Presentation Summary

The Inner Edge

We all experience how the pace of change is speeding up, but seldom do we
step back to look at where this acceleration is taking us, and how to cope
with the impact it will have on our lives.
This acceleration is not a just twentieth-century phenomenon. The world of
fifty years ago was much faster than the world of 500 years ago at the dawn
of the Renaissance. The pace of change then was much faster than it was
5,000 years ago at the dawn of civilization. And change then was much
faster than it was 50,000 years ago. In fact, this accelerating pattern goes
all the way back to the emergence of life itself.
There are two reasons for this acceleration. The first is positive feedback.
Each new step of progress facilitates future steps. When we moved from the
Industrial Age to the Information Age we did not have to re-invent factories
or mass distribution. That expertise had already been gained; we had simply
to apply it to the production of computers. Today information technology is
facilitating rapid developments in almost all areas of life. And the new
technologies it spawns will in turn fuel the pace of change yet further.
The second reason for the increasing pace of change is somewhat ironical.
We are trying to speed things up. No one ever made money from an
invention that slowed things down. We are continually striving to get more
done and faster. Twenty years ago social commentators were forecasting
that information technology would lead to a "Leisure Society." Where did it
go? We’ve used our new technologies not to give us more time, but to pack
more and more in to the time we have, driven by the belief that the more we
do the happier we’ll be.
In short, whether we like it or not, the pace of change will keep increasing.
Extrapolating Moore’s Law in computing, we find that by the year 2020
your $1000 computer will have the processing power of the human brain,
and virtual reality will be as familiar as the web is today. Biotechnology will
have revolutionized medicine, and led to many unexpected breakthroughs,
possible extending life far beyond current expectations. And
nanotechnology will be creating its own revolution in manufacturing.
Twenty years may seem a long time away, but 1982, which saw some of the
first PCs, was not that long ago. Yet more change is likely in the next twenty
years than occurred over the last 200 years. If we could see just 20 years

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into the future our new technologies would seem like magic–just as a CD
would have seemed like magic to Mozart.
The faster change comes, the harder it is to predict the future. In fact we’ve
never been very good at predicting the future. In 1893 a group of eminent
people at the Chicago World Trade Fair were asked to predict the world a
hundred years ahead—in 1993. They got just about everything wrong. They
did predict the adoption of the telephone, and said that by 1993 every city
in the world would have one!
In our own times, many experts have vastly underestimated the full impact
of computing. Forty years ago, when I first started working with computers
(an 8K machine that filled an office and took 20 minutes to boot up each
day), few even foresaw the networking of computers. Twenty years ago,
when I wrote The Global Brain, forecasting the growth of the Internet, none
of us—not even science fiction writers—foresaw how profoundly the net
would affect our lives. And how many of us, just five years ago, when we
were probably first coming to terms with e-mail, would have predicted what
the Worldwide Web would become today? How then can we make any
reliable predictions about where it will be in 5 years time—or, given the
acceleration in change, in even 3 years time?
So how do we cope with an increasingly unpredictable world? How can we
prepare ourselves as the winds of change whip up into a storm of change?
Some clues can be found from how trees withstand a storm. First a tree
needs to be flexible; not to resist the wind but to bend with it. If we are to
adapt the flow of change we will need to let go of past assumptions and
learn to think afresh. We will need to draw more fully on our innate powers
of creativity. Taking time is essential. As change pushes us to make more
decisions faster and faster, it becomes increasingly important not to fall into
the trap of rushing our decisions. We often feel that the quicker we get a
problem solved the better things will be. But this seldom leads to the best
solution. Quality decisions require we slow down, sleep on it perhaps, and
create the opportunity for insights and feelings to emerge in our awareness.
Second, a tree needs strong roots to keep it stable. If we lose our inner
equanimity and react emotionally to every new change we will become
increasingly stressed and more prone to burnout. Taking time for ourselves
is becoming ever more important. We need to find ways to give ourselves
quality downtime, some way to unwind from the increasing busy-ness of our
lives; time to put things in perspective; to recognize that the "doing" mode
of thinking often stops us getting what we really want—peace of mind.
Third, a tree needs other trees. My cottage in England is in the middle of a
large forest. In storms I hear the wind in the treetops, but the trees around
me are still and safe. Similarly, we need the support and companionship of
others. The future is uncharted territory, and we will all feel vulnerable at
times, or in need of a friendly ear. In most organizations today people are
expected to check their feelings at the door. You are meant to be working
hard, with a good reasoning mind, not caught up in feelings. Yet feelings
contain a wealth of hidden information.
In conclusion, those who will thrive best in the coming times are those who
learn to take back some of the time that accelerating change is taking away.
We need to reclaim quality time. Time to think, to rest, to allow ideas to
bubble up, and to let our feelings surface. Time to nurture our
relationships–both at home and at work. Our culture has developed a
remarkable mastery of the material world around us; it is time now to
develop a similar mastery of the inner world of mind. This is the next great
frontier, not outer space, but inner space.

Peter Russell is the author of ten successful books including The Global
Brain, The Creative Manager, Waking Up in Time, and From Science to
God. He has degrees from the University of Cambridge (England) in
theoretical physics, experimental psychology and computer science, and
was one of the first people to introduce personal development prgrammes
to the corporate world in the 1970s. His work integrates Eastern and
Western understandings of the mind, exploring their relevance to the world
today and to humanity's future.

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