Category: Institutions and Revolutions

Broadcasting power defined the institution of the Industrial Age

So many institutions of the Industrial Age were defined by their broadcasting power.

They were defined by their specialized journal, their TV channel, their radio station.

Broadcasting was expensive and complicated. It took institutions to do that.

Institutions decided what could be broadcast and what could not be. Institutions decided what was mainstream and what was not. Institutions decided what was good and what was not.

Today, unprecedented long distance interconnectivity bypasses the monopoly of institutions to broadcast information.

Anybody can, for no cost, broadcast to the world.

When will institutions realize that superior broadcasting power is not any more the justification of their existence?

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Professions are just a type of institution

diploma

“I am an engineer”. “I’m a doctor”. “I’m a teacher”. “I’m a librarian”…

“I have a PhD”. “I have a MBA”…

So many professions defined by a diploma, a degree. Each profession is an institution. You can’t enter it without the right document.

Once established, professions fight for their rights. You need certain qualifications to practice.

Protectionism kicks in. Degrees from other regions, from other countries are not recognized.

Professions are institutions. All those professions, all those degrees have been created during the Industrial Age.

Institutions of the Industrial Age will be significantly changed through the Fourth Revolution.

Professions, as any institution, will resist the Revolution. But they will have to change. They will have to open.

They will change, because a diploma that you get when you are 20 doesn’t say a thing about how useful you will be at 50.

They will open, because people outside established professions start contributing to the world in the area professions thought was their exclusive remit.

The question is not: when will professions open? But rather, whether they will open before being overtaken by the Fourth Revolution.

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Once established, institutions fight for their survival

As soon as they are established, institutions fight for their survival.

buckingham palace - royalty institution

It is much easier to create an institution than to remove it. A testimony is the bloated government bodies of developed countries.

Even if the logic of their creation disappears, institutions will continue to fight for survival. There will always be people complaining about their possible removal; and members of the institution will fight for their social status and income.

Revolutions change the logic of society. Old institutions get removed and new institutions created.

When old institutions resist too long, change will be brutal.

What can be done to help institutions dissolve themselves?

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Perfectly acceptable institutions will become inappropriate beyond the Fourth Revolution

Slavery is unethical. It is a terrible mistake of humanity, an example of the dark side of man.

Or at least that’s what our mindset of the Industrial Age tells us.

But in the Agricultural Age, slavery was a perfectly acceptable institution. It was an economical need. The surplus of manpower could not ask for more than subsistence.
slaves in Egypt

Slaves were a significant part of the population in all ancient empires: Babylon, China, Egypt, Rome. When it is not pure slavery, it is exploitation of the peasants, the “serf” of the Middle-Ages.

In the Agricultural Age, slavery is a real, useful institution. And nobody finds anything to say against it!

Suddenly at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, this institution suddenly becomes inappropriate. It gets forbidden by the European powers. Is it because suddenly they realize that it is unethical? No, it is just that slavery is not needed any more in the Industrial Age production system. Workers need to be literate and educated. They need to earn money to become consumers.
Only after will people find higher order justifications on the moral level and try to impose it to the rest of the world.

We are now at the onset of a new Revolution. The value production system will change drastically.

Which of our current institutions will become inappropriate and unethical in the Collaborative Age?

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