With access to affordable services or public outlets in libraries, everyone will be able to see and talk with their colleagues, family and friends no matter how mobile our lives become – at the moment this will be particularly beneficial for people working in remote area mines.  However, it is the emerging and more resilient economic development that I sense as an major potential of a general shift from broadcasting by experts to more general participation in the enterprise of life in our culture.

For example, food producers could have real time advice about the best market for their produce, consumers could find the closest and freshest sources of food and even provide feedback to producers about their needs.  Similarly, all parents could enrol their children in inspiring classes that are supported on-line by the best educators in the country.  Schools can easily be connected with and be more relevent to their communities.  The quality, scope, flexibility, and availability of many other goods and services will be extended – nationally and internationally.

The accessibility of information about what other people are doing will similarly improve.

All we have to do is sense our own opportunities and create the means to achieve  them with our friends and colleagues.

However, the above bleak outlook is the view from within a shrinking set of structures that were designed in the past and are no longer working. For many creative people in small and larger groups, our growing understanding of the world is resulting in emerging new capabilities, new opportunities and enterprises, and new technologies to enable us to prosper in abundant ways. Change is an opportuntity.  The challenge for most people is to consciously change our habits of thinking and doing and build from what we do now to a more productive social, cultural and institutional infrastructure going into the future.  It is in every person’s self interest to take account of what we now know, look forward, and take part in building the emerging future.

To change gear will require more thoughtful interactive communication and learning from shared experiences with unlike minded people who have had different experiences and possess different insights.  This is now possible with new networked technologies but requires a conscious change from the traditional normative, broadcasting approaches used in the media, formal business, and government settings.  Research suggests groups of people build a vision of  a working future by observing, listening and being listened to respectfully, asking questions, clarifying ideas, and building trust.  New visons also need to be contested, argued about and built on past beliefs.  By working together experimentally in small considered adaptive steps, reviewing outcomes and the impact of what they are doing, and continuously ajusting, the risks of adapting to change can be managed.  Only through such communication, shared action and  insights gained from shared experiences with diverse people can new and effective ways of doing things, and living cultures, be created and perfected.