The world that is changed

The reality of what is new

In the information age everyone will have fame for five minutes. So goes an adage. It is not difficult to see how the change has occurred from the previous blog that narrated the times gone by from a lone wolf perspective.

It is not necessarily a leap from the past as mentioned there because lone wolf takes a stand from the agricultural, pastoral past to the present, but here were people who never saw the pastoral one rather an urban living for who the transition may not be that dramatic. But how does it change even the urban man of yore. Though change may be lesser for them there is some fundamental way in which things have changed.

First of all there are multiple channels of knowledge and if one prefers he can tune in to the one particular one that he is interested in and only to that and stay in his world. While it can create extreme specializations for the man it may also be used by say schools for better academic transfer of knowledge. For instance how do we make teaching interesting or how does a priest make church interesting. It is said that a certain priest used skateboards to communicate to the young just as the Salesian founder Vincet de Paul used youthful activities to attract the youth.

To me the most important change is the one of multiple realities that are emerging. It is not just a single reality of the past agricultural times that is relevant or present any more. There are munltiple realities and one could even chose the reality one wants or is inclined to.

Another one that is implied by the five minute glory is tht alternate nodes of the network can become the apex of the pyramid and therefore there is not necessarily a permanent Weberian pyramid. Which is to say that the concept of a permanent boss itself need not be. In fact this is something that the corporate are still not awakening to. Sure there is talk of two heads instead of one. Buth the idea that leadership is distributed and that there need not be an apex except a notional one that performance requires only temporary leaders who are willing to abdicate after the project is a new one perhaps the older generation shall never understand. One way of understanding it is the stepping down of Tony Blair and stepping in of Brown and now Cameroon.

So does the understanding of the multiple modes of knowing many of which stands to be underutilized or even pooh- pooed. There is the question that is asked as to how many sheep are left if one of them escapes from the pen through an opening. The answer is none. Mathematically the answer in n-1 but the reality is that there is none and this can come from only insights. Mathematics need not be sufficiently representative of the facts. Knowing Maths is definitely needed but having insights is even more. So does the story of the gypsies who are able to predict the cards although the sequence in which they find are not correct. To which the answer is that in their world there is no past present and future .

All this points to the world that is terribly altered perhaps for the better.