1) Smartphone integration

Let’s start with an easy one.  The smartphone is becoming a ubiquitous tool, and their usage will extend to pretty much every aspect of our lives over the next five years.  Indeed, you can make a solid argument that for many of us it’s already there.  What we are going to see is a complete integration with our daily activities, and there’s a lot of thoughts out there on the future of smartphone design and utility.

The smartphone will become a more regular form of contactless payment. Coupled with access to your spending habits through other means such as loyalty programmes, your shopping experiences will be tailored to your presence in a store even before you step inside.  This data will enable stores to directly highlight particular new items or deals that you are likely to be interested in, and indicate them and their in-store location to your handset.  The extension of advertising will be used to entice you into stores as you walk by, and a number of sleek and attractive interfaces that collect this data from various sources in the one place will be designed to ensure that the information is neither annoying or overwhelming.

Fast food, restaurant and supermarket purchases will be made even faster, and indeed we’re already seeing these kind of applications, and the concept of a separate loyalty card will become obsolete as you will develop separate accounts for the many different stores that you purchase items for and they will all be stored via your smartphone in the ever-widening data cloud that moves with you.

The connectivity will continue as you travel, and will interface with the more comprehensive systems in place in your home and office.  We’re already seeing the emergence of voice-recognition interaction whilst driving, and this is starting to be coupled with the streaming of your smartphone interface in your car’s dashboard.  By the time you enter your home, the movements and updates from a day’s worth of digital interaction will already be synced with your home network and your focus will then shift over to the tablet as the central hub device.  The key word here is integration, and the smartphone provides the key to integrating all of your movements with your digital homespace; whilst vice versa assimilating your digital identity with the various work and leisure spaces you engage with as you move through the day.

2) Smart TVs and the integrated home entertainment system

We’re starting to hear a lot more now of ‘Smart TVs’, and within the next five years this is something that is likely to gain considerable momentum.  This will go beyond merely the internet-connectivity notion of ‘Smart TV’ that currently dominates the marketplace, with moves towards a more interactive and personal experience.  If the thought of your TV having a motion and sound sensor attached to it bothers you somewhat, consider already the move into this arena with the likes of Microsoft’s Kinect.  At the very least, your television is going to become a much more responsive and dynamic medium then the passive role it has played up until this point – and this will be coupled with it responding to your face, movements and words.

Hard media such as DVDs or Blu-Rays will be on the way out at the top end of the market, and instead this content will be streamed directly to your television through high-bandwidth internet connections.  This will negate the need for any kind of storage space, as all of it will be on the cloud, and will also negate the need to have separate boxes of hardware sitting under your TV.

The videogame platforms of the future will be subscription based services (a present example of which is the OnLive platform that, although not without teething problems, is a solid proof of concept).  Digital distribution models in general will be pushed strongly, as they overcome the primary developer concerns of piracy and second-hand sales eating into profits.  When this integration occurs, you can expect to see Microsoft release a television and Sony will push big for this move as they face rapidly decreasing profit margins and market share.  There’s more news recently of the Google TV service, and there have been rumours of a dedicated Apple TV floating about for a while.  A move into this area from the king of consumer confidence-building will push the whole thing into overdrive.

We’re not going to see this eventuate completely within the next five years; but the foundations are already in place and are waiting primarily for bandwidth and consumer demand.  Streaming movies and music in particular will gain a lot of momentum, and these systems will be built directly into televisions rather than require separate boxes or equipment.  The next generation of videogame consoles will still follow the traditional model, but I’d hazard a guess that the generation after that will move away from physical media and pricey-to-produce hardware in favour of cloud-based streaming services.

3) Social Media web-browsing

Facebook will release a web browser. That’s the short version.  It’s almost inevitable that there will be a successful attempt to frame our web browsing experience through our social media identity.  At the moment this relationship exists the other way around, but there will be a move to shift this perspective.  There are already attempts to do this, such as RockMelt backed by the founder of Netscape, but Google will likely soon lead the way with this as they attempt to salvage (or build upon, depending on your level of cynicism) Google + and the many other aspects of their online platform that they currently offer.  I’m surprised that Google hasn’t already built a version of Chrome around this concept, but it can’t be far off.

