Archive for May 2009
Humanity: what makes you human
What is contextually The Fourth Wave ?
In his book, The Third Wave, first published in 1980, Alvin Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of ‘waves’. The advent of each new wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside.
First Wave is the society after the agrarian revolution and replaced the first hunter-gatherer cultures. Second Wave is the society during the Industrial Revolution (ca. late 1600s through the mid-1900s). The main components of the Second Wave society are nuclear family, factory-type education system and the corporation. Toffler writes: "The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy."
Third Wave is the post-industrial society. Toffler would also add that since late 1950s most countries are moving away from a Second Wave Society into what he would call a Third Wave Society. He coined lots of words to describe it and mentions names invented by him (super-industrial society) and other people (like the Information Age, Space Age, Electronic Era, Global Village, technotronic age, scientific-technological revolution), which to various degrees predicted demassification, diversity, knowledge-based production, and the acceleration of change.
Ever since the publication of The Third Wave, there has been speculation of what is or will be the contextual Fourth Wave in human society. Since the capabilities of the Third Wave via Information Age, Electronic Era and Global Village allow for individual opinion to be presented for review, discussion and scrutiny to any and all on the so called world wide web (which I actually refer to mankind’s tabula rasa), I will present my perspective on what I have been considering as the Fourth Wave.
The Fourth Wave is the untethered information ubiquity and access for all mankind.
The information age has facilitated access to all information, anywhere, anytime but still somewhat in a tethered i.e. wired environment when observed from a global perspective. Harmonization of wireless technology platforms combined with evolution and convergence of services and service enablers will result in the untethered availability of any information to anyone globally. This will be the great equalizer for mankind. The impact and implications of this revolution on human society are going to be exponentially greater than those of the agrarian, industrial or information revolutions as such.
The fact that the impact, of the prior waves or revolutions, has taken substantial time to permeate the entire planet has been one of the key drivers of man made inequality and inequity, which in turn has led to an imbalance of access, development, production, supply, demand and consumption of our planet’s resources. This fourth wave will permeate into human society at a relatively faster pace and will result in becoming the great equalizer for mankind. The implication is not that it solves the geo-political or socio-economic ills of human society but provides a platform that serves as an equalizer. It would be no different than the use of the "Atlatl" as early as the Upper Paleolithic age (c. 30,000 BC) by Homo Sapiens. The Atlatl, as a device, became the social equalizer in that it required skill rather than mere muscle power. Information will become available to all through the Fourth Wave as an equalizer. Best use of this information, to overcome lingering global inequality and inequity, will also depend more on skill rather than mere muscle power.
Power structure of the world will fundamentally change in the Fourth Wave. It will become increasingly more and more challenging to continue to overtly or covertly disenfranchise the mass of society from the actual control structure, from an intra-nation perspective. Global economic or political advantage, competitive and comparative, maintained through control on information will rapidly diminish and geo-political balance will evolve from an inter-nation perspective.
My above hypothesis got somewhat reinforced, when I read this following article that was published in The New York Times today.
May 9th, 2009
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A Pocket-Size Leveler in an Outsize Land
VERLA, India — Sometimes a technology comes along and crystallizes a cultural moment. Not since Americans and their automobiles in the 1950s, perhaps, have a people and a technology wedded as happily as Indians and their cellphones — small and big, vibrating and ringing, BlackBerry and plain vanilla.
And neither India nor the cellphone will be the same after the pairing. India now adds more cellphone connections than anyplace else, with 15.6 million in March alone. The cost of calling is among the lowest in the world. And the device plays a larger-than-life role here — more so, it seems, than in the wealthy countries where it was invented.
Of course, in so vast a country, India’s nearly 400 million cellphone users still account for only a third of the population. But the technology has seeped down the social strata, into slums and small towns and villages, becoming that rare Indian possession to traverse the walls of caste and region and class; a majority of subscribers are now outside the major cities and wealthiest states. And while the average bill, of less than $5 per month, represents 7 percent of the average Indian’s income, enough Indians apparently consider the sacrifice worth it: if present trends continue, in five years every Indian will have a cellphone.
