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The Modern Age Has Been Characterized By A Promethean Spirit, A Restless Energy That Preys On Speed Records And Shortcuts, Unmindful Of The Past, Uncaring Of The Future, Existing Only For The Moment And The Quick Fix. The Earthly Rhythms That Characterize A More Pastoral Way Of Life Have Been Shunted Aside To Make Room For The Fast Track Of An Urbanized Existence. Lost In A Sea Of Perpetual Technological Transition, Modern Man And Woman Find Themselves Increasingly Alienated From The Ecological Choreography Of The Planet.

-Jeremy Rifkin

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The Modern Age Has

Jeremy Rifkin

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The Modern Age Has Been Characterized By A Promethean Spirit, A Restless Energy That Preys On Speed Records And Shortcuts, Unmindful Of The Past, Uncaring Of The Future, Existing Only For The Moment And The Quick Fix. The Earthly Rhythms That Characterize A More Pastoral Way Of Life Have Been Shunted Aside To Make Room For The Fast Track Of An Urbanized Existence. Lost In A Sea Of Perpetual Technological Transition, Modern Man And Woman Find Themselves Increasingly Alienated From The Ecological Choreography Of The Planet.

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The 10 Largest Antitrust Law Firms In The United States Have Gone Into The Federal Courts Charging Monsanto With Creating A Global Conspiracy In Violation Of The Antitrust Laws, To Control The Global Market In Seeds.

The Revolution Here Is From Hierarchical To Lateral Power. That's The Power Shift. So Increasingly A Younger Generation That's Grown Up On The Internet And Now Increasingly Distributing Renewable Energies, They're Measuring Politics In Terms Of A Struggle Between Centralized, Hierarchical, Top-down And Closed And Proprietary, Versus Distributed, Open, Collaborative, Transparent. This Shift, From Hierarchical To Lateral Power, Is Going To Change The Way We Live, The Way We Educate Our Children, And The Way We Govern The World.

The American Public Is Not Aware That There Might Be Potential Allergenic And Toxic Reactions. With Regular Food, At Least People Know Which Foods They Have An Allergy To.

Today We Are Raised With The Notion That To Be Secure Is To Be Financially Autonomous. Amassing Wealth Is Viewed As The Primary Rite Of Passage To A Secure, Autonomous Existence.

Turning Points In Human Consciousness Occur When New Energy Regimes Converge With New Communications Revolutions, Creating New Economic Eras.

Facebook's A Wonderful, Incredible Way To Bring Humanity Together. They've Brought Together 2 Billion People In The Largest Fictional Family In History. So Young People Are Starting To Empathize With Each Other Through Facebook Across The Globe. This Is Wonderful. However, When Everyone Needs Facebook Because It's So Successful That Everyone's On It, Then It Starts To Look Like A Global Public Utility, A Public Good. Same With Amazon.

We Were Making The First Step Out Of The Age Of Chemistry And Physics, And Into The Age Of Biology.

A Refuge Is Supposed To Prevent What? The Genes From Flowing Out Of Sight? This Refuge Idea Won't Stop Insects From Moving Across Boundaries. That's Absurd.

Companies That Actually Survive And Flourish Are Going To Change Their Business Model From Production To Aggregating The Networks And The Network Services And Solutions. If You're A Construction Company Or An It Company Or A Logistics Company Or An Information Data Operation, To The Extent That You Can Find Ways To Help Build The Commons, You Can Get Some Commercial Value In That.

We Need A Change In Consciousness To Go With This Technology Platform. We Need A New Narrative: We Need To Shift From Geopolitics To Biosphere Consciousness In One Generation. The Biosphere Is Understood Here As What Goes From The Biosphere To The Depths Of The Ocean 40 Miles Where All Living Beings Interact With All Chemicals To Create A Very Complex Choreography That We Call "life On Earth". That Is Biosphere That Is Our Indivisible Community.

We're Creating Multiple Personas. We're Creating A Thespian Sense Of Personality Where We See Ourselves As Works Of Art, And We See Everything In Our Environment As A Prop, As A Set, As A Stage, As A Backdrop For Filling Ourselves In. We Don't See Ourselves As Ever Completed. We Are In-formation.

Deep Play Precedes Deep Work.

I Think Capitalism Will Not Disappear, But It's Going To Increasingly Not Be The Exclusive Arbiter Of Economic Life. It's Going To Have To Find Value In Interacting With The Sharing Economy On Many Levels. And This Hybrid System That's Already Emerging Among Millennials Is Going To Be A Mature System Where, By Midcentury, Part Of The Day Will Be In The Capitalist Market, Part Of The Day In The Sharing Economy, Depending On Your Marginal Costs.

