Accelerating Electronic Connectedness is a Foundation of the Global Stage of Human Evolution

In my last column I wrote about the Three Flows of the Shift Age . All three are precursors to the global stage of human evolution that the Shift Age has ushered in. This column is about the most dominant disruption of the last 30 years which is the accelerating electronic connectedness of humanity. On scale, this is completely a phenomenon of the 21^st century.

Here is a chart that shows the recent – 35 years- of global cell phone growth:

There are several points to be made with this chart. First, note that the rapid spread of cell phones was basically in this, the 21^st century. Second, note that in 2000 there were fewer than one billion. By 2005 that doubled. Then the number of cell phones globally tripled in the next five years. Finally, please note that in 2016 the number of cell phone subscribers became greater than the entire global human population [due to some people, particularly in the developed countries, have multiple SIM cards/phones]. So, there are more cell phones than people. Compare that to the start of the century – 2000 – with less than one billion at a time when there were 6 billion or some 15% of the total population. We are now at nine billion phones which is 115% of total population. So the Shift Age was truly the beginning of the rapid rise in Accelerated Electronic Connectedness, just with cellular connections.

Accelerated Electronic Connectedness in the category of cell phones has profoundly changed human communications. This 115% of population brings the elimination of place. For all prior forms of communications, a person had to be in a place. One had to be in the telegraph office or have it delivered to where you were. Landline telephones meant one had to be at home or in the office [ remember the phone answering machines that were in both places as telephones were in places]. One had to watch TV at home. Faxes were sent to physical machines. Yet, when everyone has a cell phone, place was eliminated in terms of human communication.

When you call someone cell phone to cell phone, after, the questions “Can you hear me okay?” and “Is this a good time to talk” is asked, the other/next question is “Where are you?” So mobility has made place irrelevant.

A visual way to state that is to show you two women who are now your neighbors as they are a phone call away, just like neighbors down the street:

So the Accelerating Electronic Connectedness truly has made us a global village, and eliminated the concept of place for human communications. For the first time in human history, we can all communicate easily with each other, whenever and wherever. This is why this flow of the Shift Age has brought us to the Global Stage of Human Evolution.

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