What makes the cellphone special in India? It is partly that India skipped the land-line revolution, making cellphones the first real contact with the outside world for hundreds of millions of people. It is partly that, with few other machines selling so briskly, the cellphone in India is forced variously to be a personal computer, flashlight, camera, stereo, video-game console and day organizer as well. It is partly that India’s relative poverty compels providers to be more creative to survive.
But it is also that the cellphone appeals deeply to the Indian psychology, to the spreading desire for personal space and voice, not in defiance of the family and tribe, but in the chaotic midst of it.
Imagine what it was like — in the Pre-Cellular Age — to be young in a traditional household. People are everywhere. Doors are open. Judgments fly. Bedrooms are shared. What phones exist are centrally located.
The cellphone serves, then, as a technology of individuation. On the cellphone, you are your own person. No one answers your calls or reads your messages. Your number is just yours.
And yet the young Indian rebel, unlike his Western counterpart, does not rebel totally. He wants to savor his new individuality, but do so while sitting with his parents having dinner, listening to his grandmother implore him to get married. He listens, then taps a few keys on his cellphone to escape, then listens some more, and taps, and listens.
The cellphone appeals, too, because it plays into the Indian need to place people. Cellular differences today perform the role that forehead markings and strings around torsos and metal bracelets once did: announcing who outranks whom.
Small people have small phones, and big people have big ones. Small people have numerical-soup numbers, and big people have numbers that end in 77777 or something equally important-sounding or easy to remember. Small people have one phone, and big people have two. Small people set their phones merely to ring, and big people make Bollywood songs play when you call them.
The cellphone, in short, has made itself Indian. There are 65 times more cellphone connections than broadband Internet links, and the gap is widening. And so those who wish to influence Indians are not waiting for the computer to catch on, but are seeking ways to adapt the cellphone to the things Westerners do online.
Indian companies have invented methods, via simple cellphone text-messaging, to wire money to temples, pay for groceries, find jobs and send and receive e-mail messages (on humble phones with no data connection).
But the most intriguing notion is that cellphones could transform Indian democracy.
Even in this voting season — the results of a four-week election will be announced May 16 — Indians are famously cynical about their senior-citizen-dominated, dynastic, corrupt politics. The educated often sit out elections. But with cellphones becoming near universal, experiments are sprouting with the goal of forging a new bond between citizen and state, through real-time, 24-hour cellular participation.
In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, citizens who file a right-to-information request can now check its status via text message. Anyone who has been to an Indian government office, begging men in safari suits to do their job, will welcome this service.
A number of civic groups, meanwhile, have devised cellphone-based ways of informing voters about candidates for Parliament. If you text your postal code to the Association for Democratic Reforms, it will reply with candidate profiles like this:
CANDIDATE A Crim. Cases – No, Assets 175373142, Liab 0, Edu graduate_professional
CANDIDATE B Crim. Cases – Yes (1), Assets 445015617, Liab 2489959, Edu illiterate
A new interactivity is dawning in the news media, too. Now, via cellphone, citizens are talking back to the press, creating a continuous feedback loop between reporters and the public opinion they shape. Channels solicit text messages during broadcasts to air opinions and to poll viewers. Comments crawl across the screen as the talking heads talk.
In 2006, a court acquitted Manu Sharma, a politician’s son, of the murder of a model, Jessica Lall, even though several witnesses testified that they had seen him shoot her. This was nothing new in India. But a groundswell of text-message anger made its way onto television screens and compelled officials to retry Mr. Sharma. He was eventually convicted and given a life sentence.
Imagine the future: a young woman sits on her sofa. With a few taps, she checks that her tax return has been cleared. With a few more, she learns that her local legislator is a criminal, and she switches to the other candidate. She wires a campaign contribution by text. And then she notices on television a debate on her favorite topic, and listens to the arguments and taps hurriedly into her phone words that will soon scroll across the screen.
