|
|
|
|
The next century will be the century in which the unity of the human species will occur. Due to the change of technical system, the future can no longer be thought as a continuation of the past. Our era presents two radically new modes of operation, never before experienced by humankind, in its two million years of its existence.
¥ The first one is the ability to instantaneously communicate from one end of the planet to the other. By the first quarter of the next century, communication will become audio-visual, and will reach even the most disadvantaged groups of people. Almost all countries will cross the threshold of ten telephone lines per one hundred inhabitants before 2020. This web of communication means it will no longer be possible to control civil society. The very concept of power will have to be reconsidered.
Following industrial society, we will be entering into the cognitive civilization. Now, to each technical state specific forms of organization correspond: for the hunters-gatherers, the tribe; for the farmers, the village and feudalism; for industry, the large company and the Nation-State. For this new technical system, the normal form of socialization is the small firm, and for community requirements , associations, foundations, local authorities and professional organizations. All these organizations are constructed and organized in line with cognitive needs. They must balance their accounts for fear of insolvency. They are the emanation of the human conscience, translated into volition. Each generation can create them, animate them, suppress them and reorganize them anew according to its own desires.
¥ The second mode of operation results from the perception of the limits of the world and the fragility of life. The last remaining wild forests are threatened. The perspective of their disappearance is a source of distress. After a period of unrestrained consumption, humans start to feel responsible and seek to limit energy wastage, pollution, to preserve flora and fauna and to heal the wounds of Nature.
Humanity is increasingly exercising birth control. Demography will be stable in a little less than a hundred years at around thirteen billion inhabitants, i.e. slightly more than double the present. It will be the century of the Feminine. The values of preservation of life, harmony and balance will become more important than the previous masculine values of conquest and authority, which fitted in with the periods of unbridled expansion of the Species.
While wo/man becomes definitively responsible for Nature, as its gardener, s/he also transforms it. It becomes a Techno-Nature. From now on, all the environment is recreated. It is imagination given form. The issue of technology now presents itself in other terms. It is no longer about just providing useful answers to specific needs, but about recreating conditions favourable to the spread of life in all its forms.
These two characteristics of our time, instantaneous communications and fragility of life, give birth to a planetary consciousness. At the same time, they call forth a continual re-creation of the world, focusing on innovation as the central question in controlling this poorly defined future. However, the culmination of this scenario of the next century, creative freedom, will occur only after a long march riddled with trials and tribulations.
At first, we will experience the disarray of the entertainment society. Reality shifts, infused by the media and virtual universes. The hyper-visibility of some is met by the invisibility of others : exclusion increases. The inner cities and deprived slums of the big cities swell on all continents. There are no longer rich countries and poor countries, but rich and poor people living within a hundred yards of each other, throughout the planet. Half of humanity lives in towns in 2005, and urbanization continues to grow to more than two-thirds of humanity, before receding.
Between 2010 and 2020, life in towns becomes so dangerous and inhuman that the ruling classes are forced to radically change their strategy, as they did in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. They no longer expect the "invisible hand of the market" to create miracles and get down to organizing planetary mass education and major redevelopment programmes. This marks the transition to an energetic and normative education society.
It is only in the third stage, towards 2060, that a rejection of the constraints and standards stipulated by this didactic society appears. Pressure is by then sufficient to liberate the imagination and move to a creative society.
Prior to the work of the new historical school, we believed that History - our History - consisted of struggles for power amongst the powerful, written in the blood of the battlefields. Tribes, followed by Empires and then States, were the players. It was a History of spectaculars "an absurd tale, full of tremor and fury, told by an idiot". Then we believed it was written in the struggles for liberation of peoples against their oppressors... until they placed themselves under the yoke of new, even more abusive powers. But that kind of history is only the most visible part of history, the emerged tip of the iceberg. The rise of communications is silently dissolving it. This really is the "end of History", or rather the transition to a planetary civic society in which the actors are entrepreneurial bodies.
We should not regret the fading of the powers that be. They were primarily abusive, and still will be for some time. But more than that, this mutation means that institutions are no longer regarded as sacred. Tribes, Empires and Churches used to impose themselves on humans. They pre-existed their birth and survived their death. Each individual person had little influence on their course. From now on, all organizations can be remodelled and are even mortal. It is up to each generation to confirm, invalidate or reorientate them. Institutions have no other legitimacy than the energy of those who give life to them.
