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What do you think will be the next big change in how societies organize? Why?

A few examples. Communication, gradually to written words and eventually the printing press and more recently internet and cell phones. Agriculture, changing from hunting/gatherers and eventually invention of the plow. Wheel, changing transportation eventually roads, the steam engine, and internal combustion engine. Numbers, counting to mathematics, to elaborate equations. Scientific method, understanding how things work eventually knowing things we can see, e.g. viruses and bacteria.

Each of these resulted in new ways societies were able to organize. Some others to consider. The assembly line/industrial age, cities, art/architecture, city councils, city states, governments of various forms, and business structures.

What update, extension, or completely new thing will allow or even lead to a new means to organize societies? Or maybe how can societies be organized differently and what would it take to make such changes? Will that make the society stronger, safer, better? What about the individual?


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  • Jun 24 2013: Reading your commetns, I see most take a how do we distribute resources, e.g. food, security, power, as the purpose of societies. If this is accurate, then governments and corporations (maybe small businesses) are the current means to organize society. Maybe the question should be how will distribution of resources change over the next 30 to 40 years?

    But what I'm personally even more interested in is there other possibilities to organize societies then the governement, in it's many forms - dictator to democracy, and corporate hierarchies working together or not working together? And what new "thing, event, technology, etc" will allow or require that change.

    My simplistic view of management is to turn effort into desired outcomes. When able to do this as a win-win-win situation, most would agree the management is excellent. I don't see societies as just a means to distribute resources. Of course in the end that is an outcome of successful societies.

    One thought I have about any new means to organize socieites has to do with communications. It is mainly through communications that a group begins to effectively turn effort into desired outcomes. We are rapidly turning into a world of wearable communications. This allows us to exchange ideas, emotions, and whatever else quickly and in near time.

    We are also at the same time developing prosthetics which can be controlled by the human mind/brain. How long before we may be able to combine communications with a direct access to the thinking and feeling or someone else. It will likley start with a spouse or someone close to us maybe even someone with serious medical difficulties.

    But what if one day we could directly share all the things a group thinks and feels as if it were in my own head. The conversation as if it were my own but with so much more data, wonderful connections, the emotional response, etc. Would this change societal organization?

    Answer any of the questions. I'm interested in all.

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