Technological Change Accelerating Faster - Where will it all End?
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Technological Change Accelerating Faster - Where will it all End?
Video interview: Our editor, Philip Letts, chats about agents of change so we ask - where will it all end?
Change used to be something that happened slowly, gradually - over time. Like a smooth ageing bottle of wine or an itch that we gradually get to scratch. Today change moves at the speed of, well, technology - which as we know is too damned fast. Our tireless editor, Philip Letts, was recently interviewed about the history of change at one of the UK’s innovation leaders. In so doing it stimulated a bit of poolside (we wish) summer thinking:
‘Where will all this change end?’
To be clear ‘a change agent is an individual or a group of individuals who take initiative and orchestrate changes within an organisation. The change agent identifies the need for the change and takes the initial steps for the change process, overseeing it from inception to closure’. Modern day agents of change have become folk hero’s and villains from Musk to Gates, Branson, Zelensky, Trump and even Bankman-Fried.
The Letts Journal’s mothership was asked to be a part of an ‘Agents of Change’ series from leading international agency, Agent3. We bring the interview to you in full with a story of historic change proportions conveyed by Philip Letts as he takes us through the backstory to LettsGroup. [See video below.]
Change agents have brought us many of the developments that today we take for granted - from art to architecture to electricity, computers and phones. From Leonardo da Vinci to Steve Jobs, these tireless progressives all had one thing in common. An innate ability to see things differently.
Most of us see the world around us as it is. These loonies see how things might be. Like David Attenborough peering into a strange new world. One full of dystopian roadsters we can hardly imagine. They perceive a divergent place - one separate from the space we inhabit today. Their inventions are a push towards that. You know like Specsavers blurry vision adverts only in real life.
With each new invention we are propelled onto the newer world - shuffling us towards alternate possibilities. Some good, some bad. All different.
As we reflect on the arc of the Letts family and the extraordinary change agents they have produced going back some 227 years, agents that brought us the diary and personal organisers and now their technology innovations, we consider where this all ends. Will someone create the ultimate innovation which phases man itself out? Will we fail to protect ourselves from our most earth-shuddering inventions such as ‘fossil fuel’ and sit by as the planet melts into a haze of oil and plastics and pollution?
Or will we simply create the most Orwellian robot that takes over from us - ushering in a post-human, post-modern, machine driven future? Meaning future change agents could be, well, WALL-E!
We leave you with such ‘change’ musings to ponder as you relax at the beach, or chase the next extreme event after a godforsaken year of inflation and fear. It feels like something quite profound might be broken. More than ever, it's going to be up to us to fix it. God/Elon/Greta save us!
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Technological Change Accelerating Faster - Where will it all End?
Great piece - really enjoyed it...I recognise the passion ref.!