Because of how it has evolved, social media emerged as an online service; but the sphere has increasingly manifested as a digital platform in and of itself.  Facebook has been trying to extend its reach beyond the closed-doors of its community for a while now – see Facebook Comments and Recommendations as an immediate case in point.  In addition, we have the increasing use of geolocational and augmented reality aspects of social media that don’t require a traditional browser and rely instead on new mobile interface paradigms.  As we move towards a semantic web framework, the capacity for our social media identity to be the lens through which we view and contextualise disparate online elements will be pushed.  Our emotional attachment to social media identities will almost assure that a well-considered and designed attempt at this will succeed.

Obviously, such a move has the same worrying implications for online privacy that have already been highlighted over the last few years; but like many of these concerns they will be ignored by the majority of web users who choose convenience and accessibility over autonomy and privacy.  In addition, a great deal of time will be spent by companies such as Facebook and Google to build in genuine and secure privacy settings and data protection promises (whilst at the same time still promoting the idea of a true-identity web experience as preferable).  The alternative is for more open-sourced, decentralised developments to emerge; something which will no doubt occur but whether they can gain enough traction in the hearts and minds of the general public will be a contest worth paying close attention to.

4) Crowd-sourced Politics

We already have all of the technological components available to more accurately and widely canvas public opinion on various political and social agendas.  Over the last few years we’ve seen moves towards government petitioning systems in the US and elsewhere, and experimentation with forms of direct democracy that are facilitated via online platforms.

There will always be a demand for this kind of participation in decision making, and an increasing malaise if we continue to ignore this demand as evidenced by the inclusive aspirations of the Occupy movement (which have arguably begun to lose focus on this important issue, to their detriment).  Ultimately, representation of this sort can only really be brought to scale effectively through the ideological underpinnings working in close tandem with technological implementation.

What will distinguish such a platform from any other site that has come before (such as user-voted platforms likes Reddit or Digg) is that they will be legitimised by their relationship with both local community and government processes and such efforts will also become more ubiquitous in their usage.  Over the next five years, simple and secure polling systems that achieve large citizen uptake will broaden the validity of certain political positions and government programmes; Real-time, large-scale audience feedback to things such as political debates will become commonplace; and more complicated systems will be explored that could enable direct influence on an increasing number of future initiatives.  The path that Iceland has embarked upon represents this concept in direct action, and the We The People petition system in the US is experimenting with technological solutions.

In the end, problems will always arise when you rely solely upon basic majority rule systems, and therefore we need to develop a more nuanced concept of what direct democracy means.  What needs to be garnered from these recent experiments are some genuine and honest critiques of where the process works and, perhaps more importantly, where the idealism has failed to bring about truly productive results.  Expect a lot more work on this from many different areas over the next five years.

5) Data Architecture and Visualisation rises to the top

The exponentially growing levels of data in modern society is astonishing when you begin to get to grips with it.  We are now creating more data every day or two then we have collectively since the dawn of civilisation – let’s just let that sink in for a little bit.

The question now revolves around what we do with it all.  Most of the data surge comes from user-created content that many would argue has little value outside of the local contexts of the individuals creating and consuming it; but there are wider social trends available in this date.  Not least of which are the commercial avenues that data mining is capable of, and they have been discussed at length and will increasingly form the central profit model of many companies.

But in a more general sense, the need to make sense of vast amounts of raw data – to make it usable not just in an algorithmic sense (as in the case with data mining) but in a end-user, visually digestible manner.  Platforms are already in use, and increasingly being developed, to allow various sectors to more effectively harness the power of information.  The biggest push for this, as always, comes from the intelligence needs of military, police and government (GeoTime is a good example in regards to locational data).  From military intelligence, to helping solve local crimes, to creating more efficient public sector workflows; the correct and effective use of data will play a key role not just in the next five years but from here on out.

On a more individual level, the need to create interfaces and visual graphics that help us make sense of the growing amount of data in our own lives will become central – and in some ways will also be invisible.  This begins with filtering web searches, news feeds and other information streams according to your preferences and activity profile.  Extends into creative and inspiring ways of using data to more effectively put across information and ideas (this great talk from David McCandless at TED explores some of those uses and is definitely worth watching).  This is all driven by commercial applications for data mining and building effective platforms for companies to interface with the resulting information.

