Alexander Bard On The Internet Revolution

 Futurism

Alexander Bard proposes to look into predicting the  future of the information society, we first need to reassess our previous view of history and define new revolutions in terms of information.

At the NEXT Berlin 2012 Conference earlier this year, Alexander Bard talked about the fourth revolution, where the internet dramatically changing society, culture and economy. Even though his conclusions sometimes seem obvious, his talk (embedded below) is enlightening if not entertaining.

In the lecture, Bard proposes to look into the future of the information society, we first need to reassess our previous view of history and define new revolutions in terms of information.  In his view, the first revolution was the development of speech, the second was the development of writing, and the third was the rise of printed publishing after Gutenberg.

The fourth revolution was the development of the internet.  The information explosion brought about by the internet revolution means that information becomes less centralized, as Bard suggests was a consequence of the previous revolutions.

As with Jason Silva's latest video, Bard suggests that attention is the currency of the internet age.  He clarifies the equation as awareness multiplied by credibility.  He says:

We moved from the countryside to the city, now we've moved from the city to cyberspace.  We've moved from capital as the driving force to attention as the guiding force and everything is now about people having attention connecting with other people that have attention networks.

Having made a habit of lecturing dressed in haute couture shorts and an impressive beard, scribbling his notes on huge whiteboards and chalkboards rather than parading just another predictable power-point presentation, the larger-than-life Bard's simultaneously entertaining and earth-shattering lectures have consistently topped the ratings at major business and management conferences around the world. And as any good speaker does, Bard takes pride in practicing the message he preaches.

Bard is also co-author of The Futurica Trilogy, a work of philosophy, sociology and futurology in three closely related movements.

The first volume, The Netocrats, deals with human history from the perspective of the new elite of Informationalism, the emerging society of information networks, shaped by digital interactivity, making prophecies about the digital future of politics, culture, economy, et cetera. The second volume, The Global Empire, explores the near future of political globalization and the struggle to form new, functioning ideologies for a world where global decision making is a necessity. The third volume, The Body Machines, thoroughly deals with the demise of the Cartesian subject. It discusses the implications of a materialist image of humanity and explains how it relates to the new, emerging technological paradigm. It explains why we’re all of us body machines, and why this is actually good news.



SOURCE  Next Berlin

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