Waves of Change

This first chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by reviewing the idea that humanity has gone through four “societies”—periods distinguished by significant technological, environmental, social, and other differences) since we emerged from the Plestocene epoch into the Holocene epoch 12,000 years ago—hunting and gathering society, agricultural society, industrial society, information society. According to six publications that first identified the emergence of a fifth “society” (Sternberg E, The economy of icons: how business manufactures meaning. Praeger, Westport, 1999; Jensen R, The dream society: how the coming shift from information to imagination will transform your business. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1999; Pine II BJ and Gilmore JH, The experience economy: work is theatre and every business a stage. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1999; Postel V, The substance of style: how the rise of aesthetic value is remaking commerce, culture and consciousness. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2003; Pink DH, The MFA is the new MBA, Harvard Business Review, 2004; Pink DH, A whole new mind: moving from the information age to the conceptual age. Riverhead Books, New York, 2005), humanity may now be emerging into a dream society and the Anthropocene Epoch.