Change is no longer accelerating, it is in fact slowing.

Someone on a forum I frequent posted pictures of a shopping mall from 2006. I was quite shocked that even though 2006 was nearly a decade ago, the pictures look as if they could have been taken in 2013!

Generally speaking it takes about seven years in my opinion for a certain time to seem noticeably 'dated', but that doesn't seem to apply anymore.

In terms of aesthetics and social change, and even technological change, 2006 was more like 2013 than it was like 1999, and 1999 was more like 2006 than it was like 1992. That is change has been slowing down since at least 1999.

On the other hand though, 1992 seems closer to 1985 than it does to 1999, at least in my opinion, and 1985 seems about as close to 1978 as it does to 1992. Change was still accelerating up to at least 1992.

And if you're going more long term, I'd say the world in 1980 much more resembled the world of 2013 than it resembled the world immediately after the Second World War and I think this is because of the slowdown in change that wasn't technological starting in the 1990s and the slowdown in even technological change starting around 5 years ago, the time the Great Recession started.

My conclusion is that at some point between 1992 and 1999, the exponential change in human civilization, technology and society began to slow down. The only reason people still think change is exponential today is because it's still extremely fast compared to how slowly things changed over the generations throughout the vast majority of history.

So I have to say, it humors me when people say times are still changing exponentially. I think that has to do with the fact the 1990s mentality has never really gone away and people haven't caught up to the fact that we are actually reaching a period of equilibrium where the focus is going to move away from increasing our population and information and move towards conserving our environment and culture and extending our life spans.

I think this is part of why the economy is bad. Just how many flat screen TV's and next generation smartphones do we need?

The marginal improvement new purchases provide isn't worth the expense for many people.

I think you're on to something.

Interesting. A teacher told me in high school (mid 90s) that knowledge was increasing exponentially.

We humans tend to self-limit. Better healthcare to extend life is tempered by horrifying lifestyle habits. Technology that could better life for all becomes a silly gadget because that is what makes the most money.

People never really change. We is what we is.

Interesting thought.

I think it is a matter of limiting technological advancement that this feeling of being 'stuck' in the world 'they' want us to live in. (Consume! Consume!)

If technology was free to advance without budget constraints and freely sharing all ideas about modern medicine and construction of modern cities. Imagine the paradise we could be living in.

Just my two cents

I think the biggest change in human history happened in the period of 1900's to 1960's....two massive wars made the nations to speedup the progress of their advancements,technologically and socially...A noticeable change happens under certain circumstances and it takes at least 25 years to flourish...We are at the edge of a new era at the present time,and everyone is feeling the need for a change worldwide....Last time the governments and wars motivated the change,lets hope this time people are more civilized to find different alternatives to make things happen.

I have noticed this as well. It may be due to our heavy use of electronics and the need to express ourselves have been numbed down some. The styles over all in pop culture really have not changed much from the 90's till now. Then you have the earlier decades, each with drastic change from each other(50's,60's,70's,80's). I have wondered what is going on with us, even aging seems to be different from 20 years ago. I am in my 30's but feel like in in my early 20's. When I was a young kid, people in their 30's seemed so much older than they do now. It is very odd, I am guessing it may have to do with our turn to the digital dark side.

Originally posted by mcx1942
I have noticed this as well. It may be due to our heavy use of electronics and the need to express ourselves have been numbed down some. The styles over all in pop culture really have not changed much from the 90's till now. Then you have the earlier decades, each with drastic change from each other(50's,60's,70's,80's). I have wondered what is going on with us, even aging seems to be different from 20 years ago. I am in my 30's but feel like in in my early 20's. When I was a young kid, people in their 30's seemed so much older than they do now. It is very odd, I am guessing it may have to do with our turn to the digital dark side.

I think the people alive today from the Boomers onward will live much longer than our grandparents did: being a centenarian might even become the norm for people born after 1950-1960 or so. There's no 'set' human life span and our lifes are physically speaking much easier, so the calculated life expectancies might be completely wrong not to mention I think there is going to be a push in medicine to make people live longer since fewer of us are interested in having children.

reply to post by lampsalot


lmao i graduated in 1992.. let me tell you whats different... we didn't have cell phones ( well some of the richie rich did but they were the size of a huge shoe box) we didn't have the internet... Gas when I graduated high school was 89 cents a gallon, do you wanna talk about fashion, music, entertainment etc?? You were cool to have a game boy. Seriously i'm not sure how you came up with this stuff but I couldn't disagree more.. 1992 in no way resembles 1999.... nor does 1999 resemble 2006, nor does 2006 resemble 2012 ( since we are only 3 days into 2013 ) who know what the trends will be..

not a chance.

we are on the precipice of technological changes that will make our current way of life unrecognizable in only a few short years. if we can manage to not obliterate ourselves before then, artificial intelligence and transhumanism will be a true revolution of our minds, lives, and malls.

