Читать книгу The Exponential Era - David Espindola - Страница 23

Our inability to relate to the Exponential Era is most pronounced when we try to grasp the fundamental construct of exponential curves. Picturing in our minds how technologies move imperceptibly across what appears to the brain as distant and slowly approaching horizons – only to be surprised as they suddenly explode in front of us at speed and volume – is one of the great mental conundrums of the Exponential Era. These explosions in the growth and the unprecedented rates of adoption of new technologies are leaving most of us unprepared and in wonder. We find ourselves trying to set our minds to a view that is capable of constantly adapting to the sudden appearance of new technologies and digitally driven transformations.

These digital transformations are the direct result of the confluence of new technologies converging to create entirely new ecosystems.¹⁶ These new ecosystems grow at velocities well beyond our primal brain's hunting mode speeds. Calculating where to launch a spear and at what speed to intercept a target remains a difficult task that takes time and practice to master. However, a computer aims, calculates range, fires, and hits a target in milliseconds, again and again.

Humans have difficulty observing and responding to the future. We have trouble extrapolating meaning or even putting energy into understanding a time period that appears to be far away. While some of us can marshal and focus our brain's processing energy on “futures,” most of us can't. In fact, very few of us can focus for extended periods on our future. The reason is fairly simple. Our brains are not comfortable with diverting energy from human self‐preservation and survival. In order to survive, we are careful with how we allocate our finite brain energy; and it is very much “in the moment!”

Research shows that our brains think that concentrating on our current self is rather more important than worrying about our future self, let alone future generations.¹⁷ The study of fMRIs overwhelmingly concludes that the energy that our brains put to our current self, relegates the future self to a much lower priority. As Jane McGonigal, director of the Institute for the Future writes: “Your brain acts as if your future self is someone you don't know very well and, frankly, someone you don't care about.”¹⁸ It seems only logical. After all, we have survived as a species for a long time by being alert to immediate threats. Our brain activity is largely occupied with operating life‐preserving processes and looking for threats and pleasures right now. This leaves us wide open to dramatically underestimating the real impact of exponential curves over time.