Mindstorm

Mindstorm’s Logo by Hachiro

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Mission Statement

To find and investigate all things deemed mysterious, unanswerable, incomprehensible and unfathomable. Everything in our world happens for a reason and finding out the reasons behind perceived random occurrences would not only increase our chances of survival and success, but also increase our pleasure of living.

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PS: Mindstorm is a sister site of Eternity in an Hour. Mindstorm, unlike this site, is a collective blog with many many writers!

Please visit our site:

Mindstorm

Foreword

Like our predecessors, the challenges of the millennium that we are going to face is not one but many. The next society like all previous ones will be shaped by environmental factors that cannot be controlled by a single individual.

Trends from environmental forces includes:

Social

• Declining differences in gender roles and buying patterns
• Growing diversity in the world’s population
• Increasing lifespan and aging population

Economic

• Increasing military and humanitarian expenditures
• The outsourcing of white collar workers
• Increase in savings and money management as many workers reach retirement

Technological

• Increasing use of wireless broadband technology
• Growth in open source software movements
• Advances in biotechnology, cosmetic surgery and medical drugs

Competitive

• The growing influence of China as a world leader in both technology and manufacturing
• Empowerment of workers to improve performance

Regulatory

• New legislation to digital copyright and intellectual property protection
• New legislation on internet taxation, e-mail spam and domain names

While technological changes are often perceived as the fastest and greatest in impact, the next society would be driven more by demographic changes than anything else. Although many advanced economies (G7: United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, England and Canada) are facing a rapidly aging population, world population on aggregate is still exploding.

The era of the baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) is drawing to its end. As the 78 million baby boomers have aged, we look now to Generation X (people born between 1965 and 1976) to fill the gap. Commonly known as the baby bust, the current era of Generation X will also soon be eclipsed.

The next society would be a society filled with Generation Y, or more commonly known as the baby boomlet (people born between 1977 and 1994). People of Generation Y are the babies of the baby boomers and are thrown into a society of computers and cellphones. Being a Generation Y baby myself, wireless communications, text messaging, camera phones and multinational relations are a common thing seen among my peers.

Everything in my world including my name (Ee Suen Zheng) starts with the letter e!! We have e-commerce, e-books, ebay, internet explorer and emerging socio-economic problems problems (inequality of income)! For most of humanity’s time on Earth, we go to rivers and seas to catch the fish we eat. In today’s world, rearing fish for food is becoming more and more common.

The railway which exploded in the industrial revolution resulted in mankind conquering geographical distance. The internet of the information revolution threatens to eliminate geography distance all together. The industrial revolution brought prosperity and power to many nations while at the same time drastically increasing the inequality of income to unforeseen heights. We should be prudent to expect that the information revolution would do the same.

In 1455, Gutenberg proceeded to destroy the monopoly of the media of the Vatican Church in Rome. This led to the Reformation. In our current day, blogging and internet access threatens to destroy the monopoly of Governments over the media. Globalization is thought to be something new. On the contrary, Alexander the Great was one of the world’s earliest ‘globalizer’ when he tried to merge Hellenistic culture with Asian culture.

Peter Drucker was right in saying that only the terms were different, everything else, the arguments, the logic, the predictions, the rhetoric, was practically the same. However, the changes happening in our lifetime is likely to be on an unprecedented magnitude, scale and degree. For the first time since the dawn of human civilization, we now control the power to wipe out almost all life on Earth with nuclear bombs. Similarly, this is the first time the world is truly and fundamentally globalized and inter-connected.

Whether we succeed or fail in making the world a better place is our ultimate challenge. Yet whether we succeed or fail, we must live through the next society. In an effort to tap into the intelligence of the collective, I have established Mindstorm together with a group of close friends as a platform to exchange ideas, thoughts, logic, rhetotic, knowledge, wisdom and anything else you are willing to share!

Should you be interested in contributing to our cause, please email me at:

jamesesz@yahoo.com

Until then, Happy MINDSTORMING!!

Please visit our site:

Mindstorm

~ESZ, James

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