What we will see towards the end of the next five years is the culmination of this growing culture of data exchange into the public sphere.  The manipulation of digital data in its many guises is generally considered to be a subset of information technology.  The tools to put this into the hands of an increasing number of people will be developed and pushed over the next five years.  Consider the impact that software such as Photoshop or iMovie have had on the current media revolution, now extend that into the realm of data use and analysis and we can begin to see how important a role such things will play in the democratisation of data in the post-digital age.

Do you agree or disagree with these predictions, and what are the implications of them?  If you have any more five-year predictions to add, please do comment!

Unfortunately the exhibition was far too crowded, so it was difficult to get much time with any of the robots or their creators (it’s kind of hard to push your way passed wide-eyed kids enjoying an educational day out with their parents…).  However, one thing that was immediately apparent is that the more human-like or ‘cute’ the robot was, the bigger the crowd around it.

Whether it be intricate replications of human hands, all the way through to the Astroboy-like iCub (pictured here as it tracks and accepts a red ball – even showing signs of frustration in its eyebrows and mouth when teased with a constantly moving target), we are drawn to examples of robots that mimic our own attributes.  One of the robots was even specifically designed to work with this response, its’ cherubic face and ability to make eye-contact designed to test our perception of the robotic cute-creepy continuum.  I thought the eye-contact was a positive but felt that the baby face was a bit odd and disconcerting as it often held a blank stare.  There was also an example of a robot designed to help autistic children read social cues, probably the most appropriate example of a genuine need for child-like attributes.

So there’s something here about our fascination with cute robots, and more generally with android-style automatons.  Whenever I see my friends sharing a video about robots via social media, it’s invariably of the latest anthropomorphic creation and almost exclusively ‘cute’ in some way.

It’s understandable, we are hardwired to be interested in such forms.  But it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on where the line between machine and robot is for you, and whether that line is dependent upon human attributes (or more widely, the attributes of animate life-forms in general).

I’m taking a guess that most people use the term ‘robots’ to indicate a certain capacity for human attributes rather than recognising the robots that help us in the manufacturing process, which we would often label ‘machines’. Semantic though it is, that our definition of what constitutes a robot as opposed to a machine is influenced mainly by whether or not they have some resemblance of a face intrigues me.  Like many things, we have been heavily influenced by television and cinema in our understanding of robots; so it’s probably not surprising that our imagination tends to be relatively limited.

For example, Wall-E had to be given expressive capacity in the movement of his eyes before we found him adorable – and my use of a gendered possessive adjective to describe Wall-E gives away the game even further! I can’t bring myself to call Wall-E an it…because that somehow diminishes from the expressive, and sentient, existence that Wall-E encapsulates.  Upon ordering a Roomba-style robot floor cleaner recently (review will be forthcoming), one of the first thoughts is to stick eyes on it to heighten its cuteness.  I am actually more enamoured by the fact that it will have the capacity to map out the room, to respond to obstacles and self-regulate its need for energy, to mimic sentience even if only through an algorithmic simulacrum. But without the eyes, it just won’t quite reach peak awwwness.

So is it possible to create a new aesthetic not just for programmed robots but even for new forms of sentience? One that can be filled with identity and creative expression (I hesitate to use the word ‘personality’ here for obvious reasons) that we could relate to in a way that does not constantly assess the level of similarity to ourselves.  As we strive to make robots more like us, is an opportunity being missed to widen our emotion of empathy away from its genetic imperative?  Of course, we find it difficult to imagine possibilities because our experience of sentience is relatively limited.  But that doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there to create new links and expand our concepts and cognitive domains.

My thinking along these lines is too new and raw to be of much use at this stage, so I would welcome thoughts from anybody reading this and please do comment below – even better, if you can point to some examples of robotic research and engineering being done in these kind of areas.  It strikes me that an aspect of this will be in truly decentralised communication and co-ordination possibilities, something which immediately brings the capacity of robotics beyond the confines of how we usually experience life in our daily existence.  Another possibility lies in modular technology, that allows form to be dynamic and sentience to adapt itself to different environmental and locational paradigms that fixed physicality cannot.

