Observation 1 - The world is changing faster than ever

I know it's obvious but that's the point of this observation and those to follow.  They are designed to be things that 90% of us can readily agree on because we have observed them personally or intuitively know them to be true. 

The real questions will come later when we ask if we know these to be true why do we ignore them in the way we manage change? and how do we need to change change to improve our effectiveness? 

Let's start breaking this observation down.  First an acknowledgement.   Pretty much everything changes.  Continents move, species evolve, landscapes erode and rebuild and what's acceptable in society evolves over time.  This change is omnipresent and likely the type of thing Heraclitus was referring to when he said "change is the only constant in life" in 585 BC.  This change however is relatively slow and fairly constant (perhaps excepting our current climate change issues). 

As a general rule what is causing the pace of change to increase is advances in technology (the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry).   I'm no historian but for the purposes of this blog I'm going to assert this process of accelerated change started in earnest with the invention of the printing press and moved through to steam powered machines, electricity and on into electronics and the internet as we know it today.   Every cycle seems to get quicker and this is particularly true for our current "revolution"  highlighted by computer based technologies, the internet and "digital".  This cycle doesn't just feel different it is different and this difference is best explained by Moore's Law.

Most of you will be familiar with Gordon Moore the Founder and CEO of Intel and his prediction in 1965 that "The number of transistors on a microchip will double approximately every two years."   At the time Moore was simply projecting forward a trend he had noticed to be true through the 1950's and into the 1960's and said he expected this trend to continue well into the 1970s.  Moore, a visionary,  drastically underestimated the trend and the doubling every two years holds today (note, many commentators believe the doubling is closer to every 18 months).  This trend is not just for transistors on microchips however it also applies broadly to nearly every aspect of IT from network capacity, to availability of storage size, global connectivity and many others. 

Moore's law, doubling every 18 months to 2 years is a geometric progression that has been in force now for 70 plus years.  We humans are quite good at understanding linear change but we are not very good at grasping the impact of geometric change.  The problem with geometric changes is they start really small appearing insignificant but they eventually reach an inflection point where the changes become significant and then quickly incomprehensible.  We rapidly run into what has become know as "the second half of the chessboard problem" (attributed to Ray Kurzwell).  So here's a short version of the story:

The myth goes that the inventor of chess introduced the game to a King.  The king so loved chess that he gave the inventor the opportunity to claim any reward he wanted.  The inventor asked for some wheat to feed is family and requested that they work out how much wheat by putting 1 grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third and continue to double until all squares are full.  The king readily agreed although he wondered why the inventor asked for such a meager reward.  He instructed his men to gather the wheat and give it to the inventor.

Of course they couldn't as the amount of wheat required was enormous, so enormous that it represents more wheat that has ever been grown through the history of mankind or about 1,600 times the global wheat production in 2020.  How much wheat is it:

18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (or 264 - 1)
If you wanted to say this number then apparently it is .....
eighteen quintillion four hundred and forty-six quadrillion seven hundred and forty-four trillion seventy-three billion seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty-one thousand six hundred and fifteen

And virtually all of this wheat, well over 99.9999 % occurs in the second half of the chessboard (I could go on and on with the repeated "9" but you get the idea). 

Suffice to say the numbers get very big very quickly when you enter the second half of the chessboard and our 70 + year IT trend of doubling every 18 months to 2 years has entered the second half of the chessboard and the change that is coming at us year on year is hard to comprehend. 

This is why we sense that the pace of change is faster than ever and that the pace of change is accelerating.  It also gives some sense around why we are feeling overwhelmed. 

Unfortunately it is likely to get worse.  As Justin Trudeau said “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.” I find this scary.  You?  

For Trudeau's quote to be true depends on an assumption that this trend will continue forever.  As we sit here today we have no way of knowing if this will come to pass but I note two things:
  1. I am not aware of any trend in the history of mankind that has lasted forever unabated. 
  2. This has been a 70 year trend and counting, with no end in sight and it's unprecedented.

For those seeking other views on the wheat and chessboard problem check out this video from Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.

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