Hommage to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Published originally in The FUTURE of COMMUNICATIONS, NEC, 1989
The evolution of life on Earth does more than simply find a way of prolonging itself in us along the line of its earlier expression:
like one of those multiple-stage rockets, it is now visibly starting a fresh forward leap, with a directive mechanism and a power of penetration that are both fundamentally new.
A true visionary more interested in discerning the future in the present than in indulging in distant utopias, Teilhard de Chardin noticed the power of emerging communications technologies:
All around us and right under our eyes, a process of great importance is going on. It is favoured by the sudden multiplication of ultra-rapid means of travel and transmission of thought…
Today, as we enter the last decade of the millennium, the increasing globalization of markets and industries and the increasing rate of technological, economic, and political change create more and more diversity, complexity, and interdependence. As a net result of these evolutionary trends, decision-makers are under pressure to solve more complex problems under more uncertain and ambiguous conditions in less time.
These conditions are aggravating the global environmental and epistemological crises, and making the restoration of the harmonious relationship of humans with nature and knowledge more and more difficult. The good news is that the very same computer and communication technologies, which are — at least partially—responsible for the increasing globalization and complexification, can also usher in an Age of Learning.
As corporate task forces on learning, strategic learning forums, tele-education technologies, and numerous other signs show, learning is emerging as humanity’s new frontier.
With each new electronic network, with each new user of knowledge-based software programs, the innervation of our planet-wide “grey matter” is accelerating. That’s happening just in time before the accumulation of local and global problems irreversibly outpace our collective capacity to deal with them.
Imagine what life on Earth would be when we learn to combine and fully harness the power of communities driven by Consciousness, Competence, and Compassion (C3) and supported by Computers and Communications (C2)! Some of today’s online communities will become a crucible of the emerging C5 civilization.
Forward-thinking leaders in the business world, many of whom have already recognized that “the business of business is learning” (Harrison Owen), will also recognize that C5 makes good business sense. In fact, it may well represent that unique mix of critical ingredients that alone can reconcile the frequently conflicting needs for increasing the autonomy of
work groups and business units on one hand, and increasing overall organizational effectiveness on the other.
A C5 culture will dramatically redefine our highest potential as individuals, organizations, and as a new civilization. Wouldn’t it be easier to get there if we knew a bit more about that “there”? Certainly, but I can’t know it, and you can’t, only we can. Just as no one can know what is the full meaning of “human dignity”, “self-actualization”, or “freedom”, until we all live in a world in which these birthrights are supported not only by constitutions but by the very fabric of our social relations.
And the strange, beautiful thing is that probably this time the
vision will not be the product of any one person, but will be a
collective product. It will be the creation of the new human
species as a macro-organism, as a perfected neural system
made up of thousands and thousands of networks.”
(Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary of the United Nations).
It is time to start preparing for the learning expeditions
that will seek the overall patterns that connect us
into the macro-organism of a sentient humanity.
George Pór, Founder, Community Intelligence Labs
I unearthed this piece that I wrote 34 years ago, as I was combing my hard disk for content related to future studies or AI-enabled planetary superorganism, aspects of a Generative Action Research that I’m working on in collaboration with the RADAR, a decentralized global collective of 300+ researchers, early adopters and innovators accelerating better futures.
Having worked with corporate change agents as my clients in the 1980s, this mini-essay reflects the misplaced hope that many of us, “organizational transformation” consultants, shared at that time about business-led global transformation.
I decided not to change any word so that the tension between (r)evolutionary ideals and the weak material force supporting them in that epoch remained visible. May that tension renew the interest in how the forces for and against a C5 civilization will play out in the time of the AI revolution.