Ultimately, however, the change might have to come from our own perception of the robots and machines we create and how we relate to them.  It’s not easy (to say the least!) to bypass deeply embedded evolutionary traits that instinctively equate sentience and individuality with aspects such as a recognisable ‘face’, responsive body language, recognisable vocal patterns or concepts of rationality based upon the human condition.

As we begin to more and more closely assimilate artificial intelligence with highly advanced engineering we should not see ourselves as limited by the biological necessities that have previously created a boundary for physical existence and the expression of identity.  Although I can, of course, recognise the technical challenge and milestone that such efforts represent; we should always be striving to widen our horizons and embrace ever more progressive creative potential.

It’s often been said that in the future we will be able to embed intelligence into all of our technology.  Forms of sentience will multiply exponentially, and will eventually even be able to autonomously create new forms of life that are even further removed from their biological ancestry.  The field of robotics represents movement into identity formed by the basic foundational physics of the universe coming into collision with the heights of creative expression that humanity embodies, eventually bypassing the traditionally understood mechanisms of biology and requiring entirely new social and evolutionary paradigms.

We can no longer simply presume that our understanding of being, based on biological cognitive architecture, is equipped to deal with these newly changing boundaries of sentience never before encountered.   In the relatively near future, we will need to widen our capacity to recognise individuality, rationality and sentient existence whilst finding new ways to enter into relationships with entities that we may have been the progenitors of; but that will eventually be our peers.

Because of this, we have ultimate power over our future existence; but this also means we have a responsibility to act collectively towards a higher mode of being.

The revolution begins now, with you.

Active and vocal resistance such as the Occupy Wall Street movement and its global counterparts must be supported wholeheartedly, but such expression is only one component of the transition that can occur once we hold as sacred our ability to connect and share. An uprising of the 99% is not a call for violent revolution – unless in explicit contexts of violent oppression – but is instead a sign that the global community is beginning to embrace a new way of being. Wherever possible this must manifest through peaceful means that embody the true depth of human communication rather than revert to the easily accessible hatred and anger that our primal instincts might instill within us.

Our focus should be on formulating a collective understanding of the ‘common good’ and how it relates to corporations, governments and communities. Discuss privately and publicly what it means to better these areas; how one can identify and encourage such behaviour; what alternatives or options might exist and how they might allow us to grow and evolve into the multitude of different contexts and forms that transform society.

As a society we have to better understand the difference between desire and need, to recognise when we have enough of a personal share and it is time to distribute of ourselves to others in greater need. Our demand is that we renew society around a central proposition of fairness and equality, arrived at through transparent representation, rather than remain with the status quo that often serves only the needs of a self-perpetuating elite.

We must not dismiss the true hardship of life that countless face, barely finding the capacity to eke out a meagre existence within the current order. Nor should we ever allow ourselves to forget that almost half the planet lives on the equivalent of $2 a day, experiencing difficulties that many of us cannot even fathom. But we must recognise that to make demands of an amorphous and unaccountable ‘They’ will not bring about the revolutionary change that is needed in the very fabric of society in order to ensure a fair and just future for all. Injustices should always be fought against within specific contexts and towards particular guilty parties; but the wider movement overall must focus on proactive progression towards equality and liberty that transcends national borders and uplifts the exploited rather than focuses too narrowly on tearing down the impenetrable.

We cannot progress on opposition alone, for we must also provide the solution and become an active participant in its manifestation. The momentum being gained through the current physical expression of discontent must be harnessed and utilised to bring about a positive change in the many and varied structures of global society. You are the revolution!

In order to see progress we have to start acting upon our grievances, for it is only through action that we can improve our understanding of goodness and life; of justice and peace. Embrace openness, and always maintain the peaceful composure of genuine fraternity whilst not holding back from standing up to those who attempt to break down the bonds of society. The 1% are not to be identified through a bank account balance, but rather those working actively against the common good, looting the global community in order to ensure dominance, and rejecting transparency in instances where openness will benefit a large proportion of society.

