ALONG THE CRYSTAL ROAD -- FROM TEACHING -- TO KNOWLEDGE NAVIGATION 

When humans went from hunters and gatherers and entered the Agricultural Age, the skills taught in the jungle were of little help in selecting, planting, growing and storing food. Time and conditions obliged settlers to acquire new skills. In those days they fortunately had centuries to make the conversion. And, much of what they needed to know could be taught.

When farmers moved from agriculture to cities as the Industrial Age beckoned, the agricultural skills were of little use to the new urban dweller. New thought patterns, new levels of skills became mandatory to participate in the new Industrial Age that increased the wealth of the world thirty-fold.

It wasn't evenly distributed; Europe and North America reaped the most. Then the learning conversion period was shorter but still counted in decades. Again there was time to teach the majority new skills.

Today, an even more dramatic shift is demanded in a vastly shortened period of time. Radical and dramatic changes in thought patterns must be assimilated in weeks and months to participate in the new surge to the future. New knowledge can only be discovered. It can't be taught. There is no time. It has already become obsolete.

There is little actual unemployment in North America. Just millions of people still looking at the world through Industrial Age eyes who haven't acquired the right lenses to see opportunity instead of despair. By the time the Information Age changes into the Age of Mindlink, the wealth of the world will increase another hundred-fold. Although it still won't be evenly distributed, any more than Nature chose to scatter the prairies evenly.

Technology today makes the laws and breaks the laws. Those who resist jumping aboard, as this bulldozer of change rolls over the planet, may find themselves becoming part of the road.

Local and international organizations no longer have the luxury of taking years to acquire new information and pass it on to their members via old traditional channels. They must set up a DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line immediately to search for, locate, acquire and disseminate the new information to their members.

If they don't someone else will.

* * *

< previous | chapter index | next >
back to Main Chapter Listing
back to Home Page