Image by Ms.
Vasundhara GH
When we look at the evolution of humanity till date, we discover many interesting aspects of it. One prominent characteristic of humanity is craving for not just satisfying basic needs in own life span but also to provide comfort & luxuries for the forthcoming generations! In my view, this unique capability, result of evolution for millions of years, enables us to thrive on the planet, ... and probably helps us to colonize the rest of the universe in future.
Humanity has been on the quest for prosperity since millennia. In that collective perennial pursuit, we, Homo sapiens, have made very significant progress so far. The progress towards prosperity has progressively accelerated till now, punctuated by disastrous downfalls due to natural calamities, wars … and, probably far more frequently, due to sheer collective ignorance, arrogance & incompetence!
The history of different societies, civilisations, cities, states, nations … also indicates intermittent thriving of humanity, not necessarily everybody benefit to the same extent, but definitely, we have collectively moved in positively progressive direction. We have definitive clues about the last few millennia about the civilizations, which shaped our current status. We have very sketchy details of the earlier period, except for the evidences at archaeological sites all over the world including pyramids, Stonehengs, ... various remains of the societies long forgotten. While the last two millennia of humanity can be traced more definitively because of easy access to verifiable multiple recordings.
Image by Mr. Hrishikesh GH
Right at the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Kelvin pronounced …
Radio has no future. X-rays are clearly a hoax. The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.
Lord Kelvin was echoed by, across the Atlantic by Albert Michelson, a Nobel Laureate as follows:
The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.
(Source:
Light Waves and Their Uses. By Albert A. Michelson. Published by The University of Chicago Press, 1903, pp 23-25. Albert Michelson was the first American Physics Nobel Laureate in 1907 for measuring the speed of light.
It is a good sign that humanity was on the cusp of flourish and prosperity at the beginning of the last century of the last millennium. It also indicates that, even the wisest of the period were dazzled by the scientific & technological developments for to the Scientific Revolution followed by the emergence of Industrial Revolution. Hence they were quite convinced that further inventions and discoveries were not possible. Those also reflect the mood of the time. The mankind was smugly, with beaming over confidence, was looking forward to glorious days ahead, basking in the glory of the flurry of inventions & discoveries, in addition to the prosperity delivered to the brave & bountiful due to the technological progress.
But we ended having two World Wars within the first half of the last century with the added curse of the global pandemic in the second decade of the last century!
By the end of the 20th century, humanity, all over the world, was pretty much connected in unified pursuit of prosperity with the aim to flourish together, separated due to various barriers, be they,- nationality, culture, polity, society, ...,- but connected through internet, which was originally intended to address the worst situation of complete communication breakdown due to the worst calamity!
By now, humanity has achieved the distinction of thriving over all other species while being aware of the possible threats to our home, Mother Earth. In addition, we have realized our collective responsibility of taking care of Mother Earth, while exploring the potential lifeforms and livable 'Goldilocks' planets, if ever the need arises to colonize.
Recently, I went through Serendipity Mindset, excellently postulated by Dr. Christian Busch. (My review is on
http://adventuresinbmterrain.blogspot.com/2021/03/serendipity-mindset-primer-to-sixth.html) Dr. Christian Busch’s timely Serendipity Mindset presents us many ways to identify & leverage Serendipity to our advantage to deliver greater value to the society, to ultimately gain from such value creation. Being a Serendipitor, doesn’t just stop at a serendipitous discovery or an innovation, one needs to have Tenacity & Sagacity to deliver synergetic value by leveraging the network effects facilitated through the social media, both online and offline! I like to go another step forward, which, I believe was implicit that the Serendipitors need to have the prepared mind to size and seize the serendipitous outcomes! The prepared mind of the Serendipitors can only be ready through competence, comprehension, compulsions and more importantly, the Compelling Collective Vision!
In my view, diffusion of all the technological innovations necessitated the formulation of Business Management innovations. The last century saw many management innovations shaping the business world. Evolution of management theories & processes and resultant systems were largely innovative blend of discoveries & inventions in almost all the fields.
If we look at the state of humanity in the first two decades of the third millennia, we have gone through quite interesting times while getting ready for more interesting, rather exciting times!
Recently, I went through Vaclav Smil’s Growth. He has almost exhaustively & comprehensively growth. Two of my insights I like to share from the book are as follow:
1) Everything which can be measured physically & quantitatively had been identified and our thought processes are attuned to this reality hence it's very difficult to collectively (even tools aren't there to measure this!) imagine future growth in qualitative, subjective & creative dimensions. And fortunately, that's where the further progress lies.
2) Certain fields like harnessing nuclear energy have hit the feasibility, viability, safety limits. Hence, we aren't able to achieve the euphoric growth projections in those fields! It's as if we have reached an insurmountable barrier, while we all got struck by a flashlight of infinite inspiration.
Recently, I came across the essay, The Empty Brain by Robert Epstein.
The following quote of the essay, in my view, is the fulcrum and the essence.
Forgive me for this introduction to computing, but I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception by algorithms.
Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?
The insights I gained from the article are as follow:
Collectively, we have been trying to understand the mystery of the universe since millennia. We have been fairly successful, through centuries, in modelling, comprehensively capturing the essence,- of the physical universe around us. And whenever we have broken,- rather we felt ‘we have broken’, ‘new grounds', in understanding the mechanics & dynamics of the physical universe; we have triumphantly moved ahead to model our minds, and the physical representation of our minds, our brains! And in addition, we have limited and chained our minds within the new boundaries. Interestingly, we get ‘encumbered’ within those new ‘breakthrough’ limits!
In my view, we get stuck in a stupor (I'm using stupor for the want of a better word!) for considerable period, especially while enjoying the benefits of the new breakthrough Innovations.
Then we enter into a territory that the emergence of new innovations will hurt us, once we reach ‘singularity’!
In a way, we have crossed those ‘singularities’ many times over millennia until the Renaissance. And afterwards, we have successfully crossed many more singularities, over centuries until the last decades of the last century of the last millennia. In my view, now we have reached a stage wherein we are going to breach, rather self imposed and much dreaded, singularities in decades! This may sound like a bold utterance now. But I'm sure, it may look unimaginative and probably too mild for the posterity! I look forward to that time, which may emerge shortly.
All the thoughts I have gone through above signals a new beginning. Humanity, unbeknownst to itself has entered into intractable path of Prosperity. There is a new paradigm which awaits us. I think this new paradigm before us is Prosperity Paradigm.
And this Prosperity Paradigm is hidden in plain sight in bright daylight because of involuntary inattention to it due to complexities of the stark ground realities and our own encumbrance of our minds because of the dazzling effects and benefits of the preceding breakthrough innovations, all around us.
Image by Mr. Hrishikesh GH
