Pretty big stuff, indeed! And that’s the point of this essay. What are we missing that is inches from our noses that will pay us back in spades?
Let’s look at a few of them: Alternative Energy, Alternative Housing, Alternative Transportation, and Alternative Communications. That’s enough for a start.
Maybe a word on “alternative” would be helpful. We live with much information, images and impressions about everyday things. Energy, housing, transportation, and communication are large industries already. But how can they be changed or improved? In fact, do we even know if they need change?
Rethinking these basic industries will help us live smart for the next 100 years. Current industries have invested in the status quo and will selectively change in ways protective of their investments. Will the oil industry ever see itself as the Energy Industry and use all resources available to satisfy an energy hungry planet? Oil is only a piece of the big picture, and a declining piece at that. What will take its place? What do we need to do to make that happen?
Rethinking housing will also reprioritize our society’s value structure. Is home a place of hiding or refuge? One is aloneness, hermit-ness; the other is safety, peace, and family nurturing. Social interaction and the quality of it depend on the latter. And family boundaries shift constantly to include extended family and friends. Housing design incorporating these emerging mores enhances our ability to know others and ourselves. And thus create better together new things, news interactions--you get the idea.
Transportation forms need to be expanded to include new methods, new technologies, and new user behaviors. More intense use of public transportation would aid energy scarcity, urban sprawl, air and land pollution, as well as social aesthetics.
How do we handle this? Incentivize the use of public transportation? Concentrate on changing public values to avoid status associated with luxury autos, private space as opposed to public space? Will walking return to vogue? Will Segway’s personal transport expand exponentially?
And finally on our list of alternative industries, communications. Once we wrote letters and licked stamps. Now we send emails, from desktop and laptop computers to palm-sized PDAs. When we shop in a large store we can leave the family shoppers to their own devices (no pun intended) and reconnect by calling their cell phones.
Newspapers increasingly wither and die, but partnered websites are fast taking on larger roles. Yes some segments of society do not have Internet access; but this will certainly not be an issue in the near future. Universal electronic communication is moving quickly to new frontiers. We must intentionally embrace it.
In fact embracing change is the secret to reinventing ourselves and our nation. Fighting it prolongs the change, confuses it and makes it slower and more cumbersome. Joining the process speeds our understanding and acquisition of needed skills to adapt easily to even more change. Change is not a negative. It is possibility writ large! It is our future and in need of our support.
Just think of the possibilities!