One Thing I've Learned Over These Last 30 Or 40 Years Is That People Make History. There's No Fait Accompli To Any Of This.

The Transition Of World Agriculture From Food Grain To Feed Grains Represents An...evil Whose Consequences May Be Far Greater And Longer Lasting Than Any Past Examples Of Violence Inflicted By Men Against Thier Fellow Human Beings.

The Antitrust Litigation Currently In The Federal Courts In The U.s. Against Monsanto Will Be The Test Case In The Life Sciences, Just As The Microsoft Case Was The Test Case In The Information Sciences.

I Wanted To Make Sure That This Be The First Scientific And Technology Revolution In History In Which The Public Thoroughly Discussed All The Potential Benefits And All The Potential Harms, In Advance Of The Technology Coming Online And Running Its Course.

Many Of The Mainstream Agricultural Scientists, Especially At The Agricultural Schools, But At All Of Our Major Universities, Are Tied Into All Sorts Of Contractual Relationships And Consulting Relationships With The Life Science Companies.

Europe Will Not Accept Genetically Modified Foods. It Doesn't Make Any Difference In The Final Analysis What Brussels Does, What Washington Does, Or What The World Trade Organization Does.

Humanity Cannot Afford To Acknowledge All Of The Blood That It Spills And The Destruction It Inflicts On The World In Its Effort To Perpetuate Itself. Desacralization Is A Process That Allows Us To Sever Any Relationship We Might Feel To Other Living Things. By Draining The Aliveness Out Of Things, We Can Pretend That Our Control And Manipulation Are Of Little Consequence. Man The Trapper Becomes Man The Taxidermist, Disemboweling Nature Of Its Spontaneity And Movement, And Stuffing It With A Leaden Inanimateness.

The Electronic Media Introduced This Idea To The Larger Audience Very, Very Quickly. We Spent Years And Years And Years Meeting With Activists All Over Europe To Lay The Groundwork For A Political Response, As We Did Here.

The Very Notion That Millions Of Workers Displaced By The Re-engineering And Automation Of The Agricultural, Manufacturing, And Service Sectors Can Be Retrained To Be Scientists, Engineers, Technicians, Executives, Consultants, Teachers, Lawyers And The Like, And Then Somehow Find The Appropriate Number Of Job Openings In The Very Narrow High-tech Sector, Seems At Best A Pipe Dream, And At Worst A Delusion.

Can We Reach Biosphere Consciousness And Global Empathy In Time To Avert Planetary Collapse?

So My Attorneys Brought Litigation In The U.s. Federal Courts. The Judge Ruled In Our Favor.

The Industry's Not Stupid. The Industry Knows That If Those Foods Are Labeled "genetically Engineered," The Public Will Shy Away And Won't Take Them.

In This Country, The Health Concerns And The Environmental Concerns Are As Deep As In Europe. All The Surveys Show That. But Here, We Didn't Have The Cultural Dimension. This Is A Fast-food Culture.

If I Were Mark Zuckerberg Or Any Of These Guys, I Would Say, "my God. How Does The World Expect Us To Deal With This?" I Mean, It's Too Big A Responsibility; I Think They're Going To Welcome This. They'll Maybe Keep It In The Private Sector, But They'll Welcome Some Form Of Regulatory Operation Because They've Been So Successful That They Are A Global, Public Good. Everyone Needs Them.

If Your Corn Has A Herbicide-tolerant Gene, It Means You Can Pray Your Herbicides And Kill The Weeds; You Won't Kill Your Corn.

How Do We Address Network Neutrality When The Whole World Is Connected? How Do We Ensure Governments Don't Purloin This For Political Purposes? It's Already Happening. Look At Russia On The American Election. How Do We Protect Data Security When Everyone's Connected? Look What Happened With The Ransomware. How Do We Deal With Cybercrime And Cyberterrorism And The Disruptions Of The System? And We're Seeing This Every Week Now.

We Have Come To Discover What We Suspect Is A New Political Mindset Emerging Among A Younger Generation Of Political Leaders Socialized On Internet Communications. Their Politics Are Less About Right Versus Left And More About Centralized And Authoritarian Versus Distributed And Collaborative.