Originally posted by gnosticagnostic
reply to post by lampsalot

 

lmao i graduated in 1992.. let me tell you whats different... we didn't have cell phones ( well some of the richie rich did but they were the size of a huge shoe box) we didn't have the internet... Gas when I graduated high school was 89 cents a gallon, do you wanna talk about fashion, music, entertainment etc?? You were cool to have a game boy. Seriously i'm not sure how you came up with this stuff but I couldn't disagree more.. 1992 in no way resembles 1999.... nor does 1999 resemble 2006, nor does 2006 resemble 2012 ( since we are only 3 days into 2013 ) who know what the trends will be..

I think you misunderstood. What I was actually saying is that the contrast between 1992 and 1999 is vast, but the contrast between the years since 1999 is not quite so much. Based on units of 7 years, the difference between 1992 and 1999 is the most recent counting back from the present that is truly striking.

From about 1800 to about midway through the 1990s, change was exponential and things just kept speeding up, the 'Quickening' if you will, but for the past 15 years or so these changes, while still fast, are at best stabilizing and at worst actually slowing down.

Originally posted by tgidkp
not a chance.

we are on the precipice of technological changes that will make our current way of life unrecognizable in only a few short years. if we can manage to not obliterate ourselves before then, artificial intelligence and transhumanism will be a true revolution of our minds, lives, and malls.

I think life extension is going to be a reality of the future but I'm still skeptical about AI. Siri really isn't that much more impressive than the voice recognition technology of the 1980s ... she definitely wouldn't even come close to passing the Turing Test.

While I do think AI is possible, there are a lot of ethical concerns to it. For example, if machines actually think and have feelings, we don't have the right to turn them off or make them do work for us do we? So what is the point in building them, aside from maybe as pets or 'children'?

reply to post by lampsalot


think you re right OP

imo the reason is, that people have been more and more imprisoned in a small consciousness

um... like, that the réal world, outside of them, has become like a videogame, inside their own mind
...does that make sense ?

so, they dont have no longer a real, living concious contact with the world around them,
but, instead, got a projected representation of that, in their own mind

i for one deeply hate those computergames with their virtual fake world

But the operation, led by evil, to create this poor virtual-reality-consciousness inside people,
has the goal, to can control the input to that consciousness
...and so rule people by their own small consciousness

...its scarey, if you ask me

The change occurs first in the scientific labs and garages of the genius, and plenty of that is occuring. Then things like the latest Mars Rover add a certain percentage to our overall knowledge of particular subjects and fields (in that case, Mars, Mars geology, planetary geological timelines). People of the past imagined that we'd have flying cars by now, but even if we had it would only mean traffic jams at the most popular altitudes.

Change occurs quickly sometimes, and at others it comes in without us even noticing. Look at politics, in 2006 very few people (except where is Edgar Cayce when you need him?) would have imagined having a black president of the U.S. in just two short years.

Lots of stuff in society now to enjoy, and if someone is a knowledge junkie that's increasing very quickly and is as much fun as shooting fish in a barrel of monkeys.

.....the best example of the above, is ' fruits and vegetables ' -

we have arrived at such a scizophrenic situation,
that, as long a tomato is deepred, and has a moist skin, it is accepted as 'a healthy tomato ' -
eventhough it lacks any nutrient, these days
[ who posted the chart of vegetables having lost 50-75 % of nutrient value, over the past 40 years ? ]

so, the people reject everything, that is different as that what is Presented In Their Mind as 'good ' .
- by the constant bombardment of visual commercials

Some say, lets make the people aware of healthy, nontreated vegetables and fruit -
but Evil is opposing those who want to have back the healthy food again:
..because It can better harm mankind by this slowly toxication of food.

..and the way evil does this, is by Projecting Images into the mind,
- which slowly on will not have any correlation with the real world around that person, anymore

.. there is your ' slowing down '

Some things just stick. How long have blue jeans been around? 40 years? Even in Germany you see a lot of people wearing Jeans. Germans do not think of them as foreign or exotic anymore. The pace of change from the 40s to the 00s was taken for granted, however we lived in "interesting times". It is maybe unprecedented that the scenery changed so often. Think of Shakespeare (or Bacon depending on where you fall on the debate. the world he was born in probably looked pretty much like the world he died in.

