Just imagine Rip going to sleep in 1991.
His world was made up of pyramid shaped organisations organised geographically, and most likely he worked for one person in the same location. Rip got his news in the paper the next day, so long as he paid for it, and the proprietor/editor considered the item to be “news” worthy of printing, almost everything was sent by post, although the Fax had just burst onto the scene. When on holidays he took a few photos, then dropped the film into the local chemist for processing, getting the photos back in a week or so, the telephone was the big black thing in the corner with a rotary dial, 1 per household, and the computer at work took up an air-conditioned room, and involved the incantations of serious geeks to get them to work on Wednesdays, petrol is .20c a litre, and the hole in the Ozone layer has just been discovered.
Imagine his surprise to wake up in 2011, less than a generation later. Newspapers are virtually redundant, and news is free, businesses are global and the pyramid structure has been replaced by groups and matrices, the internet has replaced the post and encyclopedias, phones are devices that go anywhere, do anything, and photos are immediate, cheap, and transmittable on these funny phones, the environment is the great moral issue of our time (sic) and petrol in 1.48 a litre, with a Woolworths discount, and you have never actually met most of your friends.
Scary to think how disoriented he would be if he had slept for another 20 years, and woke up in 2031. You are awake, how ready are you for the changes coming in the next 20 years, as they will be greater than those of the last 20.