The Modern Age Has Been Characterized By A Promethean Spirit, A Restless Energy That Preys On Speed Records And Shortcuts, Unmindful Of The Past, Uncaring Of The Future, Existing Only For The Moment And The Quick Fix. The Earthly Rhythms That Characterize A More Pastoral Way Of Life Have Been Shunted Aside To Make Room For The Fast Track Of An Urbanized Existence. Lost In A Sea Of Perpetual Technological Transition, Modern Man And Woman Find Themselves Increasingly Alienated From The Ecological Choreography Of The Planet.

The World's Environment Can No Longer Handle Beef.

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The Empathic Civilization Is Emerging. A Younger Generation Is Fast Extending Its Empathic Embrace Beyond Religious Affiliations And National Identification To Include The Whole Of Humanity And The Vast Project Of Life That Envelops The Earth.

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Being Both Entrepreneurial And Social Is No Longer An Oxymoron, But Rather A Tautology.

Entrepreneurial

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President Obama, I Voted For Him. I Think He's A Mature Politician, But Here's What Happened. Obama Wanted A Green Economy. He Spent Billions Of Dollars Of Tax Money To Create A Green Economy And It Didn't Happen. The Question Is Why.

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We Are Entering A New Phase In Human History - One In Which Fewer And Fewer Workers Will Be Needed To Produce The Goods And Services For The Global Population.

Wikipedia Is An Amazing Construct. It's A Commons That Works. I Don't Know How Jimmy Wales Came Up With It. I'm Sure All Of Us Would Have Said, "this Is The Stupidest Thing We've Ever Heard Of. That'll Never Work In A Million Years."

What I'm Suggesting To You Is That This Could Be A Renaissance. We May Be On The Cusp Of A Future Which Could Provide A Tremendous Leap Forward For Humanity.

Cosmologies Are Made Up Of Small Snippets Of Physical Reality That Have Been Remodeled By Society Into Vast Cosmic Deceptions.

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The Hydrogen Economy Will Make Possible A Vast Redistribution Of Power, With Far-reaching Consequences For Society. Today's Centralized, Top-down Flow Of Energy, Controlled By Global Oil Companies And Utilities, Could Become Obsolete.

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We Are Learning That The Earth Functions Like An Invisible Organism. We Are The Various Cells Of One Living Being. Those Who Work To Save The Earth Are Its Antibodies.

With The Communication Internet, Whole Industries Have Been Disrupted. You're In The Publishing Industry, You Understand That. Before, We Had Newspapers, Magazines - Now You're On The Web. I'm In Book Publishing. I Don't Have To Tell You What's Happened To Us. Television Has Taken A Hit. The Music Industry. But, Thousands Of New Businesses Have Emerged On This New Communication Revolution Platform. Not Just Google, Facebook, And Twitter. There Are Thousands Of Operations. Businesses That Are Doing The Platforms, The Apps. They're Mining The Big Data. They're Creating The Connections.

The Prospect Of Cheap Fusion Energy Is The Worst Thing That Could Happen To The Planet.

Back In 1983, The United States Government Approved The Release Of The First Genetically Modified Organism. In This Case, It Was A Bacteria That Prevents Frost On Food Crops.

Starvation Does Not Occur Because Of A World Food Shortage. If Everyone Ate A Vegetarian, Or Better Still, A Vegan Diet There Would Be Enough Food For Everyone. The Only Sane Way Forward Is To Grow Food For Humans Rather Than To Feed It To Farmed Animals.

You Can Eliminate, For Example, A Brazil Nut Gene If You Know That It Will Create An Allergenic Effect.

Basic Income Is Not A Utopia, It's A Practical Business Plan For The Next Step Of The Human Journey.

We Need A Game Plan To Deploy It Very Quickly To Both Move The Economy Forward And Create The New Businesses And Jobs, And Address Climate Change. It's A Pretty Big Task. Pretty Challenging.

Generations Of Human Beings Were Transformed Into Machines In The Relentless Pursuit Of Material Wealth: We Lived To Work.

We Now Have An Opportunity, Though, To Do Something We Didn't Do In The Industrial Age, And That Is To Get A Leg Up On This, To Bring The Public In Quickly, To Have An Informed Debate.

It Is Not Uncommon To Suppose That The Free Exchange Of Property In Markets And Capitalism Are One And The Same. They Are Not. While Capitalism Operates Through The Free Market, Free Markets Don't Require Capitalism.

When We Seed Millions Of Acres Of Land With These Plants, What Happens To Foraging Birds, To Insects, To Microbes, To The Other Animals, When They Come In Contact And Digest Plants That Are Producing Materials Ranging From Plastics To Vaccines To Pharmaceutical Products?

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