Where are the practical suggestions behind these words of idealism? Even whilst reading this you are already imagining them, picturing them each to your own context and capacity. You already know what to do, or at the very least how to make a start. Particular actions can’t be dictated to you, because the reality is that a truly revolutionary movement must find its birth in all of us. By doing so it manifests across all social strata and circumstance and builds strength through the bridges formed between different local situations. Transformative power emerges from the unique perspectives of all those who participate. The one thing you must do now is start participating with open sincerity and pure intention.

The popular occupation movement cannot in and of itself lead to the change demanded, but what it does very successfully is galvanise those who hear its message from the influence of a deeply corrupted system. A system that promotes narcissism over compassion and thrives on our capacity to feel powerless and apathetic amongst the distractions and noise of modern life. Stand in peaceful unity when you see such a movement emerge in your locality, but know that you do not do this just to represent your own particular beliefs and values; you do this to change the world for the better of all that wish to see humanity flourish in its diversity.

No matter what community you identify with, you have a sense of what it means to belong and an empathy that can extend its membership beyond the immediate and increase your networks. Always seek to widen your capacity to give and receive. Be emboldened by the magnificence of life and the miraculous nature of creative endeavour.

It is important that we overcome the disgraces of the modern world with a joy that signifies our hope in the inherent goodness of humanity. An uprising of this nature means nothing if we will merely fall back onto the old tropes of xenophobic tribalism and selfish endeavour. True activism requires one to shift the entire momentum of their life and to shift it in such a way that maximises positive impact in whatever context we find ourselves in.

Do not reject authority outright, do not fall into the trap of blind anti-authoritarianism that often serves to weaken the possibility of representation and participation. Strive for ownership of government, not rejection of it. Recognise that government exists in a wider sense than just the halls of parliament, and that we are all guardians of a just and honest society. Radicalism for its own sake runs the risk of serving up change without true form, of revolution without recreation. It also runs the risk of playing into the very hands of those who seek to oppress this movement by undermining the deeper and wider message of participation that it represents.

It is vital to keep a strong basis of peaceful solidarity and not be goaded into actions that undermine the core message. Aggression must sometimes be used against particular injustices in order to overcome their influence, however true systematic change cannot be predicated on hostility but must rather be built upon foundations of charity. To stand together arm in arm, literally and figuratively, is to create a unified solidarity that will embolden those who come into contact with it. It will allow and encourage them to make the changes in their lives that are required on an individual level, across millions and millions of people, in order to make a lasting difference.

This is why, if nothing else, it is your duty to identify that you are part of the 99% and that you do so not just because you are angry but because you are hopeful. There is no fixed political message, no ideology or dogma other than an acceptance that the way forwards is to be built upon equality, openness and mutual understanding. Be very wary of those who would seek to undermine this message with calls for violence based upon hatred, for they are either seriously misguided or attempting to provoke you away from productive action.

The moment to physically stand up and be heard is right now, but what must come afterwards requires a concerted effort to move the message beyond the picket lines and into the heart of our collective being. It’s about recognising how to actualise the capacity for charity and compassion that the wisest throughout history have promoted as the peak of human endeavour.

We must continue to be vigilant against injustice, but at the same time also accept some responsibility for allowing such grievances to occur in the first place.  We must stand in solidarity alongside the vulnerable and exploited around the world, but at the same time recognise that standing alone is not the only action needed. Once we have accepted this responsibility we can make a solemn commitment to no longer be culpable either through action or inaction. This will be the watershed moment that brings about a true revolution and recreation of society.

We are the 99% and there is no need to expect us because we are already here. Those who make decisions and act contrary to the tenets of goodness, justice and equality are not afraid of resistance; they are afraid that we might realise that they can be ignored and sow the seeds of a new form of social existence. Now is not the time to tear down the 1%. Now is the time to make them irrelevant.

For more information see United for Global Change – 15th October 2011 and Occupy Together

Out of This World (Science Fiction: but not as you know it) puts together many of the most ground-breaking examples of science fiction literature that have seen print (and even a few that were never published), and for an exhibition consisting almost entirely of books its impact is commendable.