As everything gets better and better improving becomes harder, until breakthroughs are reached that are not an evolution or reconfiguration of existing tech, but render possible what is not possible now.

Originally posted by mcx1942
I have noticed this as well. It may be due to our heavy use of electronics and the need to express ourselves have been numbed down some. The styles over all in pop culture really have not changed much from the 90's till now. Then you have the earlier decades, each with drastic change from each other(50's,60's,70's,80's). I have wondered what is going on with us, even aging seems to be different from 20 years ago. I am in my 30's but feel like in in my early 20's. When I was a young kid, people in their 30's seemed so much older than they do now. It is very odd, I am guessing it may have to do with our turn to the digital dark side.

I think there is just more fragmentation. With digital media you can access all you want, while in the past there were one or 2 fads of the decade, like punk in the 80s. Also today we are obsessed with forever young. In the 80s people in their early 30s often would grow full beards to appear more senior.

I like watching old movies and TV shows just to try and guess the year it was made. I base my guesses on clothes, interior design, hair styles, products and technology like phones, TVs and cars.

I can tell for the most part if it was 1950s rather than the 40s or 60s, or the 60s vs the 50s or 70s, etc.

I can do this accurately up to the late 80s into the early 90s, so for the last 25 years I believe we have reached a plateau in our culture that is reflected in style.

I'd have to say that cell phones and other small communication devices are changing society in a huge way, but styles haven't seemed to reflect that change. I expect we will head toward less excessive styles as people will be more concerned with being conservative with their personal resources.

reply to post by lampsalot


oh well it was 3 in the morning so I have no doubt I misunderstood... however I'm not sure that things are slowing down esp in the technology dept... I always seem 3 steps behind all the latest. Infact I still have an old cell phone from 2010 that isn't 3 or 4g , isn't capable of all the new stuff most people have on their phone and sometimes I'm lucky to get the internet at all on it.. haha!! but then i'm tech resistant I think.

What I percieve is that the part of a society that is most rapidly changing, changes.

I mean, we change our focus on what we are nurturing and causing to grow and evolve.

A mall may not have changed much in that time, BUT
The buying and selling of products via the web has changed a LOT!

The growth evolved to a different form.

In 2006 I wasn't buying anything online- now I do my banking, my clothes shopping, christmas shopping, even grocery shopping online. I don't go to the mall anymore.

I also was noting how my brain seems to have changed since internet access (I am one of those old enough that half my life was before personal computers became generalized). I am so used to processing more information in each minute I get bored just watching a movie (even when I am enjoying the movie)- I need to open up other windows and researched various things at the same time. I am able to think and make connections and analyze things ten times faster now. It seems like life has sped up because my mind has sped up.

Just taking a walk outside, I rake in ten times more data consciously than I did ten years ago!

You might be looking in the wrong place to see the changes.......?

Originally posted by Aleister
The change occurs first in the scientific labs and garages of the genius, and plenty of that is occuring. Then things like the latest Mars Rover add a certain percentage to our overall knowledge of particular subjects and fields (in that case, Mars, Mars geology, planetary geological timelines). People of the past imagined that we'd have flying cars by now, but even if we had it would only mean traffic jams at the most popular altitudes.

Change occurs quickly sometimes, and at others it comes in without us even noticing. Look at politics, in 2006 very few people (except where is Edgar Cayce when you need him?) would have imagined having a black president of the U.S. in just two short years.

Lots of stuff in society now to enjoy, and if someone is a knowledge junkie that's increasing very quickly and is as much fun as shooting fish in a barrel of monkeys.

Is a black president that much of a change though? Aside from his skin colour, he's no different from his predecessors including George W. Bush. Nor do people today really seem less prejudice in general, maybe towards black people and gays less so but people seem about as ignorant and judgmental as ever.

Originally posted by Merinda


I think there is just more fragmentation. With digital media you can access all you want, while in the past there were one or 2 fads of the decade, like punk in the 80s. Also today we are obsessed with forever young. In the 80s people in their early 30s often would grow full beards to appear more senior.

edit on 4-1-2013 by Merinda because: (no reason given)

I think rap/hip-hop and grunge/post-grunge dominated the 90s and 00s as much if not more than any one or two fads dominated the 80s. Post-grunge finally died by 2010 and rap is declining but it seems like in general things stay 'cool' for longer. People still sag their pants, new episodes of South Park and The Simpsons are still being made, TV still reruns Seinfeld and Friends like there is no tomorrow.

Imagine if people were still obsessed with Family Ties and Dallas in 2003 and there were still new episodes of The Smurfs.