Are You Ready for the 21st Century? – Rupture!

I heart Twitter; actually, no, I *love* Twitter. Oh, ok, hang on, let me put it another way: I heart & love the amazing varied group of social networks I interact with on a daily basis in Twitter. There! I said it! And I will probably say it over and over again! It’s just such an amazing continuous learning experience! Day in, day out, there is always something new to learn; new conversations to engage with; new connections to make; new amazingly fresh and provocative ideas being shared across all over the place every single minute! Yes, folks, that’s Twitter for you! That’s your social network(s) reaching out to you through the concept of micro-sharing to keep you moving along and don’t leave you indifferent. Ever!

And today it has been one of those days. Again! Being 1st of April (i. e. April Fools’ Day) and all, I made a conscious decision last night of trying to stay away from as many links shared across as I could possibly manage from my Twitter timeline. I know! I agree with you on that one! Quite a challenge! Of course, I failed! I bumped into a good number of superb reads that I will surely be blogging about in upcoming weeks, but there was one special link to a short video clip that I just couldn’t help but blog about it today. Right now, I still have got shivers going up my spine after watching it through all the way.

The actual video clip was shared, earlier on, by my good friend, the always insightful and enlightening Jon Husband. It’s titled "Are you ready for the 21st century?" and it was written by both Michel Cartier and Jon Husband himself, about three months ago. It lasts for nearly 8 minutes and it is one of those videos that once you start watching it you can’t stop. Even better, it won’t allow you to stop, just as it won’t leave you indifferent either.

It starts with this thought provoking sentence: "Are you ready for the 21st century? We are not living through an economic recession, but a reorganisation of our society" and from there it takes you through onto a fascinating journey through the last 300 years of Western history, covering all sorts of aspects (Cultural, economical, political, etc. etc.) and providing some rather stunning insights as to where we come from, where were up to 10 years ago, where we are now, and where we will be in the next 10 years. Did I say fascinating? Yes, I did! Well, that’s probably the best word that I can use to describe the video clip itself, to say the least.

But it goes even further; it comes to explain, and elaborate, quite nicely, on formulating a key question: "What type of society do we want? [in the end]" and from there both Michel and Jon get to present four different models of society for the next few years that, like I said, won’t leave you passive, quite the contrary, perhaps ever rather disturbed, to some degree, at least, for two of the models proposed…

I guess there would be plenty of other things that I would talk about from the video, but I think it’s better if I just stop here, share with you folks the direct link to the video clip itself and embed it over here, so you can play it right away and start thinking for yourself the kind of society you would want to live in the next 10 years:

Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo.

If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you will probably venture into making an educated guess as to which model you would think I would go for; yes, you can probably call me an optimistic, a utopian, a knowledge Web worker living in a bubble, in that dream of never wanting to wake up, … but then again … why not? "What legacy do you want to leave to our children?" Think about it and decide whether I’m being far too optimistic or utopian on this… Or not.

Somehow I feel I won’t be the only one on this one, don’t you think?

Tags: Jon Husband, Michel Cartier, 21st Century, History, Life, Work, Society, Science, Technology, Economics, Politics, Culture, Sustainability, Green, Reboot, Rupture, Legacy, Things That Matter, Smallest Things, Our Children, Future