View source for Jeremy Rifkin on the Convergence of Time and Space


'''= Video via http://vimeo.com/9939382'''

==Description==

"The great turning points in human history, the really big ones, occur when new technologies allow us to dramatically compress time and space, shorten the time in which we engage with each other in exchange. And those moments are very few and far between.For example, agriculture in ancient Samaria came together with cuneiform and writing. It changed the speed, flow and density of exchange. It created surplus. The coming together of the print press in the early modern era with coal and steam power became a great revolution. It changed the pace, speed, flow and the density of exchange in compressed time and space. The same with the telegraph and telephone when they joined together with the internal combustion engine, oil and the auto era. Today we're seeing a new compression of time and space. We're connecting the central nervous system of the human race for the first time in history. The personal computer revolution, the world wide web, the internet, wireless, satellite, Wi-Fi. We're now in an era where we can actually connect the central nervous system of each individual to every other individual on the planet.We have to step back and look at the enormity of this change in time and space. Remember two hundred years ago, your ancestors here in Europe would have come in contact with maybe two to four hundred people in their whole lifetime. Today you could have the whole human race in contact. Two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, the average amount of knowledge that a person had was on the stained glass windows of the local cathedral. They told the biblical story. Today one on-line newspaper has more information than your great-great-great-grandparents would have had in their total life."

==More Information==
* [[Jeremy Rifkin]]


[[Category:Geography]]

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