I first heard about The Great Resignation in mid August, and wrote about it in a report I wrote in early September. It's continuing. According to this PBS report above, over 25 million Americans have quit their jobs since January 2021. In a recession! (Which is technically a depression). WTF is going on? I have a pretty good idea. But I'm an amateur futurist, I've had a head start at all this.
I've been blogging about economic and work-related issues since mid-2017 (like this post from June 28, 2017). I saw a very serious economic downturn coming our way, even back then. But as an amateur futurist who was keeping an eye on some ultra long term cycles playing out, I saw more than just another recession coming, or even another "Great Recession."
Since late 1989 I've been watching a theory, a concept play out, called The Law of Social Cycle, by a mid-20th century thinker from India, named P.R. Sarkar. In late January 2020, before Covid-19 was close to hitting U.S. shores, I wrote a chapter in my 20 chapter online book/blog thing about this theory. In part, that theory, analyzed for the U.S. by economist Ravi Batra, predicted a major, long term, populist uprising in the United States. My 12th chapter in this online book/blog, written 20 months ago, in the last paragraph says, "...but the Laborer class are still rising, and will force massive change at some point. This is not even close to over." That's at the end of my explanation, of my understanding, of P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycle. You can read that chapter (or skip to the last paragraph) here.
After reading about this theory in late 1989, and watching much of what Batra predicted play out in the early 1990's, I believed that a MAJOR populist uprising, a wide scale "worker's revolt," of some type, would happen in the U.S. years in the future. I believe it started with the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and rose up again in the support for both populist candidates, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, on the Left and the Right, in the 2016 election.
But I knew there was more to come. Life for average American workers has been going downhill for 30-40 years. It has simply been getting harder and harder to make a good living, and raise a family well. A time of reckoning was coming.
And that is just one part of the major changes I saw coming, according to the thinking of Alvin and Heidi Toffler (last two blog posts), P.R. Sarkar (this post), and also Richard Florida (more on his Creative Class concept, in future posts).
In late 2019, I tagged this decade as The Tumultuous 2020's. There are a whole lot of reasons why, and that's what this blog is for. Simply put, there are all kinds of societal changes that need to take place, on virtually every level, for human society to move forward. The major cycles and concepts I've watched for years, even decades, all started converging as we headed into the 2020's. It's like they were all heading for major transitions, major inflection points, at the same time. That made me think, "Oh shit."
There's a lot going on, and it's NOT the crazy conspiracy stuff many people are hearing from bad media and worse websites and stupid friends. We have all kinds of relatively new technology that makes whole new lifestyles possible, and society itself needs to catch up, and integrate all this technology into lifestyles that work for real humans. In a sense, we all need to upgrade the world to fit the tech and lifestyles and other issues (economic, climate, social injustice, political, etc) going on in our world.
It seems the time has come to remodel... the whole freakin' world. Really.
There's a lot more to come. I've been blogging about this big group of inter-related ideas for four years now. Now that what I've seen coming is partly visible to most people, I've got a lot to say on where we're at as human society, and where we're headed. Then you can decided what, if any, of my ideas, make sense in your lives. Then it's time to figure out how we all live in today's world in a more functional way.
Honestly, being a Gen X guy who began using record players when I was 4 or 5 years old, about 1971-72, it's hilarious that there are actually how-to videos on using one. That said, I can barely operate a cell phone, which most of today's 3-year-olds have mastered. Times change, and that's the whole point of this post. So, thank God for YouTube how-to videos, for the young, the old, and everyone in between.
In the last post, I explained that my concept, The Big Freakin' Transition, is that we are in an 80 to 90 year transition period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age. That's one half of the idea. The other half of the idea is that during this long, increasingly chaotic transition period, EVERY business, every industry, and every human institution, will have the old business or social model disrupted, and a new model will emerge. So those two ideas are the core of The Big Freakin' Transition. Again, this whole idea is basically a continuation of The Third Wave * concept that futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler discovered, and Alvin wrote about in his 1980 book by that name.
My favorite model for disruption is the music industry. The older generations of people, and the older Millennials, can remember when the file sharing service Napster exploded onto the scene in 1999. Before that, the music industry was well entrenched in a stable business model. Record label company executives looked for talented bands and singers. They offered their favorite ones a "record contract." The record label paid for the studio time while a band created an "album," usually of fifteen songs. Then the band was sent out on tour to promote the album, and build a following of people to hopefully buy millions of those record albums, usually for about $15 each. The record label paid for the tours, where tickets were fairly cheap. They also promoted the new record with single songs on FM radio, with coverage in music magazines likeRolling Stone, and with music videos on MTV, after it came out in 1981. When the albums sold a lot, the record label made back their money, and tens of millions of dollars more, and the singer or band made a small percentage of that, sometimes millions of dollars.
