Often when historians talk about time periods, they may refer to periods by .
The 1500s-1700s was the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery
Beautiful Art like Rembrandt's "Prodigal Son"
People traveled the world by ship using their technology like armor and guns to dominate and plunder the more modest people of the globe.
The mid-1700s to 1900s was the industrial revolution
Industry became a staple focus of creating and consuming, which led to much more massive destruction of resources through the cycle of production—fed incessantly by wars of greater scale than ever before.
In the late 1900s we jumped into the information age.
Inventions of the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, fax machine, computer, and E-mail changed the speed at which news of new developments could travel throughout the globe.
Customer data was surveyed and catalogued. Then with the advent of computers, the catalogs got recycled and replaced with databases.
Suddenly, knowledge from all over the world began feeding into a cyber network. Anyone with access to a computer could find any information within a matter of hours with the right search engine. Once Google came alive, and technology advanced the speed of data transfer, any answer became seconds away.
Myspace.com and Facebook competed to gather personal data about people in a brand new way—socially. Here people catalogued themselves for marketers by providing information about their likes, interests, friends, and activities.
So with billions of people vested in this technology, how could the information age possibly end?
The same way all of the other ages did; with a change of focus. When the Iron Age ended, we didn’t stop using iron. In the same way, we won’t stop using information. But we’ll use it differently.
In 2050, colleges and universities won’t be able to charge so many thousands of dollars for information that can be obtained for free. While the last generations of corporate hierarchies will still believe that college should be a pre-requisite for a job, the next generation will have grown up by then. They will have seen the foolishness of student debt that never gets paid back. They will have already experimented in using the abundant technology to create their own businesses online.
What’s the catalyst for ending this age?
This generation has become super saturated with information. Every piece of data out there has become embedded with advertisements. Every conversation with a new person leads to a sales pitch. People are working 24 hours a day with their phones. We’re making money to spend on the next efficiency-booster with the promise of saving more time.
Or else we spend it on entertainment and distraction from our lives. Countless people are living addicted to sugar, caffeine, pornography, alcohol, work, school, or “feeds” on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and countless others. Information isn’t valuable anymore to normal people. We’re overloaded with data.
So what’s next?
People are now looking for meaning. How can we decipher all of the overwhelm of data and distill it down into something meaningful? Since human beings are unique, all of the information of the internet cannot be relevant. Instead, each person must find what is uniquely important based on their own values. Once they do, they wonder “Are there others like me?” And then the quest begins to scour the internet for other: Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, Meet-ups, Conferences, or Community Education Classes.
The Tribe-Building Age has begun!
Whether you see it as niche-marketing, community organizations, social services, volunteer groups, intramural sports, or online-gaming, people are getting together. But it’s not limited to geographic location. People are searching the globe for ways to connect with like-minded people who share their values.
- Groups like Live Your Legend promote a philosophy and encourage others to meet local to support the vision.
- People use Zoom conferencing to start spiritual discipleship groups or business masterminds.
- Author Academy Elite is a program that teaches people how to write, publish, design, and market books. It comes with a Facebook “Tribe” page where members encourage each other throughout the process—including buying each other’s books.
This age of tribe building is far from over. Right now, it often impacts social lives or entrepreneurs with on-line coaching businesses. However, as governments and corporations continues to grow into even larger and more impersonal entities, the millennials will continue changing the landscape by creating smaller pockets of cultural change based—not on increasing revenue—but on their unique cultural values.
Young people are looking for a place to belong. The marketers know this because they are the same young people looking for a place to belong. So they are creating niche markets of dedicated followers that will buy anything created by a company that aligns with their values and mission.
This Generation hasn't found a reason to respect their Elders
Much of the older generations are still dedicated to the powerful oligarchs and brand names that have silently been swallowed by larger corporations who’ve Walmart-ized the quality of their products and values. Those generations have trusted establishments that have blurred the lines between government, business, healthcare, food, and Wall Street. These entities have normalized practices and products that are filling our minds, bodies, and environments with cancers of all kinds.
The younger generations aren’t interested in business as usual. They want something different. They want something meaningful. They want something healthy. They want to create a balance between work and play, but also between co-workers and family and friends and volunteer groups and spiritual groups and hobby groups.
What's Next for you?
The Tribe Building Age is about working to help people niche down and connect to people who share their values.
Who is in your Tribe?