While doing research for this series of articles, I thought it would be interesting to apply a “100 year test” to compare humanity 100 years ago with the state of humanity today and also compare it with humanity in 100 years from now. As a result of the accelerating pace of change, although life has changed a lot in the last 100 years this change and the technological advances that have driven this change are totally primitive and technologically pathetic compared to the technology we will be using in 100 years from now.
Although life has changed dramatically in the last 100 years this is a pace of change that humanity can handle.
The interesting thing about this “100 year test” is that, at some point in time in the near future, 100 years will be too long for the test to the meaningful. This number will have to drop to 50 then 20, etc. One of the other tests that form part of an MPI analysis of any concept is to follow the concept through to its logical conclusion and see where it ends up. If we follow this concept to its logical conclusion we can ask, if the pace of change is accelerating and we are currently at a point in time in history where 100 years results in an enormous change in humanity then what happens when the 100 year test drops to one year or 1 minute or on one milli second? Will it be possible for humanity to even continue to exist in its current form, or at all, if the pace of change and does in fact continue to accelerate?
Next article in this series: “The World’s Biggest Problems”