It is not Athens, but it would be a start: in the world’s largest democracy, government not by passive consent, but by something like a conversation.
“Don’t Fire Until You see the White of Their Eyes”
Chief Seathl aka Chief Sealth aka Chief Seattle
Old Chief Seattle was the largest Indian I ever saw, and by far the noblest looking. He stood six feet full in his moccasins, was broad shouldered, deep chested and finely proportioned. His eyes were large, intelligent, expressive and friendly when in repose, and faithfully mirrored the varying moods of the great soul that looked through them. He was usually solemn, silent and dignified, but on great occasions moved among assembled multitudes like a Titan among, Lilliputians, and his lightest word was law.
When rising to speak in council or to tender advice, all eyes were turned upon him, and deep toned, sonorous and eloquent sentences rolled from his lips like the ceaseless thunders of cataracts flowing from exhaustless fountains, and his magnificent bearing was as noble as that of the most cultivated military chieftain in command of the forces of a continent. Neither his eloquence, his dignity or his grace, were acquired. They were as native to his manhood as leaves and blossoms are to a flowering almond.
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On January 22, 1855, 2,300 Indians assembled at Point Elliot where Chief Seattle and eighty-two headsmen signed the Port Elliott Treaty. The council began and ended in a single day, which may be attributed to the fact that it is unknown whether or not the treaty was ever explained to Seattle or any of the other signers. This marked Chief Seattle’s official acceptance of life on a reservation for his people, specifically the Port Madison reservation.
Yonder sky has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for centuries untold, and which, to us, looks eternal, may change. Today it is fair, tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never set. What Seattle says, the great chief, Washington,can rely upon, with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers can rely upon the return of the seasons.
The son of the white chief says his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will. This is kind, for we know he has little need of our friendship in return, because his people are many. They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies, while my people are few, and resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.
The great, and I presume also good, white chief sends us word that he wants to buy our lands but is willing to allow us to reserve enough to live on comfortably. This indeed appears generous, for the red man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, for we are no longer in need of a great country. There was a time when our people covered the whole land, as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor. But that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten. I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it, for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, their hearts, also, are disfigured and turn black, and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no bounds, and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities between the red-man and his pale-face brothers may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
True it is, that revenge, with our young braves, is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and old women, who have sons to lose, know better.
Our great father Washington, for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since George has moved his boundaries to the north; our great and good father, I say, sends us word by his son, who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people, that if we do as he desires, he will protect us. His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his great ships of war will fill our harbors so that our ancient enemies far to the northward, the Simsiams and Hydas, will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then will he be our father and we will be his children. But can this ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill all the land; while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. The white man’s God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How then can we become brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial. He came to the white man. We never saw Him; never even heard His voice. He gave the white man laws, but He had no word for His red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament. No, we are two distinct races and must ever remain so. There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The red man has ever fled the approach of the white man, as the changing mists on the mountain side flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one, and I think that my folks will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them, and we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the great white chief seem to be the voice of nature speaking to my people out of the thick darkness that is fast gathering around them like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
It matters but little where we pass the remainder of our days. They are not many. The Indian’s night promises to be dark. No bright star hovers about the horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Some grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man’s trail, and wherever he goes he will still hear the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer and prepare to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter. A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of all the mighty hosts that once filled this broad land or that now roam in fragmentary bands through these vast solitudes will remain to weep over the tombs of a people once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine? Why should I murmur at the fate of my people? Tribes are made up of individuals and are no better than they. Men come and go like the waves of the sea. A tear, a tamanamus, a dirge, and they are gone from our longing eyes forever. Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers, after all. We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe. Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The noble braves, and fond mothers, and glad-hearted maidens, and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.
Shahid Batalvi Speaks 