The interpretation team at the British Library have always been adept at making books fascinating, providing some great historical and ideological context around them, but they have really excelled with this latest exhibition that explores the history of science fiction and its visionary themes.

Of course, science fiction and futurist thinking go hand-in-hand and until recently you could have argued that they were one and the same.  It is this aspect that the exhibition focused on, and did so very well, in that it was for the most part showing how it has been through science fiction that we have dealt with pressing ethical and technological issues even before they become reality.  In many instances, it is the works themselves that bring about the eventual invention in a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.

Amongst the many fantastically looked after tomes – including a couple of Philip K Dick first editions, which made this author particularly happy – were numerous examples of humanity’s capacity to foresee and attempt to deal with problems both pressing and far off into the future.  In fact, there was a distinct focus in the exhibition in drawing in many early texts to show that even though we consider science fiction to be a relatively new genre of literature; its roots actually lie in authors exploring issues of social cohesion and political possibilities (Thomas Moore’s Utopia being a particular highlight that lends its namesake to an entire field of futurist thinking).

The exhibition was a good illustration of categorical thinking in interpretation – so instead of taking us on a chronological journey through science fiction it explored instead the different forms that thinking within the genre have taken.  Everything from our desire to journey to the stars, fear of alien invaders, visions of future dystopias, paranoid landscapes of urban modernity, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and many other sub-genres were represented.  If anything, it was a fantastic overview of just how broad a genre science fiction really is; exploring every aspect of the human condition from warfare to romance, isolation to communal expression.

It was a great example of how exhibitions can be constructed that go beyond objects and extend out to present a tapestry of ideas.  A book is a book is a book (well, except maybe the special edition of Flatland on display), but every single one of them contained a different universe of possibility that enticed you to contemplate further the realities they were presenting.  Many of the older books, of course, had magnificent prints and imagery to accompany the text; and seeing depictions of future technology throughout the ages, and how much it differs and yet is the same, was a true highlight of the exhibition.  Even just going through and reading short summaries of the plots of books, many of which I had never even heard of, was enough to fill a futurist thinker with ideas for the rest of their natural life (and even more thoughts of what form an unnatural life might take).

Around this were a number of videos, as well as some great interactive elements that show modern exhibition design at its best.  Kids of all ages were invited to draw their visions of aliens into a computer, which were then to be seen projected en masse up on a big screen in all their technicolor glory (presumably moderated to weed out penis monsters).  There were some fantastic, mood setting sculptures around the place; but my favourite had to be the Turing Test demonstration where you could interact with an A.I. in an attempt to recreate the complexities of human conversation.  The older man at the terminal next to me had a lengthy conversation about the difference between being and speaking English, something which he was determined to get the computer to understand to amusing effect.

Wonderful stuff, and a real treat to see futurist thought presented in such a mainstream context, but unfortunately the exhibition has now ended (I know, what a tease of a post right?!).  Thankfully, an absolutely magnificent book was produced to go alongside the exhibition.  It’s a true labour of love and any science fiction fan will want to get their hands on a copy (if you buy through the link to the left you support Future Conscience along the way!).

If this is a sign of future exhibitions at the British Library then I can’t wait, as it was an almost perfect example of how modern exhibition interpretation can combine with a subject holding infinite imagination to truly inspire those who visit towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the universe around them.

Combine this with the impact that something like WikiLeaks has had on the relationship between government, corporations and people; or in a more tangible sense the ongoing results of the ‘Arab Spring’ that is shifting political lines all over the Middle East.  Even such visceral things such as how we conduct warfare are changing dramatically.  All of this before we even get to the most pressing paradigm shift for most people: the changing of Facebook and their new timeline concept.

Each one of these would be impacting in its own right, and yet we are witnessing many of them occurring at the same time.  The final result of this avalanche of paradigm shifts and the abolishment of so many of our sacred cows is still very much up in the air, and for the most part it seems  we are all blindly trundling through it with no clear end-point in mind.  Where we will end up, nobody knows, and all of this just at the beginning of the 21st century.

