David Houle - Power (Entering the Shift Age, eBook 11)

Throughout human history there has been power. The power of Mother Nature and the Earth. The power of the planets and their force fields. And of course, power as defined and wielded by humans. Now lets take a look at how power will change in the Shift Age.

Human Power

Human power has many different shapes and shades. People have been born into power, earned power, seized power, and been given power. A few have created subsequent power over others through the ages due to what they wrote or spokeSocrates, Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, and Marx are just a few. No matter how much power these people had while alive, they wielded incredible power for millions who came after them due to their thoughts and writings. Others had even larger posthumous power due to the starting of major religions: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Confucius are just a few examples.

Many people have also embraced the ideas and beliefs of the original figures to gain personal power over others. Stalin appropriated the writings of Marx in his attainment of authority and its brutal implementation over a nation and its people. Popes have wielded great power over the morality and actual lives of people in the name of Jesus. Recently, radical Islamist mullahs have created personal and paramilitary followings in the name of Mohammed.

Control Power

Generally speaking, the human exercise of power has been one largely of control. Those that have the power control those that dont have it. Those that follow people with power are granted or appropriated power by being anointed followers. I call this type of power Control Power. It might be physical control, thought control, moral control, or political control: all different forms of the manifestation of power.

In the Agricultural Age, power mostly came from bloodlines and from war. In the Industrial Age, power often came from war victories, the creation and oversight of hierarchies, early-stage democracies, and the control of machines and the power of production. In the Information Age, power came from all of these plus technological invention, knowledge, and use of information. In the Shift Age, all of these forces of control and manifestations of power will continue. However, there is a new clear direction in the definition of power as we enter the Shift Age.

Influence Power

Simply put, power in the Shift Age will move from Control Power to Influence Power.

The three fundamental forces of the Shift Age, the Flow to Global, the Flow to the Individual, and the Accelerating Electronic Connectedness of the planet, all are reorienting power from being about control to being about influence.

The Flow to Global means that we are moving into the global stage of human evolution. This means we are moving beyond the nation-state as the highest form of identification. Yes, we may still be citizens of a country, but we are also developing the sense of being global citizens. The idea and wherewithal of controlling global humanity is much harder to consider than controlling a country.

The Flow to the Individual is providing all of us with ever more power. The few hundred media companies have become hundreds of millions of bloggers, video producers, and social media participants. Thirty years ago, media companies and governments controlled media and the news. They largely controlled what we consumed. Now, any human with some sort of electronic connection can have their voice or content consumed by any other human. None of us are trying to control; we are trying to influence others.

The Accelerating Electronic Connectedness of the planet is the obvious dominant force altering this power equation. Now that everyone can theoretically reach everyone else, and do so at close to the speed of light, it is both easier for individuals to influence others and harder for any institution or individual to control individuals. Dictatorships and radical religious sects have almost always maintained control in part by censoring or severely restricting outside information. Control Power relies to a significant degree upon the control of information. We saw this back in Chapter Five when discussing how the common denominators of the Arab Spring were electronic connectivity and social media.

This global freedom of expression, this ability to connect with anyone in the world, this ability to organize and coordinate groups of people of any size online, has forever changed the power equation.