"The world is moving faster than ever before. Everything is
being disrupted, including that thing you do. So you're going to
have to tear it up. And you're going to have to keep on tearing it
up. If you stop, even for a second, you will die."
If you've ever sat through a consultant's presentation,
including *cough* many of mine, or leafed through a copy of
the Harvard Business Review or Wired then you've
heard a spiel like this. The audience sits up. Yes, the world is
accelerating so fast we can't think! So much new stuff to deal
with! We are so special to live in such an exceptional time! Tell
us how to cope!
My grandmother would have folded her arms and frowned. She was
born in Belfast in 1900. Horse drawn carts clopped up and down her
cobbled street. Life expectancy was 57, Britain was a superpower
with the naval equivalent of the Death Star and her house was lit
with gas and candles. By the time she was 20, cars were rattling
and hooting down her road and they were enjoying electric lights,
outrageous women's clothing and jazz. Russia had convulsed into a
radical new kind of government, airships were crossing the Atlantic
and many of her male relatives had been slaughtered in the First
World War.
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