Of course, paradigm shifts are a natural part of the social evolution of humanity and have occurred throughout history – there is nothing new about having our world altered irrevocably by new information or the escalation of events.  The difference that we will face in the 21st century, unlike any other that has come before, is that our ability to create and process new information is accelerating exponentially.  When this is combined with the exponential growth in our ability to share sentiment and ideology, the basic recipe for increasingly regular systematic change is present here and now.

Amongst a lot of the chaos that these shifts are harbingers of, our ability to reconcile them with our old viewpoints and move forwards is what dictates how smoothly and comfortably any change is likely to occur.  Without flexibility in this regard, we will face increasing turmoil and conflict on a global scale; and it could easily reach the point where the social contract breaks down entirely because the tools necessary to continue moving and creating in times of such rapid and all-encompassing change are not widely available.

What is required here is a more concerted effort to move beyond modern information and communication networks and back into areas of true engagement with society.  Rapid change will not only be facilitated by our technology, but also our ability to properly process it within the structures of modern society and will depend on each of us understanding our own limitations and developing an openness to interact with the wider context of human diversity.

We must ensure that we do not hold stubbornly onto our own paradigm commitments, whatever context they might be in, if the data available – combined with collective sentiment based on philosophical discourse – points starkly to a new direction to be forged.  This can occur across any field of study, for any model of behaviour or social structure, any concept of identity or even – as we approach an era of transhumanist possibility – our perception of what it means to be human.  We cannot merely replace one stubborn commitment for another, but must move towards a more pluralistic understanding of the construction of reality and our creation of the role/s that we are able to play within it.

This extends beyond ourselves and out onto the larger organism of society that we collectively create, where the advantage of adaptability sits at the core of long-term survival and progression.  This is not to be taken purely in an evolutionary-biological sense, since one of the major shifts to occur will be how we embrace a post-biological direction of human evolution.  Rather, we must create a true and widespread sense that success and flourishing becomes increasingly available the more one is able to adapt their ideology quickly to an ever changing environment without completely abandoning their sense of identity of wellbeing.  There is nothing easy at all about how we must respond to this unknown landscape of human endeavour; for it will rely upon a degree of measured behaviour based on principles of empathy and dialogue that has never manifested on a global scale at any point yet in human history.

We must embrace change and yet at the same time ensure that those who cannot are not marginalised to the point of extinction.  Let us not forget that in many instances (Facebook being the trivial, farcical example) these shifts impact us in the context of an existential crisis of mundane luxury  - the domain of those that fate has blessed with being born into a lifestyle of relative comfort and possibility.  Most of these paradigm shifts – consider here that of massive climate change – will have profound impacts on the truly marginalised and vulnerable around the world.

Let us never overlook in this blur of activity those who live in extreme poverty, often for no reason other than they are victims of circumstance; oppressed by the very systems that we rely upon for our own sense of peace and abundance.  Large swathes of the global population may not even be explicitly aware of what is occurring on the global stage, but they will undoubtedly be greatly affected by the negative impact of such shifts if we allow them to overwhelm us through negligence, greed or narcissism.  Hopefully we can see a collective impact on the global landscape that drastically reduces such instances of true and lasting hardship; but it can only come if we embrace those shifts which lead us closer to the ideals of empathy and compassion and reject those which promote a regression to tribalism, narrow-mindedness and exploitation.

Which is why it is vitally important, now more than ever, to become actively involved in the direction of humanity.  We have access to more information, more communication and more inspiration than ever before; and yet so many of us are willingly distracted away from the possibility of creating change and instead buy into the visions of paradigm commitment and avoidance of responsibility that will challenge our very ability to survive the 21st century.

It is time to start paying attention, because if we don’t we will be subsumed by the changes brought about through our inattentive stumbling towards the future.  True liberty requires true engagement with global society, helping to collectively shape and form our future according to the highest ideals of freedom and equality.  This is not to chase some unattainable utopian ideal, but rather to recognise that where a potentiality exists for common good we must strive to actualise it.  Human history has always been dynamic, but in the past it has been at a pace that the very structures of society can keep up with.  The issue that we face, if we cannot develop a new ultra-adaptive framework of being on a global scale, is that we will become as a species irrelevant in our own history – consumed by our drive forwards until we no longer have any agency whatsoever.