TODAY IT IS TECHNOLOGY THAT MAKES THE LAWS -- AND BREAKS THE LAWS
About 800 years ago small villages in Europe and England were defended
mainly by the skilled military darlings of the day -- the bowmen. They
might spend a year building a bow, a month an arrow and weeks finding
the right bird feather. Usually when attacked, their unerring aim kept
the would-be invaders at bay and the village was saved once more. Until
the day man invented the stirrup.
For the first time in history the stirrup gave man enough stability on
his horse to carry a long lance and to cloak himself and his mount in
heavy armour. So equipped the horse and rider became more invincible on
their next charge. This time the bowmen's arrows glanced harmlessly off.
The lance became a formidable weapon -- skilled bowman ended up not as
victors, as in the past, but on the wrong end of the shish-ka-bob.
Not just the rules, but the very game had changed. The key to survival
became a new way of seeing their world, a new attitude relevant to
surviving. From such beginnings came The Knights of the Round Table, Sir
Arthur and the Kingdom of Camelot. The stirrup, seemingly so simple
today but the height of sophistication then, allowed man for the first
time, with this small bit of technology and a new outlook, to build
kingdoms.
A few centuries later Portugal was blessed with an intelligent ruler,
Henry the First, the Navigator King. Henry's hobby was astronomy and
since, in those days of zero television channels, he had plenty of time
to indulge his interest by spending lonely hours with the monks in their
secluded monasteries studying the heavens. In time he mastered the use
of the astrolabe, another relatively simple mechanical instrument, that
allowed the monks to measure the angles of the sun and stars. Up until
Henry saw other possibilities, marine navigation was a matter of
sticking close to shore and not venturing out of sight of land, where -as everyone KNEW -- they would drop off the edge of the world, if they
were lucky enough to get there without being devoured by the 'Dragons of
the Deep'. Hence, all shipping was small and coastal, witness the tiny
ships with which Columbus crossed the Atlantic.
But King Henry saw beyond the stars and back to earth where he
envisioned that if the astrolabe, could measure the angle and distance
to the stars, it certainly should be able to measure the distance to
Cadiz. He quickly summoned his admirals, Vasca de Gamma and Ferdinand
Magellan. "We shall sail out to sea on a direct course from land for
seven days", he said.
"But Sire, we could not allow you to engage in such a foolish trip.
The Dragons of the Deep and the edge of the world would appear and our
country would lose its beloved king," they cried.
"Who appointed you admiral?" he asked.
"You, oh majestic excellency" they answered.
"We prepare at dawn" he commanded. (Readers may note it always pays to
be king).
Crossing themselves repeatedly they met the king at first light. He
was carrying a strange, heavy brass instrument with a rotating ring. "We
shall know our location by the use of this device", he intoned. The
others knew they were doomed but after all he was the king. King Henry
instructed them to hold the instrument on their thumb at a height of six
feet and sight the sun -- at high noon -- every day. By noon all had
learned the rudiments of such navigation and after sighting the sun from
the beaches of Lisboa and so marking that position on their rustic maps
showing naught but the coastline and the vast expanse of space marked
"Mer Incognito", they sailed, not without trepidation, into the unknown.
Thereafter at high noon each day admirals and sailors, crossing
themselves with the only protection they knew, sighted the sun through
the astrolabe and continued on. When the final day of the trip arrived
and all were still well; no dragons had charged and no edge of the world
encountered, the king instructed them to turn around and head back to
Lisboa, their capital. "But how to find it", they implored the king, for
regardless of rank none had previously been out of sight of shore in
their entire maritime careers.
"Follow the dots Dummy", the king replied, for he had been the first
to apply reason to the lines we now call meridians. This piece of
technology then allowed man, again for the first time, to create
empires. Within 80 years tiny Portugal had become the world's leading
maritime and economic power -- because of this piece of technology and
one man's insight. Again, not only the rules, but the very game itself
had changed. And the discovery changed the attitude of the masses.
During the past decade we have seen many changes, although nothing
compared to what is to come. Information is currently doubling at the
rate of 100 percent every 18 months. Several trends indicate this
acceleration may increase 16-fold by the start of the third millennium.
Refined into knowledge, this information will change the world. The Age
of Tranquility we have experienced in the past decade has come to a
close. What scientists, computer experts, communicators and
entrepreneurs are working on today will allow us to control planets.
Well within the memory of many people on the planet today is the
knowledge of the first computer, INIAC, whose "vast memory" was but a
fraction of what comes today with every school-kid's hand-held
calculator or found in the new "fuzzy logic" vacuum cleaners. INIAC was
a computer so impressive it would fill a large room with its banks of
vacuum tubes and require another room of equal size to hold the
air-conditioning equipment to dispose of the generated heat. It also
demanded numerous, highly-skilled, patient and untiring staff to keep
adjusting and repairing the almost constant break-downs. Now we have
school kids who never heard of a computer memory with less than 20
megabytes but know all about the Maytag man.
