Revolution

Meme

A Revolution is a turning abound or, more recently, a Disruption of the current paradigm into a new one.

Context

This wiki is about Identity and its driver Information and so this will consider prior revolutions only to help understand how the current Information Revolution might progress.

History

The time line

Can we say that new technology always leads to a revolution of social value? Not always—but often, and profoundly. New technology doesn’t automatically trigger a revolution in social values, but it frequently acts as a catalyst that reshapes how societies think, behave, and organize themselves. The relationship is dynamic, not deterministic.

Historical Patterns: Technology as a Value Disruptor

Printing Press (15th century): Democratized access to knowledge, fueling the Reformation and Enlightenment. Literacy became a civic virtue.

Industrial Revolution: Shifted values from agrarian community life to urban productivity, efficiency, and wage labor. It also birthed labor rights movements.

Television & Mass Media: Rewired public discourse, creating shared cultural narratives and influencing norms around family, gender, and consumerism.

Internet & Social Media: Challenged gatekeeping, amplified marginalized voices, but also fragmented truth and privacy norms.

Contemporary Tech: AI, VR, and Bioengineering

AI & Automation: Raises questions about dignity, purpose, and fairness. Values around work, creativity, and human uniqueness are being reexamined.

Virtual Reality: Blurs lines between real and simulated experience. Empathy, escapism, and identity are being redefined.

Biotech & Neurotech: Forces ethical debates on enhancement, consent, and what it means to be human.

But Not Always a “Revolution”

Sometimes technology reinforces existing values:

Surveillance tech in authoritarian regimes often amplifies control, not liberty.

Blockchain can entrench libertarian ideals, but doesn’t guarantee decentralization unless paired with cultural will.

The Energy Revolution

What has previously been described as an Industrial Revolution will be consider here as an Energy Revolution. There is a limit to the amount of energy a human can bring to a task. That is not what Evolution has created humans to provide and other living and natural forces can be harnessed to the advance of human civilization. So we can judge the first Industrial Revolution and attempt to move from humans as an energy source to a more productive use of animals and naturally occurring streams of work, like water and wind. (note that this reference is used extensively in this section without further attribution.)

Many revolutions came to nothing more, especially in civilizations where slavery was a core component of the economic life providing both energy and information service. Both Ptolemaic Alexandria and Rome failed to sustain their hegemony. The first industrial revolution worked to increase the efficient use of available energy in Europe up to the 16th century. Somehow the user of steam, which had been understood in simple toys many centuries earlier, was first harnessed by James Watt to produce useful work in 1776. That changed the economic paradigm from then until the information paradigm shift started the Information Revolution after the second world war.

Today's failures are a salutary warning that every industrial revolution is a combination of elements, a 'family complex', a series of different factors. And it is in relation to this multiplicity of factors that the 'pre-revolutions', the movements which preceded the English revolution, are significant. In their case, there is always something missing, so that they add up to a sort of typology of failure or missed opportunity. Sometimes an invention appears in isolation, brilliant but useless, the sterile fruit of some fertile brain; no more is heard of it. Sometimes there is takeoff of a kind, perhaps as the result of a revolution in energy, or some sudden advance in agricultural or craft technology, a breakthrough in marketing or an increase in the population: there is a burst of progress, the motor seems on the point of starting - and then the whole thing comes to a halt. Is it right to Jump together under the same heading this series of abortive revolutions, the reasons for which are never exactly the same? They are at least similar in their rhythm: a burst of progress followed by a collapse. Imperfect repetitions of each other though they may be, they are repetitions all the same and obvious comparisons practically suggest themselves.

Information

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