Start of a Renaissance, or End of Civilization?

Posted on | October 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

We’re either at the start of a renaissance, or at the end of civilisation. Increasingly, from facts and figures and arithmetic, we’re building the intellectual tools to decide which it will be. While some shrill conservatives cling to the past, the rest of us are moving forward to something still in the process of being defined. That’s why, compared to them, we look a bit untogether. They know precisely what they don’t want, but we can’t yet clearly articulate what we do want. That’s the nature of the future—it’s a collective act of informed imagination. And the quality of information is improving.

Great line from Brian Eno from this month’s Prospect Magazine, still the most intelligent of the British monthlies.

Elsewhere in the short piece he writes:

In the absence of data, you theorise. In an abundance, you just need to do the maths.

I know what he means here, but I’m not sure I agree. We will continue to need to have theories to underpin the maths, no matter how much data we have at our fingertips today or in the future. We still need to make assumptions. It is our collective inability to agree what those assumptions are that makes the current debates so exhilarating!

Technorati Tags: brian eno, prospect magazine, data, assumptions

Category: change, creativity, enlightenment, knowledge, social technology, transformation

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One Response to “Start of a Renaissance, or End of Civilization?”

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October 29th, 2009 @ 11:15 pm

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