Friday, October 1, 2010

10-10-10: Look Before You Leap


More and more people are becoming convinced that we are perched on a precipice, a tipping point, a convergence, an approaching singularity, a break from the old into the new. Back at the start of the year I posted this poll question: "With which prediction do you more agree? 1. 10/10/10 (October 10th 2010) is going to be a very significant date for our planet. Or 2. 10/10/10 will be an unremarkable day."

In March we discussed the results of this poll in an entry called "Will 10-10-10 Be Significant?".

Now, as we're only ten days away from this curious date, I'd like you to think about setting aside a moment at the tenth hour, tenth minute, tenth second, on the tenth day of the tenth month in the tenth year of the century, to contemplate how much has changed, and how different our lives are now from ten years ago. Is your life better or worse now? Regardless of your evaluation, change is a significant part of our lives, more so all the time.

Nova Spivack has been talking lately about "The Now" becoming an increasingly dense and increasingly narrow focus in our collective experience. I've talked before about Nova's groundbreaking work in the semantic web and providing tools to help us navigate through the potentially overwhelming Stream of information entering our lives. Is the amount of information in the world really doubling at an exponential rate? Read this article featuring Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who says we are currently creating an amount of information every two days that equals the entirety of information created from the dawn of civilization until 2003!

How much longer can we keep up this acceleration? Where is this acceleration taking us? My song "The End of the World" suggests that people have always been suggesting that something significant is just about to happen, and in my book and this blog I've played with the idea that Everett's Many Worlds allows for the possibility that there are parallel worlds where those people turned out to be right, they're just not the version of the universe we currently happen to find ourselves in.

What do you think?

Do you believe we're approaching a tipping point? As more and more people become connected together like a gigantic "hive mind" of a tightly focused Great Big Now (as Nova Spivack calls it), will we collectively ascend to something greater? I would say that's the hope we all have to share. On 10-10-10, take a moment to think about whether you're helping to move this world to be better or worse than it was before you got here. And enjoy the journey!


A direct link to the above video is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Y9m34iJVY

Rob Bryanton

P.S.: The picture we saw at the start of this entry is part of a collection called "(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos", check them all out at Smashing Magazine. The description attached to the picture when it was posted at Pixdaus says the shot was taken on Norway’s cliff Prekestolen (also known as Preacher’s Pulpit), but according to other people commenting on the picture it's actually found at Odda, Norway, and it's called Trolltunga (The Troll's Tongue). Either way, people insist this is not photoshopped, and is an actual geological formation found in Norway. How far out on the Troll's Tongue would most of us be willing to go?

Next: New Animation - The Forest

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it is the day for the release of the next version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meercat. :D

Mariana Soffer said...

Hi Rob, very interesting post indeed, I am a big fan of nova spivak, I like a lot reading his posts opinions and theories about things.
Regarding the increase on the speed at which the information moves and increases there is also the following tought/reflection, which I agree with:
Most of us digest a piece of information as soon as we consume it. We read a blog post or an article, and we must let the information pass through our intellectual digestion system completely until it is processed into knowledge. This process is slow, and it significantly limits the amount of information we can turn into knowledge during any given time period. So, for most of us, we are probably only able to turn a handful of blog posts or articles into truly applicable and functional knowledge. The rest of it is usually lost as waste of our intellectual digestion. We simply consume more than we can process.
Take care my friend.

PappTimi said...

Hi Rob, I am curious about this special date, since it's my birthday.
Imagine '73 10 10 is all ten and was born at 19h 55min which is 10 10 as well. And now on 10 10 10 I will be 37 (that's 10 again) So who knows... We will see soon :-) I only wish my english was better, I could understand your blog better. :-) I did like your song!
Greetings from Hungary
Tim

libramoon said...

I hope you don't mind that I sent this post to the Seers and Seekers Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seerseeker/

George Peterson said...

The most important thing about 10/10/10 is not only that it's a "binary day," with 101010 being a binary value, but that 101010 in binary = 42 in decimal.

If you're unaware, 42 is the answer to live, the universe, and everything from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy.

Apocalypso Facto said...

Well, apparently it was pretty unremarkable, at least on this side of the multiverse! :-P

Anyway, I do believe we're approaching a tipping point of sorts. I'm not sure what will change, but it will be drastic.

Let's be prepared and let's hope it's for the better!

Skinfakse said...

The first episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic aired. That's really something.

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