Rock of Ages v. Water of Life

A few weeks back, I recorded on my DVR a fascinating two-hour show on the History Channel, How the Earth Was Made. The story was compelling and the graphics amazing, as the show introduced me to terms like "Deep Time" and walked me through 4.5 Billion years of the Earth's history. I'd never been all that interested in geology, but it turns out that studying rocks has taught us some amazing things. This show not only opened my eyes to geology facts on which I was completely ignorant, but also helped me to put some issues in perspective, leading me to the long list below of key events of innovation and change. This geological walk down memory lane lays the foundation to understand where we are today, with change and innovation a constant theme, and shows how recent man's walk on the planet really is.

There are two compelling forces that have shaped our planet, which align closely with the forces that shape society, Conservatism and Innovation: Plate Tectonics - where lava from below ground emerges onto the Earth's surface to create and move continents and mountains, and Erosion - where water works on the rocks to wear them down and change them. Thus, the Yin and Yang theme plays out in geology, as the fixed object and the force that acts on it are in constant play throughout eternity in the universe, just as they are in our daily lives.

How did we get here? Through this back and forth and disruptive change, the past changed into the present, always leading to the future. We see in this list of innovations and change the forces these two factors play to drive progress in a complex system. We see how our present today becomes tomorrow's past, sometimes sooner than we'd like it to. We see an accelerating cycle of change, fostered by technology and a maturing global ecosystem.

4.5 Billion years ago - The origin of the Earth, as gases came together to form the planet, saw the natural force of gravity working to create form out of chaos, pulling in first gases, then asteroids sailing along on their merry way, ultimately creating a cauldron of nuclear activity at the core of the planet, giving us a molten rock covered with a dark crust, spewing CO2. Ice in the meteors melted to give us water, which turned to steam and rained down on the planet, creating red-tinged oceans filled with iron.

3 Billion years ago - With the origin of life on the planet bacteria began to cover the earth, first in the water, where the oxygen they produced settled out the iron in the oceans, turning both water and air blue. Then the impact of oxygenation created our modern atmosphere that gave protection from the ultraviolet rays that had previously prevented life from moving out of the ocean - "Ding ... you are now free to roam about the planet"

about 100 Million years ago - The age of dinosaurs, which enjoyed a long reign in a land of plenty, until a huge meteor trashed their planet, kicking up dust that blocked the sun and killed off their food - thus, they gave their lives so that we could have gas stations and cars, 100 million years later.

a few million years ago - The emergence of Homo Erectus, who learned to walk upright, spread out over the planet, and began to use tools in innovative fashion, giving Early Man a great advantage over the other animals.

about 10,000 years ago - The first city , a mark of civilization, fostered the development of spoken then written language. This rise of human culture began to make better use of our huge brains and the innovation of gathering in a city was copied by others until it became a common trait of civilization (see The City : A Global History by Joel Kotkin).

about 4,000 years ago - Father of three major religions, Abraham's innovation of monotheism proved highly innovative and disruptive to the world.

about 2,000 years ago - The rise of Christianity brought the disruptive innovations of Forgiveness and Love, and Open Source Religion to its parent, Judaism, ultimately impacting Rome and the entire world.

about 550 years ago - The movable type printing press took information to the masses, disrupting the power equation among the ruling clergy and royalty.

about 370 years ago - Alhacen, Bacon and Descartes devise a scientific method that rapidly accelerates the development and diffusion of scientific knowledge, propelling the West to dramatic advances in technology

231 years ago - Thomas Jefferson et al sign the US Declaration of Independence, launching a country that has proved to be a radical innovative disruption to the status quo of the ancient custom of hegemonic royalty and royal families, giving the masses a political voice in their future (the jury is out on how long this will last, as we appear to be backsliding of late!)

160 - 110 years ago - The invention of the telegraph - 1844 (Western Union), the telephone - 1876 (AT&T), the incandescent light bulb - 1880 (General Electric), the electric motor and polyphase power transmission system - 1888 (Westinghouse) and wireless radio - 1900, introduced a wave of disruptive innovations through science and technology to usher in the Modern Era and let us all communicate in ever more efficient fashion - "Can you hear me now?"

about 40 years ago - The semiconductor gives birth to the computing revolution, which began with data processing and moved on to take over more and more of our lives, like The Blob in that old Steve McQueen movie.

about 30 years ago - IP and TCP take hold as standard protocols with DARPA, laying the foundation for worldwide connectivity and the explosion of the Internet

about 20 years ago - Dial-up Internet Service Providers (ISPs like Prodigy, Compuserv, and AOL) gain traction offering a new data service: Internet access over telephone lines, a service so new it was hard to see at the time just which companies it would disrupt.

about 10 years ago - Cable companies offer high-speed internet access or "always-on broadband" at 30 times the speed of the fastest dial-up Internet connections, as a premium service.

about five years ago - Major telecom companies start to eat into the cable companies dominant broadband market position with DSL, and broadband takes off in popularity

about three years ago - Internet Search pioneer Google issues its IPO and enjoys an initial market capitalization of $23 Billion, defining the Internet as a disruptive force to reckon with (current market cap is over $200 Billion)

about two years ago - Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought two-year old web startup My Space for nearly $600 Million, a year later they signed their 100 millionth member, and just this year passed 200 million on-line members.

about one year ago - Google acquired two-year old web startup YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Google stock and less than nine months later, in June 2007, YouTube related traffic comprised 10% of all Internet traffic.

about two months ago - EarthLink announced its withdrawal from new municipal wireless markets leading to a refocusing of the new Municipal Wireless market

I could go on and on - this is fun - but you get the point, life and time have always been about change, always marked by some disruptive innovation that replaces the old tried and true with the new and better. One could easily graph out a similar acceleration of change in a timeline covering other events. We just live in an ever faster world.

In today's world of technology, such change and innovation is often billed as cheaper and quicker, but better? Ah, there's the rub. Because so much change has happened over the past generation, and so much more is to come, our kids' world is vastly different from our own, and they have an entirely different perspective than we do. Just as our grandparents looked at things differently than we do, so do we look at things differently than our kids do. One of the challenges we face today as a society is the very pace of change, which compresses this challenge ever tighter and makes more complex the issues society deals with as it moves through time. We lack the tools to really deal with these issues and the pace of change. Change and Innovation loom ever larger, the stakes ever higher.

When humans came along with their big brains, they just accelerated the ancient process of change and innovation. Today, the pace gets ever faster, but we still face the same challenge - how to accommodate change and innovation and balance the costs and benefits, if the stakes have grown that much higher.

It behooves us first to acknowledge that we have a problem - the first of the 12 Steps: "1. We admitted we were powerless over disruptive innovative change - that our lives had become unmanageable."

Having our eyes open to what faces us, we must then seek to understand as a society this force that drives us and acts on us, in order to deal with it more consciously than we do now. We need a plan!!