There is no question among sociologists and anthropologists that we are/have been in a major transitional period of history.
As with tectonic plate shifts that lead to an earthquake, so it is with social tectonic plate shift. There is a continuous movement of social plates until social quakes create a new cultural landscape.
Some of the quakes are obvious and felt by everyone (September 11th for example). Most are much more subtle and felt only by the observing few. However all social plate shifts catalyze aftershock ripples that reach deeply into the cultural plate, moving a society forever.
Americana's roots are deeply agrarian. Modernity and industrialization worked hand-in-glove to provide momentum for the agrarian way of life. But as their influence cooled, the Agrarian Cultural Plate began to sink. Postmodernism and digital technology combined to heat and provide the energy for the next cultural plate to the rise; the Technomadic Cultural Plate.
The Technomadic Cultural Plate has effectively undone the rational, settled and controlled Agrarian worldview. The way we once saw truth and life has now changed. Truth is no-longer the end result of rational propositions and trademarked conclusions; it is a mosaic of personal and collective experience. In like manner, life is no longer lived in attachment to dogma, but in attachment to others - not to just family or friends or one's own tribe. For the Technomadic, connection is not a matter of geographic proximity. It is about the quality of the connection.
This shift affects everything that we are and do: how we see and live out our relationships, work (career) life, leadership strategies, politics, education, economics, arts and religion/spirituality.
Consequently, those involved in these affected areas of live must make tectonic shift. Incremental change is not enough. We must move beyond reacting to redesigning and restructuring; the innovation of entirely new paradigms and practices. Groups and organizations must question every assumption about their "market" and remake themselves. This isn't just changing the tools in the same toolbox. The toolbox has changed. We have changed.
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