Behavior

People fascinate me.  Whether they are arguing, working together, or suffering together, they fascinate me.  They are always progressing in one form or another and are discovering new things.  But how does society change?  Clay Shirky said that "Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technology, it happens when society adopts new behaviors."  So it doesn't matter what technology you've got, the people cause the revolution through their behaviors.  I read a lot about how technology has been used to further our race, and how it has been the critical tool for accomplishing certain feats that have gone down in history or have changed the course of a nation.  It wasn't because of the technology, it was by the technology that this was accomplished.  The need and desire was there, the technology just made it faster and more possible than before.  Clay Shirky also said that the future of our people is on the shoulders of those who take the present for granted.  It is true, because they will seek innovation because nothing seems new to them.  But it won't be any easy change, Douglas Adams said this about the views of society:

"I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

It is always a constant struggle, as time goes on, new things happen, and revolutions and protests are accomplished that lead to better lives.  After reading about a lot of success stories of change in the past ten years, they couldn't have happened any earlier.  The technology to accomplish it didn't exist, but the desire did.  Technology didn't cause the people to revolt/evolve, they did it because of the same reasons they always did.