I\’m doing what I mentioned in my first post: musing about the \”grand unified theory\” as I watch with (sometimes admittedly sarcastic) humor people\’s frenzied adherence to holiday traditions – and the mental sandboxes people accept without questioning.

It\’s more an ongoing vector analysis of humanity and the attempting to predict outcomes as to where \”streams\” are going to collide and swirl (paging Hari Seldon, yes, I know) – ultimately to predict where needs with be for next generation (and beyond) technology. And investments, while I\’m at it (why not, right?)

There are a few categories of external streams that impact on grand swathes of human behaviors…and in turn create macro trends. These are nothing more than human psychology adapting to external pressures and our fundamental natures exerting themselves. We are, after all, pack animals.

When times as busy, crazy, noisy, people feel threatened; I think this goes back to cave times, when a change in the environment was something to pay attention to (and rarely a good thing). Most instinctively retreat to what\’s known and \”safe\”. Retrench. Which definitely explains the return/rise of religion, among other things.

Why is this important? Well – as the pace of change increases, there will be (is?) a backlash. Understanding how, and why, and for how long these ebbs and flows happen (and how they will happen on a global scale).

The super frenzied pace of technology & connectivity is enabling growth and change in areas of human behavior that wasn\’t possible before (instant communication, ubiquitous connectivity, information on demand). We always talked, we always gossiped, we always sought out like minded people and formed \”communities\”. But the immediacy of it all is, I believe, not only magnifying what we did before, but changing the course of human history in new ways.

So while we are connected to everything and everyone, we yearn to make bread. To have working fireplaces. To grow handlebar mustaches.

When adding in the other, non-technology macro vectors such as the global economic situation and environmental changes (and more) I\’m wondering how fast and far we can grow without a serious push back.

Luddite living is a near impossibility in the first world, and that particular Genie is out of the bottle for good. But the urge to feel some control by retreating to the old is very strong; so tech will have to either operate so unobtrusively, so seamlessly that using it becomes invisible.

Whichever companies and products out there that improve connectivity etc to that degree will be the successful ones.

Just thinking out loud so to speak…plus ca change, as it has been known to be said.