So the record labels put out money to find bands, record the albums, and promote them with tours, radio, magazines, and MTV. All of that was promotion to sell millions of physical records. That was the money maker, those big, black, "vinyl" discs. They also sold audio cassettes, and in the 90's, CD's became the new albums. But selling lots of the albums was the business model.
Then, on June 1st, 1999, two guys none of us had ever heard of, uploaded a new piece of software on the fledgling internet. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker created a file sharing software called Napster, which allowed people worldwide to share Mp3 music files with each other. With a single click of a computer mouse in 1999, the music industry was doomed. That's what I mean by "Disrupted." There was an old business model that was working just fine... for the record companies and a small number of hit artists and bands. But new technology had been evolving, and some unknown guys had a cool idea to use that new technology. "Hey, what if we could design software so we could all share our music with other people?" Napster Disrupted the old business model with one click.
Now, the music industry didn't collapse overnight. But in the next few months, 80 million users (myself included), started looking for music files on other people's hard drives, and downloading them, often burning our own CD's of personal mix tapes. Suddenly music was free, and the traditional music industry went berserk. They even sued their own customers for a while. Teenage kids were getting multi-million dollar lawsuits filed against them for downloading 100 songs.
You can argue for the rights of the old music industry. You can argue about intellectual property until you're blue in the face, you can say this was piracy, theft, or just plain stealing. The reality is, everyday people LOVED the free music file sharing idea, and it was simply going to happen, eventually, no matter what. Napster, as a free service, lasted about two years, then became a paid service after being shut down by court order. But the Information Age music revolution had begun, and other tech people, notably Steve Jobs and the Apple posse, created new business models.
Now, 22 years later, we have far more music available to us far cheaper. Hundreds of thousands of bands and independent musicians and singers find followings, and sell some music to their fans. Concerts and box sets of physical CD's or vinyl LP's cost a lot. Most people don't buy albums, they buy single songs or rent music from streaming services. Nearly every consumer of music would say they like this system better than paying $15 for an album that had three songs they liked, back in the 1980's or 1990's. The music industry is still evolving, but it has made the transition into an Information Age business model.
The Big Freakin' Transition idea is that every single business, every industry, and every human institution (religion, law, education, non-profits, membership organizations, political parties, etc), EVERY organization, will be Disrupted by a new model, using new technology, and new social norms made possible by that new technology.
When this idea was really coming together in my head, 4-5 years ago, I tried to think of some business or industry that would not be affected. "What everyday item WILL NOT be completely redesigned or disrupted," I asked myself. Of all things, toilets came to mind. The toilet in my grandma's 1920's built house as a kid looked pretty much like the ones today, and I imagine the toilets in 20-30 years will still look pretty much the same. Yes, there will be some weird, high tech versions as outliers, but the basic design probably won't change all that much. So did that make the toilet industry immune to Disruption? I thought about the business. Even if the basic item, like a typical toilet, doesn't change much, the materials, the raw material sourcing, the manufacturing process, the factory location, the price, the marketing, and the distribution that got the toilets from a factory to a new house, that WILL all change due to new technology.
Ultimately, I could not think of one product or industry that will not be Disrupted by all of our new and evolving technology, and our new social norms and lifestyles made possible by the new technology. This is why The Big Freakin' Transition is an 80 or 90 year period. Humans, by nature, don't like change. We like to think we do, but we don't like very much change at all. The initial high tech change started slow, then one new product here, one there. They began to gain a synergy with each other, and more new technologies were developed, and as they came in to everyday life for regular people, our lifestyles began to change. Other new changes came along, more new technologies, and our lives transformed more and more, faster and faster.
But there are still many industries that are running on old, Industrial Age mindsets, even if they use many new forms of tech. Banking, for example, uses more high technology than most industries. But the whole idea of putting your money in a bank, in a physical building, so they can loan money out at interest to someone else, goes back to the Medici's, in 15th centuryItaly. Even then, banks had been around for centuries, but that model has not really changed. We all know now that all kinds of other options are now available, Paypal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Facebook pay, cryptos, wiring money across the globe, even old Western Union. But the banks, as fancy buildings, each with a huge safe (which doesn't contain digital money, obviously), still exist. So banking, and many other industries still using Industrial Age business models, will face their "Napster moment" at some point. The 2020's, seem to be shaping up as the decade when all the lagging business and social models (like churches, political parties, membership organizations, etc.) that haven't changed yet, will be forced to change. One one hand they need to catch up, and the other hand, we are in a deep financial crisis, which will drive more change, and drive lots of old models businesses out of business.
To repeat, at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition" is two basic things. We are in an 80-90 year transition period (from 1956 to about 2035-2045), between the Industrial Age and the Information Age. Two, EVERY business, industry, and institution will have to figure out a new business/social model, and put into action, to survive. That's the basic idea.
