“Pageit4 “Cassiar® Courier “'June=2990 YOUR WORLD IS TURNING UPSIDE DOWN We’re entering a new age. Are you ready for it? Reprinted From YOU Verve, 1990 issue. Spring If you put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it, the frag eventually will allow itself tao be boiled to-death. If we try to pretend that the world isn’t changing, we also will not sur- vive. The warning — and it’s im- plications -—- is in a challenging book: The Age of Unreason, by Charles Handy. : The upside is that the future is nat inevitable. We can influence it, if we know what we want it ta be. But we need ta be aware of one overriding certain-— ty: the people in power never want change. Our politicians will resist the future. The heads of our churches will re~ sist. The big wheels in busi- ness will resist. George Bernard Shaw said, "All progress depends on the un- reasonable man. The reasonable person adapts to the world. The unreasonable person tries ta adapt the world to himself." The changes happening right now are discantinisus and are nat part of a pattern. It is fright— ening and challenging. The only accurate predictian is- that no predictian 1s accurate. Nevertheless, same changes already are underway that give us a peek at life ten years fram NW . Handy says that the little changes will make the biggest difference. The way we organize our work will have the biggest impact on the way we live. Think of how the telephone line already is revolutionizing how we can work together without being together. Today, you can see a person pulled over to the side of the road in her car, working on her mobile computer and relaying the information on her fax machine, which is con- nected ta her car telephone line. Other lifestyle changes: * Child bearing is no longer taken for granted as a goal for all wamen. It is becoming a yes- ar —- no decision that she makes. * No longer do couples auto- matically marry when they want ta be together. Often they live ta~ gether and, more and more, mar— riage translates to a public com— mitment to start a family. * Right now, a new type of cordless telephone is being test— ed in Europe that will give everyone their own phone that can be used any place and any time. * Within 10 years, monoclonal antibodies should give us cures for most cancers, perhaps AIDS, major coronary diseases and sen-— ile dementia. * Within 10 years there should be the transplanting of animal organs ta humans — especially the organs of the pig, which is bio- logically similar to humans. * Within a few years, crops could be growing on poor quality scil or even in water. Currently —~ “ Sa Seem v - 4 hag ga under developement: an idea to engineer crops which can take their nitrogen directly from the air instedd of from the ground, so that any country could grow all the food it needs. * "Smart cards" are already in use in France. These replace cash, keys, credit, debit and cash cards. They open the door to your house and your car and update all of your bank accounts. * Voice —- sensitive computers will translate the spoken word into written words on screen. * Genetic “fingerprints will diagnose hereditary and latent diseases. * Mileage bells, signed for Hong Kong, will moni- tor your mileage when you use your car in cangested downtown areas. Cables laid under roads will trigger a meter inside your car and give you a bill at the end of the month. Will these kinds of changes fundamentally change our lives? already de- Meo Think of the microwave oven. Today much af our food is pre- cocked in factories, almast elim— inating the daily home-cooked family dinner around the dining room table. Look back over this century. The really influential pecaple are net Churchill, Stalin, Hitler or Gorbachev. They are Freud, Marx and Einsteini ~- men who changed nething except the way we think and therefore changed everything. It is creative upside-down thinking peaple wha always change the world. An example of upside- down thinking: The words em- ployee and employer are only 100 years old and now may become ob— sclete as we become our own em— ployees. We may become respon-— sible for carving cut cur own use of time and “selling” our service to others for limited or some- times extended periads. We can’t assume, for in- stance, that society will provide a job for everyone who wants to work. It can’t and it won’t. A study in 1986 shows that in just 10 years Cabout the year 2,000) 79 percent af all jobs will re- quire cerebral skills rather than manual skills. That completely reversed the figures of just SO years ago. We are moving —- and moving rapidly - fram a skill- intensive to a knowledge-inten— Sive society. Organizations will na longer be expected ta lock after other people. (There goes the company pension plan.) It is likely com— panies will change, using three kinds af warkers: 1) Companies will downsize. They will rely on a small core of expensive, essential, almost ir- replacelable work-managers and will treat them like gald. 2) They will contract out much af their work to specialists €from cleaning services to look after their premises, to clerical Services, delivery services, smaller parts manufactures and more). ates ae ne min . only one quarter 3) They will hire part-time and temporary workers to whom they have no obligations. Within 10 years, perhaps of the working— age population will have full— ‘time jobs as employees of corp- orations. By some estimates, one quarter of the working population will work from their own homes within 10 years. We will have portfolios to show prospective clients. These will fit together the pieces of werk history: wages work, fee work, gift work, volunteer work, homework and study work. Our educational system al— ready is obsolete. What sense does it make to build huge, ex— pensive schools and then shut them down for 10 weeks in the summer —- a system developed a century ago when children were needed to help on the farms in the summer? Education will be reinvent— ed and will go on for all our lives. Perhaps one trend will see small, core schools that teach only the base subjects with the contracting cut of. other sub- jects to independent specialists: mini art schools, language scho-— els, computing schools, design schools - with these specialized schools paid. on a .per capita fasts. Britain is studying a system under which each student has an individual schooling contract ‘with great flexibility. Handy gives us plenty af food for thought. And his chal— lenge is that we not leave our future in the hands of those who currently hold the reigns af pow- er. And that we get involved in upside-down thinking to empower us ta impact on cur own future. reading: The Age oaf pub- Good Unreason by Charles Handy, lished by Little, Brown and Com- pany (Canada) Ltd. $29.95, nea we \ ) Ni ih te ai tt te; rest Nit AU ities sen . an \u Mi Sa re —— Se Se = COME IN AND SEE OUR LARGE SELECTION : ; ; 4 Anniversaries Birthday Parties SY oi