Answer to the question posted by Brian Hawkins aka @StyleXplorers: “Do you think the “Twenteens” 2011 to 2019 will be yet another 3rd Decade?” I do think the ‘Twenteens’ will offer hardly fathomable opportunities driven by both opportunities and a threat:

Opportunities:

• Tech & in particular the explosion of mobile. Cellphones shrank the world and ‘dis-enclaved’ billions of people allowing them to enter the world scene in ways they and we have never dreamed possible > new friends, new customers, new connections, new allies, new opportunities, louder voices giving way to less misinformation, maybe more (real) democracy, even more equality?
• Socio-psychological: With louder voices, access to more information will come more power and more equalization, driven and fueled by ‘New Media’; dramatically shifting the way we live, interact with others, with businesses, with those supposed to rule us and the skills we and our kids will need to have to survive and succeed.

Threat:

• The thinning of natural resources will force us to be smarter and look harder for alternatives and since we, the people, will only settle for better ways to live, the output from those alternatives is only dream-able today for most of us.

Imagine the possibilities, the opportunities opening up new kinds of enterprises, of jobs and degrees that are now needed to cater to an ever equalizing world, stripping more and more power from those who, so far, dictated to us what to wear, eat, say, think and do. Imagine the new world emerging. Many people still don’t realize the shift that is happening right now and the power that’s profiling itself for them on the horizon. Imagine the new world when most see the light and they will!

Take for just sip of what’s coming, and ponder on, the excellent ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’ manifesto written in 2006 (!), and still very much ahead of its time, by Jay Rosen from NYU (@jayrosen_nyu) and let me know what you think. Don’t miss the updates at the bottom to grasp the ‘beyond the media impact’ the fundamental shift we are living… right now.

I do believe the road ahead is so bright we can only catch a glimpse of what’s ahead as we march on. Do you?

The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.

Link to initial post: Do you think the “Twenteens” 2011 to 2019 will be yet another 3rd Decade?“