(January 11, 2008) Information overload and paradoxes are a part of this churning new era. A look at today’s daily links on Recruiting.com (Manners and Risks) shows a world in transition. If you want a specific piece of advice, it’s easy to find several conflicting opinions, many diametrically opposed to each other. More and more is written by people who know less and less. What was boorish behavior is now insight peddled by the latest celebrity whose clock is ticking off the allotted 15 minutes.
The now-conventional wisdom is that this is all a part of disintermediation, the collapse of old fashioned institutions in the face of superior technology. (In fact, I believe this is the case on most days.) The trends towards decentralized operations, global communications and radically thinned capital requirements in production seem inextricable from advances in technology.
The call and response nature of technology can be seen in the Museum at The Tower of London (the Armouries). The theory of disintermediation suggests that rather than an appropriate response to new technologies (bullets require bulletproof vests), we’ve reached a point where our new toys are producing an era of unprecedented democracy. It’s a good optimistic story with a happy ending for all good nerds. Technology saturation equals nirvana.
Doesn’t that seem just a little too easy?
John Sumser. – . © 2008 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA
