The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

by Kevin Kelly

On a screen, words move, meld into pictures, change color, and perhaps even change meaning. Sometimes there are no words at all, only pictures or diagrams or glyphs that may be deciphered into multiple meanings. This liquidity is terribly unnerving to any civilization based on text logic. In this new world, fast-moving code—as in updated versions of computer code—is more important than law, which is fixed. Code displayed on a screen is endlessly tweakable by users, while law embossed into books is not. Yet code can shape behavior as much as, if not more than, law. If you want to change how people act online, on the screen, you simply alter the algorithms that govern the place, which in effect polices the collective behavior or nudges people in preferred directions. People of the Book favor solutions by laws, while People of the Screen favor technology as a solution to all problems. Truth is, we are in transition, and the clash between the cultures of books and screens occurs within us as individuals as well. If you are an educated modern person, you are conflicted by these two modes. This tension is the new norm.