Once more not only the rules, but the game has changed. In most
countries people are still seeing the world as it was in the days of the
now-faded Industrial Age. They need to don the lenses of the
Communication Age to see the positive bright future ahead instead of the
negative image of the crumbling past. It simply requires a change in
attitude. There isn't really any unemployment out there -- just millions
of people who haven't changed their vision enough to learn what the new
age requires. For those who have the results are astounding. Bill Gates,
reportedly the richest man in America made most of his billions in the
latter half of the last decade. Many small software companies are
producing $5 million dollars worth of product a year with only 10
"partners". Such companies can easily afford to pay their crew each a
$100,000 a year salary.
Let's look at memory storage. First there were the paintings of
animals and symbols on the walls of caves in what is now Lascaux, France
and Altamira, Spain. Then came the knots and tied strings of the
Pharaohs and Incas. The alphabet from out of Arabia gave us spelling and
Gutenberg gave us printing. Eventually almost everyone in western
societies learned how to read and write. Xerox and the computer allowed
everyone to become a publisher. Micro-fich allowed storage of a page of
foolscap to be reduced to the size of a finger nail. Optical storage
first gave us the ability to store the information equivalent of 200
pages of single-spaced typewritten information on a credit card-sized
piece of plastic. In mere months that jumped to 800 pages, then over
1,000 pages or one million bytes of information, including pictures,
graphs and illustrations, still all on the one credit card unit.
Today the common musical compact disc is being used in a new device
called a CD-ROM which, as well as playing musical discs, carries the
entire 21 volumes of the Grolier Encyclopedia which still does not
completely fill one side of that small 4.5 inch disc. Today that disc
can store a thousand 300-page books on one side, thus forever ending the
problem of reading material on long airplane flights. Hardly had that
development hit the marketplace when news crossed my screen of a new
"layering" process that would allow a CD-ROM to hold ten million pages
of information just by laying down information like paint in subsequent
layers, all readable at any depth by a multi-frequency laser beam.
But before I could turn off my computer a report from Cambridge
University reported that they had, by using an electron tunnelling
microscope, been able to record the entire 29 volumes of the
Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin -- and still leave room for
the angels to dance. Even that amazing record was short lived. Today
S.E.R.O.D.S. is marching ahead. It stands for Surface Enhanced Raman
Optical Data Storage. One 12-inch SERODS optical disc can hold a large
town library or the equivalent of one million 300-page books! And, that
is before layering.
The astrolabe of the past, its successor the sextant and other
navigational instruments like the Omni navigation systems found in
almost all planes large or small, are also eclipsed today with a small
"toy" from Sony, their GPS or Global Position System called PYXIS, which
sells for around $1,000. It gets its information constantly from 24
whirling satellites overhead. It fits on a boat, a plane, a car or you
can carry it in your hand. It tells where you are within 100 metres or
(300 feet) of any spot on the globe and advises your altitude as well,
be you on Mount Everest, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea or in the
urban jungle of New York. It is just one of the five new products Sony
released last year -- EVERY DAY! I have one. I never leave home without
it.
If we know where we are, can travel anywhere anymore and not get lost,
and if we can access basically the knowledge of the world in an instant,
why are we so befuddled? Because of attitude. I advise my executive
clients and those who attend my seminars to hire employees based only on
their attitude.
The Age of Credentialism is over. There no longer is any benefit to
accrue from regurgitating the obsolete to obtain a worthless piece of
paper. Next year, the Los Angeles County School Commission will issue a
warranty with every graduates diploma. If hired and they do not live up
to the warranty (which lists what they can do, i.e. type 60 words a
minute, etc.) they get the same treatment as a new car. Back to the shop
for repair, at the schools cost. If the graduate doesn't shape up, they
don't come back. If 100 percent of everything we know is going to be of
minimal value in 18 months and if 90 percent of everything around us
will be replaced in ten years by products and services not yet
developed, how can anything we have been taught in the past be of more
benefit tomorrow than what we can now learn in vast quantities and
sophistication so rapidly. With the right attitude most people can learn
anything quickly. And, since everything to come is so new that no
teacher has heard of it, why not learn together?
The Japanese have recently reduced enrollment at their teacher
training schools by 40 percent. Why? Because they know from what is
coming down their own pipeline that we are leaving the time and place of
a teaching environment and entering the learning environment. When that
occurs teachers must be transformed into knowledge navigators.
We are probably only using around one percent of our brain. It is time
we found out why the rest is there. A student should be able to go
through high school in four months, not four years. Only the belief that
we can't is holding us back. For the past several centuries North
America has been the favored and treasured land. Most of us lived very
well during our limited span here. With only two billion people in the
world during the 1930s we became King of the Hill. But we forgot what
was growing in the valley.
Emerging from that valley is five billion people! Many of them are
willing to study harder, be more open to change, work longer hours for
less and let their savings mount up and work for them. They have a
spirit of adventure.
They have the attitude right for the new age. As this bulldozer of
change rolls over our planet remember that if you do not become part of
the bulldozer, there is a good chance you will become part of the road.
* * *
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