As a business owner, or a leader of some kind of organization, you need to ask yourself, "What is the Information Age version of my business or organization? What is the role of this kind of business in light of all the changes in new technology, and in how we actually live, day to day? If you don't adapt, someone else will figure out the new model, and Disrupt your business. So that's the Disruption that every business or institution will have to deal with.
I'm going way back, for a classic comedic look at the factory worker's life in the Industrial Age. Charlie Chaplin trying to get through the day in Modern Times, from 1936.
The Big Freakin' Transition is my concept, an extension of The Third Wave idea put forth by futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and published in Alvin's 1980 book, The Third Wave *.
This is a big idea, and involves a lot of different aspects of our society. But at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition is two basic ideas:
One: We are not IN the Industrial Age anymore, but we are not IN the Information Age, either. We are in an 80 to 90 years transition period where American society morphs from the Industrial Age into the Information Age. This transition period began in 1956, according to futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and I estimate the end will be about 2035-2045.
Two: To remain viable in modern society, EVERY business, industry, organization, institution, and individual must make the transition from an Industrial Age living and working model, to an Information Age living and working model. When pretty much all of society has made the switch, then we will be fully in the Information Age. The world seems so crazy these days because we are in this huge, long, major transition phase.
There are tons of details and factors, but that is The Big Freakin' Transition concept at its core.
To grossly oversimplify things, originally humans were tribal people that we usually refer to as hunter/gatherers. The First Wave of civilization was the transition from hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society People began to plant crops and farm, stay in one place, and villages became permanent, and turned into small towns, and eventually into cities. That began about 10,000 years ago, probably in the region that is now Turkey. It took a couple of thousand years for agriculture to travel the Earth, and become the dominant form of human society.
The Second Wave of civilization was the transition from agricultural society to an industrial society. This, the Tofflers tell us, began about 350 years ago, and took a couple of hundred years to circle the Earth, to become the dominant form of society. The factory based Industrial Age continued well into the second half of the 20th century.
The Third Wave, as the Tofflers saw it, is the transition from an Industrial-based society to an Information-based society. As it's called now, the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Alvin Toffler's book on this came out in 1980, four years before the Apple Macintosh computer, the first personal computer for "regular people." He also wrote it right as the thousands of American factories began to either outsource jobs to other countries, or replace human workers with industrial robots and other technology. So most people who did read The Third Wave when it was knew thought, "OK, the factories are shutting down or moving overseas, we have Silicon Valley, high tech, computers and cell phones, we're in the information-based age now."
Of the people alive today, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X were born at times when the Industrial Age was still going strong. The Millennials, Generation Z (you'll get a new nickname, don't worry), and today's kids, were born into times when the Industrial age was fading fast, and the Information Age was (and still is) coming on strong. So to our older generations the Industrial Age is "normal," and to the younger generations, the Information Age is "normal." That alone explains a lot in today's culture.
The Big Freakin' Transition is my idea that the Toffler's Third Wave concept is still playing out. I think that we didn't jump right into the full blown Information Age when all the factories shutdown, or moved overseas in the 1980's, 1990's, or 2000's. I believe we are actually in an 80 to 90 year long transition period BETWEEN the Industrial Age and the Information Age. We have a lot of the technology of the full Information Age now, but a lot of our businesses, industries, and institutions are still working from Industrial Age models, and have not fully integrated their business or working models to ones that work in the Information Age. The Tofflers put the beginning of this transition period at 1956, the first year "white collar" office workers outnumbered "blue collar" factory workers in the United States. I believe this transition period will last at least until about 2040, maybe longer.
Very simply, we are about 2/3 the way through this long, crazy, chaotic period of transition from one type of society and lifestyle, to another. No other civilization has had to make this big of a social transition in the span of a single lifetime. We are going from one way of life to another, and it's weird, scary, crazy, and chaotic. We are in between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, and have aspects of both working in our world right now.
That's the Big Freakin' Transition, in a nutshell. For the record, I've been referring to this idea as"The Big Transition" in my personal and online writing, for 3 years or so. I figured that I'd come up with a catchier name at some point, but I never did. When I decided to write this blog, and go into more detail on all that the idea ties into, I finally googled "The Big Transition." There's one religious book by that name, on totally different ideas, and several other things that came up in my search. So I added the word "freakin'" to set it apart, and to not make it too serious and boring. I think this concept, as a context for the craziness of today's world, can help us explain and understand what's going on.
In future posts I'll go into much more depth on this general idea, and into the details of the various aspects of it. The basic idea to get right now is, yes, the world seems crazy for a reason, we're in a huge transition period that is crazy and chaotic, by it's nature. It's OK to be freaked out by all that's going on. I hope this concept can help other people understand this transition, and then find their own way to work within it.