Thus from the point of view of the Human Species, we are not seeing the end of History but its beginning. Our Species' Odyssey starts now.
The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, Norman Myers, Pan Books Ltd, London, 1985
Human Development Report, United Nations Development Program, New York, 1994.
State of the World 1995, Lester R. Brown, World Watch Institute, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, London, 1995.
Macro-engineering, Frank P. Davidson & Lawrence Meador, Ellis Horwood Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, England, 1992.
Our Common Future, Gro Harlem Bruntland, World Commission for Environment and Development, Oxford University Press, 1987.
The Next One Hundred Years, Jonathan Wiener, Bantam Book, 1990, New York.
Preparing the XXIst century, Paul Kennedy, Harper Collins, 1993.
The Ages of Gaïa, a biography of our living earth, James Lovelock, Norton, New York, 1988.
Planetary Service, a way into the third millenium, Eugen Rosenstock Huessy, Argo books, Norwitch, Vermont, 1978 ; 1990.
Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo, Jonathan Cape, London, 1969.
Powershift, Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the edge of the 21st century, Alvin & Heidi Toffler, Bantam Books, New York, 1990.
World Development Report, World Bank, Oxford university Press, 1994.
Surviving Failures, Paterns and cases of Project mismanagement, Persson, Bo (ed), Almqvist &Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1979.
The Mind's New Science, A History of the Cognitive Revolution, Howard Gardner, Basic Books, New York, 1985.
The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1985.
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, The Free Press, New York, 1992.
The Aquarian Conspiracy, Marilyn Ferguson, Box 42211, Los Angeles, Calif. 90042.
The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin, Random House, New York, 1983.
The Second Self, Computers and the Human Spirit, Sherry Turkle, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1984.
Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare, Paul Colinvaux, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1978.
Die Erfundene Wirklichkeit. Wie wissen wir, was wir zu wissen glauben ? Beitrage zu Konstruktivismus, Paul Watzlawick, Piper &Co Verlag, München, 1981,1985.
Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher, Blond & Briggs, London, 1973.
Energy for a sustainable world, Goldemberg, Johansson, Reddy, WilliamsWiley eastern Ltd, 1988, New Delhi.
Mindstorms, Children, computers, and powerful ideas, Seymour Papert, Basic Books, New York, 1980.
The High Frontier, Human Colonies in Space, Gerard K. O'Neill, Space Studies Institute Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1989.
Innovation Policies, An international Perspective, Gerry Sweeney, Six Countries Program, Frances Pinter, London, 1985.
The Intelligence Revolution, Report on the state of technology, CPE, A.Y. Portnoff, T. Gaudin, Gamma Institute, Montreal, 1988.
About the Author :
Thierry Gaudin was born in Paris in May 1940, to a family including entrepreneurs, scientists and journalists. In 1961, he graduated from the "Ecole Polytechnique", the internationally recognized French Engineering College and having achieved high honours was recruited in the civil service as an Engineer. He pursued further education at the "Ecole des Mines".
From 1970 to 1981, he was in charge of preparing an Innovation Policy at the Ministry of Industry. In 1974, with colleagues from Germany, Britain and Holland, he founded the Six Countries Program on Innovation Policies, an informal club enabling the exchange of research on the Innovation Process and the assessment of public or private innovation policies.
From 1982 to 1992, he created and managed the CPE (Centre de Prospective et d'Evaluation) at the Ministry for Research, center in charge of technological awareness, evaluation of research organizations and programs, and long term forecasting. At the beginning of the 90's, the CPE published the largest survey ever produced on next century forecasts, of which this volume is the first summary availiable in English.
Thierry Gaudin worked as an OECD expert and created the "Europrospective" congress in cooperation with the European Community Commission. He has published several books on innovation, technology, philosophy and on social sciences. Thierry Gaudin is one of the leading experts in Europe in the field of Innovation policies and long term forecasting.
He is now building the "2100.org", a Non Government Organization aimed at :
¥ promoting long term forecasting directed at decision makers.
¥ mobilizing professional skills from all countries to prepare programs for next century through the organization of Twelve Planetary Workshops, culminating in the Global Prospects Congress.