A Hurricane of Transformation Promises To Remake America in Time for Its 300th Birthday

We are in the early stages of a transformation so deep and wide that it will virtually lead us to a new civilization. This is far beyond just a period of modernizing or improving the times into which we were born. This shift is a process of such enormous and interlocked change that by the time we have finished adjusting to it, we will be in a profoundly different world.I have been working on a book about America’s Golden Age. It is focused on 2076 as we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.As I began looking out toward the world of 2076, I was stunned at how many different things were changing — and how profound many of these changes will be.After almost a year of thinking about 2076 — and researching different patterns of change to get a sense of what our world may be like — my conclusion is that we are entering a transformational hurricane. Just like a giant category 5 hurricane, the changes that are coming down the road are going to impact everything. We are going to find ourselves having to rethink a lot about the fabric of life and the principles which work and those which fail. Many of the events will be unpredictable — and many of the problems and opportunities will be so new and different that it will take time to recognize, analyze, and respond to them.After months of talking with people and reviewing trends that are already developing all around, it hit me that the most powerful driver of the change I am describing will be the synergistic effect of all these different changes interacting with each other.Some of this synergistic effect already exists, but we don’t talk about it much. Consider the underlying patterns that make possible a self-driving car or truck. One aspect of self-driving vehicles is the power of computerization. However, this computing power is made relevant by the worldwide network of satellites creating a communications web so dense it keeps track of you virtually every second. This scale of satellites is made possible by extraordinary technology miniaturization, which you can sense in your phone, and by the dramatic collapse — some 90 percent — in launch cost brought on by SpaceX’s development of reusable rockets.Yet what I just described is already today’s reality. We are on the verge of creating enough real-time communications that your car or truck knows where it is, what is around it, where it is going, whether or not there is an accident up ahead, whether there is an obstacle or delay based on construction, and whether or not the traffic patterns have been changed.When we move from a world in which people spend hours driving to one in which they simply give an address and then read, play games, work, sleep, or do whatever they want, a lot of things in our world start changing. Since Henry Ford invented the Model T as the world’s first low-cost mass-produced car, an entire industry and culture has developed. Now that world will transform once again. And in ways and forms we don’t really know at this time.When biological and medical breakthroughs enable you to be active and productive at 115 years of age, the average some longevity researchers believe will be possible for today’s 20-year-olds, how will this change everything we know about retirement? There is already a growth industry in cruise ships for retirees. This industry is virtually guaranteed to grow dramatically in the next half century.However, as Nick Eberstadt reported, there are at least 7 million young American males who have simply dropped out of the work force. They are not unemployed. They simply do not want to work. Somehow between the welfare state, various types of crime, and inherited assets, they simply live lives off the grid. So, we have more active people at 90 and fewer active people at 25 living side-by-side in the same communities.It is now realistic for a few young people to become millionaires, and for a smaller group to become billionaires, by simply being entertainment on various worldwide social media. This means there are millions and even billions who form a paying audience. A few pennies per event multiplied by millions of viewers and several events a week is creating social media stars and wealth as much as movies did in 1920 or television in 1950. In this reality, what is a career counselor supposed to counsel?The list of changes coming down the road is enormous and their synergistic, dynamic influence on each other is going to be enormous.Amid our current passing events version of news and politics, we badly need a national — and indeed global — dialogue about this hurricane of transformation and how we will adapt to it. It is coming whether we are ready or not.

A Hurricane of Transformation Promises To Remake America in Time for Its 300th Birthday

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