unique combinations from each interaction, however SO FAR the information age has merely created repetitive action that mechanizes the process.
This leads back to our discussion from yesterday. It is the millions of individual processes that make up the system. However, when the processes become more important than the function then they become useless. The power of interaction is in the ability to do the exact same thing multiple times and have unique purpose and function for the action. Motive is more powerful than action. It is the motive of the action that will create the next piece of the process. The information age has gelded all motive from action and has created a lifeless system of repetition.
However, before we all commit suicide at our dark and desperate system. . . there are rays of hope. The information system has the power to be so much more. It has the potential to revolutionize the entire way we think about systems, functions, and processes. I think the revolution has started and we are just starting to see the first shots. Cross cultural and unlimited communication is beginning. We have torn down the sectorized markets of the word to create the Global market, however now we are beginning the global village. Even this blog is a shot at the old system of meaningless, powerless repetition. . . if you let it be.
The problem has been that we haven't had REAL information systems, we have had read broadcast systems. We have been in the broadcast age. Where we listen to the news, we listen to the radio, we listen aTV watch tv, we receive systems that do things for us. The information age must become the COMMUNICATION age. A global village, a commune. A place where there is shared interaction. It is a place of intercourse, where your course and my course enter together to create something much more powerful than they ever could be apart.
This demands robust and honest dialogue. You have to comment on my blogs what you don't like for this to work. You have to tell me that you agree when it is in your heart. You can no longer passively observe. I wish I could attach a shock signal to your keyboard so that when you are thinking anything about the post and refuse to write it, it would shock the devil out of you. Of course that would perpetuate the system I'm trying to diffuse, but I still want to!
It is in the creative mix and confrontation of the "egg" and "sperm" of our ideas, the incubation places and the seeds of thought, that will reproduce greatness and change in our lives. For us to truly see the information revolution, we must make it the communication revolution. No more thinking of Hurricane Katrina as a 2-block storm because that is all that the television can effectively show us. No more believing the spin that CNN or FOX puts on the news. No more settling for mere rote information, but demanding. . . no let me rephrase that. . . angrily demanding to know the hearts, intents, and fullness of what you hear. That is Reality! That is Change! That is what it takes to be a real Change Addict!
We might die trying, but our cry must be "The Truth No Matter What!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
For such a long time, I have accepted things the way there were handed to me. "You are a child of drug abusers, therefore you are trash." "You do not do things my way, therefore I am better than you." "There is only one way to do things, everyone elses." "You came from nothing, therefore you are nothing."
There have been alot of people and processes in my life that have forced me to look at myself and question things. But this blog, has been very instrumental in that process. I can't just put people on pedastals and let them feed me whatever they think, I have to know what I know for myself. It is in my nature to question, and for way too long I have swallowed that and pretended to be someone else. No longer!
So, what?!? I actually have to say something? Well, I guess this is a start... SOMETHING!
Being the youngest in my family, it was more like, "How dare you think for yourself! You're supposed to do and think what I tell you!"
So this in itself, is challenging and liberating at the same time. Finding out that the answer is not just in everybody else, but also in ME, is something I'm still learning to grasp.
Post a Comment