Innovation Originates from the Collective
Michael Shaun Conaway
Speaker | Generative Futurist | Philosopher | Filmmaker | Director WeRiseUP | Illuminating Human Nature
We all know about the accelerating pace of change that we are going through. There are those who argue that this change has an exponential curve, that the rate of change is actually doubling in every unit of time. Logically that’s not accurate or provable but it’s a way for us to picture the fact that change is happening more and more quickly. One way this is happening is that fundamental changes in our world are multiplying, a breakthrough in materials science changes computing, a breakthrough in neuroscience leads to new approaches in mental health.
In no small way is PROOF a product of this era of rapid growth and change. We are out to help you understand how all of this change affects your life and more importantly our future together. Our particular concern is generating a positive future, a desirable and thriving future for humanity. My intention is that PROOF emails expose you to the positive future being generated, and how your contribution can help shape it into the kind of future we desire for ourselves and the world. By immersing ourselves in these innovations, you gain a clearer vision of the future and recognize the various ways you can actively participate in making it a reality.
Right now you may be thinking, what can I do about something as big as the future of the world? The answer is everything. Innovations in science, tech, art, education, media, communications, meditation, business, economics, physics, etc. come from the collective consciousness of any one of these areas. The history of simultaneous inventions is full of examples of two or more people inventing the same thing at the same time. For example:
Calculus — Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Telephone — Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for a patent on the same day in 1876.
Radio — Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi. Television — Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin independently inventing the first electronic television.
Thermometer — Galileo Galilei and Santorio Santorio.
Light Bulb — Sir Hiram Maxim, Sir Joseph Swan, and Thomas Edison all developed versions of incandescent light bulbs around the same time.
Photography — Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot
You may wonder why? The explanation lies in one of humanity’s greatest superpowers, synthesis. Given an information rich environment we put two and two together and create something new, some new understanding or approach that both relies on the already present information and builds something completely new out of it.
The above inventions are all things that made a positive impact on the future of humanity. There are other terrible inventions that have had a devastating impact on humanity including:
The Atomic Bomb — During World War II, both the Allies and the Axis powers were working on developing nuclear weapons. The Allies’ Manhattan Project, however, succeeded first in 1945. The Soviet Union, working independently, developed their own atomic bomb by 1949.
Chemical Weapons — Germany, France, and Britain all began developing and using chemical warfare agents like chlorine and mustard gas around the same time.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) — The United States and the Soviet Union were both working on ICBMs during the Cold War.
Biological Weapons — United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Soviet Union.
Automatic Firearms — Maxim gun, Browning Automatic Rifle, and various models of machine guns.
History would argue that these inventions, just like the ones I mentioned earlier, were created in response to the collective conditions of their time. Yet the impact of these perfected killing technologies in terms of lives lost and their ability to harm life at scale, makes them things that we wish we had never invented.
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Now back to you, and me and what we have to do with these kinds of inventions. As I talked about in You are what you attend to who we are is directly related to what we think about and give our attention to. This works on both the individual and the collective level. We are collectively what we attend to, as I am what I attend to.This has lead to some really bizarre inventions like Tik-Tok a place where people try and condense video based content into a very tiny container to atomize attention. It was hilarious watching my wife trying to follow a recipe for a tahini beet dressing from a 60 second video clip.
If you think about it for a moment, Tik Tok is a natural evolution of social media. And it has a direction towards more and more sensational, more and more shorter clips. It changes both the way we process information and the way that we create information. We are what we create. Or you might consider that we create our future selves by the things we fill our days with today. This is our contribution to evolution and many satirists have poked fun at the future of humanity where we are confined to floating chairs with a steady stream of meaningless content plugged into our brains.
Seriously, we are in charge of our own destiny as a species.
If we want a future that is desirable. If we want to evolve to be more ethical, loving and kind, we can do so. All that is required is that a sufficient number of us focus our attention, time and work on the steps that lead us there, while at the same time governing and prohibiting technologies and businesses that cause damage to people and the earth.
You can learn about the ideas that have us head us towards a thriving future in PROOF. You can consciously take ownership of your attention and focus on the things that elevate life, that inspire you towards positive action in the world.
My hope for you is that you discover your gifts, that you orientate yourself towards your purpose, and that you make a contribution to the world you want to live in.
If we all do this, then imagine all of the great things that will come about from our collective consciousness.
Read more about our journey to a thriving future at PROOF
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