Information Systems into Wisdom Systems (continued)

Cyberpubies Given this human orientation to prediction, we ask what "maturational stage" characterizes the current status of information systems on the world-wide level. We suggest that it may be in the 14- to 18-year old stage. We predict that the future looks good, as it would for any adolescent with a reasonable upbringing and a clean record. However, for the world, it wasn't always that way.

Just as the pubescent male may exercise his newfound muscular strength by dominating his weaker colleagues, we suggest that the technological advances of the "industrial age" became the proximate cause of WWI and WWII. While these wars could have been avoided if the social skills of nations had been stronger, a period of global conflicts has reasonable predictability by analogy to human growth stages. In teens we find a maturational lag in which physical prowess usually precedes or outstrips ethical development. Every teenage society has some whose impulses make them bullies. Bullies can precipitate gangs. Gangs adopt external aggression in the absence of internal, ethical controls.

Cyberpreppies The "information society" or the "global village" of television and computer connectivity represents coming of age, but with limits. Just as the adolescent gains intellectual competence and logical thought at about 16-18 years, but yet lacks wisdom, our industrial cultures have "wired up" enough to become at least "smart," if not yet wise. Just as some corporations like to hire young blood for their aggressiveness and willingness to take direction without much investigation of the ethical issues, likewise, we suggest that our current post-industrial cultures have used information dissemination in a devil-may-care manner.

Cyberwizzies However, even this youthful mode of conduct ultimately grows into ethical outcomes, based on growth of "wisdom." The young adult seeks consistency and tries to eliminate logical contradictions. This can shape moral expectations. The same occurs in our information systems. For example, everyone watches CNN to learn what really is going on. It's a global nervous system. Thus, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait could no longer remain a private affair where might makes right. It became a test case where world nations for the first time ever agreed almost unanimously on a definition of conduct unbecoming a modern nation state. This consensus become an "emergent property" of the information age and it arose solely from the new interconnectedness of global television. The global network gave rise to a more mature functioning of the constituent governments. Social approbation replaced the law of the bully. Global ethics emerged from the developing "nervous system" of the world. The internet may recapitulate this process in its own manner.

Thus, human developmental stages can guide our understanding of the unfoldment of information history. We suggest that predictions for the next 25 years can anticipate the same trajectory of growth and maturation. In the next 25-year period, we suggest our world culture will grow from being 18 years old to young adulthood. Some young adults do pretty well. And some fail, at first. But after time, the vast majority of young adults predictably get it together. Let's take a look at one picture of our global information future.

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO PREDICTION In writing for developers and fellow analysts, we recognize the need for a systematic review of possibilities. Imagine how you would program a two dimensional array of an exhaustive list of values. You'd identify the number of columns and rows required to classify the data items. Then, for each column, the program would fill in the rows. We have opportunities for a similar matrix that covers the range of life experience. This matrix is drawn from an age-old discipline for characterizing human fortune and challenge. One of us (Bob) has studied the system of Vedic astrology as a hobby for several years. Since over 50% of the mature U.S. population reads astrology columns in newspapers, we can't go too astray in adopting this scaffold for building an entertaining picture of the future.

All Possibilities The "matrix" used in Vedic astrology is simple. It says that life has three stages of evolution: outer values, inner values, and the integration of the two. These will be our "columns" in the array. Vedic astrology identifies four realms of discourse:

• personal tendencies ("Dharma for our '60s readers)
• resources (people and stuff that gives us a head start in life)
• hopes/desires (the directional predispositions we have)
• awareness (who we are and our definition of fulfillment)