PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

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9. REACHING THE CEILING EVERYWHERE relationships is getting shorter; the average duration of relationships, including marriages, has been reported to be less than 2.5 years in the United States.) Social living in general, seen from all angles, is getting ever more competitive and demanding. Succeeding or even simply surviving in today’s society is becoming harder all the time. Naturally enough, the question on everyone’s mind is, “Just how long will these conditions last?” To answer that question we can look to natural-growth curves and the periodic economic cycle to which they are related. Not long ago I was showing my observations of cyclical human behavior with Michael Royston, a friend who had taught environmental sciences in the International Management <strong>Institute</strong> of Geneva in the 1980s. Royston became excited and quickly produced an unpublished paper of his own, written in 1982, in which he talked about the same fifty-six-year cycle but from another angle. 6 Royston’s thesis was that life progresses in spirals and that long-term growth follows a spiral that passes successively through four phases: discharge, relaxation, charge, and tension, after which it returns to the starting point, but enriched with new knowledge, experience, and strength. The period of discharge is characterized by economic prosperity or a boom; relaxation is characterized by recession; charge is a period of new order and new technology; and tension is a time of growth leading once again to discharge and boom. The entire cycle is completed and repeated in fifty-six-year intervals. In the most recently completed cycle, reproduced in Figure 9.3, Royston considers the years 1912 and 1968 as high points of affluence, followed by periods when the world tumbled into war and economic turmoil. In the spiral that begins with 1968, there would appear to be an ominous echo of 1940 in 1996. Royston made an attempt to connect his fifty-six-year cycle with environmental issues, as well as with human behavior: Humans spend the first twenty-eight years of their lives acquiring or “charging,” first an affective, then a physical, then an intellectual, and finally a spiritual capability, each building successively on a seven-year spiral. The second twenty-eight years see the human in a state of “tension” as parent, contributor to society, thinker. The final twenty-eight years the person becomes “discharged” affectively and spiritually reaching the full age of three times twenty-eight to relax in eternity. 208
9. REACHING THE CEILING EVERYWHERE LIFE SEEN AS A SPIRAL DISCHARGE BOOM 1968 1912 TENSION GROWTH 1954 1926 1982 RELAXATION RECESSION 1940 CHARGE NEW ORDER, NEW TECHNPOLOGY FIGURE 9.3 The Royston spiral. Royston rolled back history and pointed out several events that acted as historical turning points, all occurring very close to fifty-six years apart. His list included the invention of the floating compass (1324), the invention of gun powder and gun making (1380), the invention of the printing press (1436), the discovery of America (1492), the beginning of the Reformation (Luther and Calvin, 1548), the defeat of the Spanish and the rise of the Dutch (1604), the arrival on the throne of France of Louis XIV (1660), the rise of the English Empire (1716), and the American War of Independence (1772). The fifty-six-year periods which followed these events saw successive transfers of power, from the French to the British with the end of 209
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PREDICTIONS - 10 Years Later Ten ye
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Copyright © 2002 by Theodore Modis
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CONTENTS Going West 53 Mesopotamia,
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CONTENTS 10. IF I CAN, I WANT 225 W
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PREFACE This book is about seeing t
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PROLOGUE The fisherman starting his
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PROLOGUE analogy between natural la
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PROLOGUE animal population and foll
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PROLOGUE stead; and those who belie
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1 Science and Foretelling A barman
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING prices,
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING the futu
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING Safety i
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING But exam
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING programm
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING terpreta
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING On the o
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING terms of
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING THE LAW
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING resolved
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING by hard
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2 Needles in a Haystack HOW MUCH OR
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK able to fi
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK LEARNING F
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK Intel’s
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK looks like
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK documentat
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK MESOPOTAMI
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK derstandin
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3. INANIMATE PRODUCTION LIKE ANIMAT
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4. THE RISE AND FALL OF CREATIVITY
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5 Good Guys and Bad Guys Compete th
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5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE T
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6 A Hard Fact of Life Natural growt
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE avoid wrong
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE one substitu
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE place in a n
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE DETERGENTS S
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE The percenta
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE During the l
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE Another inno
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE replacement.
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE soldiers opp
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE takes place
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7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND T
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY States, rec
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY in 1991 pro
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY least four
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY United Stat
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY which would
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EPILOGUE • • • We are in Cent
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EPILOGUE Fads and media stories abo
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APPENDICES 273
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APPENDIX A The Predator-Prey Equati
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APPENDIX A the two varieties will b
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APPENDIX A By assigning weights to
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APPENDIX B As an example, let us co
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APPENDIX C Additional Figures THE N
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APPENDIX C POPULATIONS OF CARS GROW
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APPENDIX C RAILWAY NETWORKS GROW LI
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APPENDIX C GOTHIC CATHEDRALS APPEND
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APPENDIX C OIL PRODUCTION AND DISCO
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APPENDIX C ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1
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APPENDIX C THE BIRTH RATE OF AMERIC
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APPENDIX C 296
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APPENDIX C WORLD WAR II FAVORED TUB
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APPENDIX C THE EXIT OF STEAM ENGINE
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APPENDIX C 302
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APPENDIX C THE DESTRUCTION OF THRES
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APPENDIX C WARS MAY INTERFERE WITH
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APPENDIX C COMPETITION BETWEEN TRAN
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APPENDIX C ANNUAL ENERGY CONSUMPTIO
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APPENDIX C THE GROWTH OF AIR TRAFFI
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APPENDIX C Annual registrations 6,0
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APPENDIX C POPULARIZED DEATHS HAVE
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NOTES AND SOURCES Prologue 1. Donel
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NOTES AND SOURCES the Law Followed
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NOTES AND SOURCES 4. For examples s
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NOTES AND SOURCES bile Road to Tech
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NOTES AND SOURCES 2. For a brief de
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NOTES AND SOURCES Appendix B: Expec
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Bagwell, my initia
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PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute