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[Darvi]

You.

Me.

This moment.

[Scelly9]

You.

Me.

This moment.

So, it has come to this.

[Loud Whispers]

That feel when it has come to this.

[kaijyuu]

This it so has come to.

[ChairmanPoo]

on this very special night

[Scelly9]

Come this to so

[Loud Whispers]

Even now it has still come to this.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, there have been major changes going on forever.  Yeah, the pace of change is increasing.  What I'm saying is we're potentially on the verge of change as fundamental as the founding of the first cities, as the human race transitioned from hunter-gatherer to sedentary lifestyles.  Except this change will happen much, much faster, if it happens at all.  A large portion of the tensions we feel in today's society I see as manifestations of single aspects of the struggle between social powers and concepts entrenched in the current establishment against their own irrelevance in the emerging context.  I do think it's mostly a result of communications technologies, but it's not just about awareness.  It's giving us new ways to organize and understand one another, and demolishing realities that have informed cultural paradigms for at least 10,000 years.

[Montague]

You mean how some no-budget film on the internet can make thousands of third-worlders across the world, thousands of miles away, go riot and burn their neighborhoods down?

That, I think is rather unprecedented. Unless you are talking about whatever, computing singularity or whatever that is.

[SalmonGod]

That's an example of one very significant new reality.  I think an even bigger one is that flat social structures are becoming more organizationally dynamic and efficient than hierarchies.  A well-networked, leaderless crowd of people can intelligently react to a situation on any scale faster than information and orders can pass down through a chain of command in a hierarchy.  This overturns much of the logical basis for a style of social organization that has thus far been a core, defining feature of civilization.

[GoombaGeek]

"there already starting too"
"Over in that location... already starting! Starting already, as well! Just like us!"

[Scoops Novel]

Congratulations, you have described every year for the past 150 or so years.

Too right :L. This may or may not have been influenced by just reading and absorbing the long earth, which you should read now, and thinking about things i haven't thought about before. To be honest, so, it has come to this.

[Wayward Device]

That's an example of one very significant new reality.  I think an even bigger one is that flat social structures are becoming more organizationally dynamic and efficient than hierarchies.  A well-networked, leaderless crowd of people can intelligently react to a situation on any scale faster than information and orders can pass down through a chain of command in a hierarchy.  This overturns much of the logical basis for a style of social organization that has thus far been a core, defining feature of civilization.

Heh, after reading this summation of the paradigm shift caused by the exponential growth in communication technologies my first thought was "How can I use this new power for evil?". My second was that I have a good chance of spending my old age either watching as well armed yet unstructured, amorphous militias hunt down the last of the global elite or hunting for tinned food in the radioactive ruins of civilization, possible with an awesome muscle car, sawn off shotgun and dog of disputable breed.

The future is bright.     

[Eagleon]

"If all the world's oceans were filled with gasoline, sooner or later some lunatic would throw in a lit match" - some person. Pretty much my feeling on the way technology is heading. Things are getting a lot more Orwellian in America, with the military catching up with modern IT - UAV drones being used by police, that giant Utah datacenter, ACTA and its relentless ratification despite all signs of being opposed by everyone but corporate interests, etc, etc. At the same time, we've never been closer to never having to worry about existential or even personal threats again.

So yeah, I'd be surprised if nanotechnology, genetics, private spaceflight, and/or AI in combination with social instability didn't destroy or reshape the world in our lifetime. I wouldn't say I'm a singularitarian anymore, but it's one possibility.

[Agdune]

I think an even bigger one is that flat social structures are becoming more organizationally dynamic and efficient than hierarchies. A well-networked, leaderless crowd of people can intelligently react to a situation on any scale faster than information and orders can pass down through a chain of command in a hierarchy. This overturns much of the logical basis for a style of social organization that has thus far been a core, defining feature of civilization.

You seem to have put the world "intelligent" in there for some reason. I don't think it belongs there. See: any group discussion/event/congregation ever. People are fucking morons in groups; they feed each other crap which prompts others to feed each other crap and it turns into a giant megaphone of crap.

I'm not saying more mob-rule is unlikley (in fact, quite the opposite, i think it's going to become more common as technology progresses), but I just think it's important to point out that it's probably not intrinsically a particularly good thing. Y'know, yay lynch mobs, moral hysteria and totally insane reactionary nonsense and all that.