Change – the Sword of 21st Century

By: Yigermal Meshesha

From A to F, from G to L and from M to Z; the world is in incessant alteration! 21st century is the most rapidly changing era of all time in the history of the world I guess. Knowledge, especially current echelon of metaphysics has brought lots of developments in every aspect and the human capability has reached its peak with machine learning, AI as well as bio engineering. more than ever the past 5 decades has been very accelerated in many frontiers which also brought inevitable challenges of global warming, slide in social and cultural values as well as advanced illicit activities including human & drug trafficking.  In my opinion, this is all Swords / Changes weather they came for good or bad. Along with the enduring alteration; generations are required to cop up with the accelerated world, as non compliance will replace the latest with a new version just in a blink of eyes.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook could be a good example of the 21st century change and its accelerated version. A global no. 1 social media platform with almost 2.85 billion users, evolved from just female pictures betting site FaceMash in 2003, to a platform that connects Harvard students then peoples throughout the world ; Facebook in 2004. Facebook is still a teenager company with indubitable and eminent success story which bring about a significant change to peoples way of life globally, which triggered other dominant social networks to the market. And now, a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like virtual and augmented reality is onboard by the rebranded facebook - Meta- a metaverse as stated by the CEO Mr. Zuckerberg. 

Through the past 19 years Facebook has been praised for the change it brought to the interconnecting world created by the social networking itself, redefining social network from just communication and leisure tool to a market place to business venue and means for various live interactions. 

Being resilient to the Sword / Change, Facebook has built up a significant portfolio and market cap to the extent of $ 926.8 billion while it’s criticized for allowing the platform to disseminate hate speech which trigger ethnic conflict, violence and fuel civil war in some cases.   

The metaverse concept brewed for the past 30 years laying its inception by the science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in the 1992 novel “snow Crash” is now officially aboard by Facebook. With the new Sword / Change - Meta, the inevitable is coming and the latest is going, a new circle, in did a phenomena to interlocked and globalized world, a milestone to build one world order.