Frames

Resistance to change is a given. What is so silly is that the very tools that can effect change is being used to suppress it. This is just because a generation is refusing to embrace possibilities in the name of risk aversion.

In one of the greatest cultural, intellectual and social changes in history called the Renaissance, one trend was how nature dominates humanity. Ironically the technology that the movement helped create became an effort to control nature. The harm caused to the environment is pushing back today.

Paradigm shifts, Frames of reference, Modal change... Call it what you want. This happens all the time in history. Regimes, religion, cultures, languages, customs... The things that define our lives for better or worse are learned or imposed on us.

They are good because they represent human creativity. But what we make can also become the very things that we submit to. They actually become idols. For Muslims, Christians and Jews they are things that conjure images of wooden dolls or something more elaborate. If something we make becomes standards we call tradition, a religion, a company, a club, a family, even a civilization.

But these are just frames of reference which over the Centuries of human history needed a look back to see paradigms shifts. In the 20th Century, it happened more and more frequently. Some blame technology which is morally neutral. How we use technology and why we develop it however, involves values and ethics. Resistance to change was so great, 2 world wars and a surge in the numbers of national identities exploded.

In illiterate societies where only the elite communicate abstract concepts through skillful use of language, I can see why the masses feel obliged to follow the frame of reference imposed on them. As more and more people learn reason, discourse and debate, the possibility to redefine the social, intellectual and economic framework is democratized. Some want the change today while others resist to the speed or the change altogether.

That is why real freedom of information, learning and expression is both a value and a danger. For change is chaotic and unregulated. It feels safer to control the outcome of things by force. From punishing children to behave, to instilling a sense of submission in youth, to re-educating delinquent adults, we prefer to treat people like robots or domesticated animals who need to act in line with the "norm". True to the mechanistic paradigm: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Convoluted reasons, both fictional and actual stories that show why "this way" is the "only way"... But even the "laws of motion" have their limits.As the forces that seem valid on everyday objects, subatomic forces behave much differently. In fact the nature of subatomic material, whether they are energy, matter, particles, waves is not easily defined. To deal with things we cannot see directly, we can observe the effects of theories through mathematical predictions tested by experiment. New ways of viewing the nature of matter and energy will change how we see the Universe and our lives on Earth.

In my almost 53 years of life on earth, besides the boundaries of my life change as I grew up physically, I have also seen shifts in generations, in regimes, in technology and science occur several times. In science and technology, the quantum theory overtook the mechanistic world view of Newton, we lived through the cold war when nuclear bombs were the center of attention, to how the same theories produced the semi-conductor which in turn made computers smaller and smaller. In University, I went to a room to use them, but they sit in my phone today and are being integrated into all things.

Despite the shift in theory, society is still organized for a mechanistic age. Contracts are written to be long-term. Barriers are set up to make change difficult in the name of stability. If you take a step back, the contracts (written or psychological) that we set up between people are part of the frame of reference, the programming or the paradigm of our lives.

The technical reason that change has sped up exponentially is that computers were made to be programmable. We can change the input and output without building a new machine as in the industrial age. All we need to do is change the code.

This paradigm shift is just beginning even though I have written programs or the more colloquial "done coding" my adult life, because we thought this only applied to computers that used to fill rooms. But now they are everywhere, the possibilities they give us is still limited by the industrial frames of reference where manufacturing was capital intensive, about mass production and marketing.

The shift is happening on all levels of society and "threaten" or "elevate" depending on whether you have vested interests in a state of stagnation (except for your bank account). If money is merely a measure of opportunity, it needs to be invested. The paradox right now is that money tends to be gambled rather than nurture human endeavor and happiness.