I use his quote below to describe how technology is evolving us, how we’re evolving technology and how both are evolving culture.

• Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
• Data becomes information when assembled into a coherent whole, which can be related to other information.
• Information becomes knowledge when integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
• Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting.
• Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principles, memory and projection.

Further, I map this evolution to a timeline:

1945-1965

Noise to Data

1965-1985

Data to Information

1985-2005

Information to Knowledge

2005-2025

Knowledge to Understanding

2025-2045

Understanding to Wisdom

Today, we are Knowledge Workers evolving into Understanding Workers.  Understanding Workers use technology to anticipate, judge and act.  Think about it.  This is what we’re doing with FitBit, Quantified Self, 23andMe.com, Facebook, and so many other technologies of this era.

As we move into an Era of Conscious Computing, we’ll also be moving deeper into Understanding and closer toward Wisdom.

I call what we’re doing today continuous partial attention, or cpa, for short.  In 1997, I created this meme to differentiate between simple and complex multi-tasking.   The motivations and the effects of simple vs. complex multi-tasking appeared to be very different to me.  I wanted a new name to describe what I was seeing in order to be very clear that when my mom was multi-tasking, she was doing something very different from what I found myself doing.

The meme, continuous partial attention, not only resonated with my colleagues in high tech and others outside of that field, it also ultimately led me into years of research – on individual and mass consciousness patterns of attention, trends, and related health and technology topics.

By now, I’ve developed what I’m calling  ZG Maps* and a process for using it called ZG Mapping. ZG Maps spans from 1945 and projects out toward 2025.   Some of the presentations I give at conferences and to corporations pull information from ZG Maps.  For corporate presentations, I often map the company’s history to the ZG Maps, illustrating when and how the company was in and out of sync with what I’ve come to call, the dominant mass consciousness attention paradigm.

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen outlines how successful companies can miss out on important disruptive technologies by focusing solely on iterating on sustaining technologies.  I admire Christensen’s work.

ZG Mapping comes at these issues from another point of view.  My favorite Alan Kay quote is:  “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.”  Thus, coming at innovation from a variety of points of view can add IQ points!

With regard to innovation, in addition to keeping Christensen’s points in mind, I think it’s crucial for companies to also consider:

1. How their products, services, marketing, recruiting and management efforts can resonate with cultural shifts. Attention, expressed collectively, can define a community, a society, a business, a corporate culture or a set of products and services.  Mass consciousness attention patterns are at the heart of the ZG Maps.  A set of values, orientations, and trends emerge from understanding how past patterns flow into the present patterns, and then, into likely future patterns.
2. How the youngest generation entering the work force can play a significant role in a company’s future success. In many companies, the newest and youngest hires become trapped at the bottom of a steep management chain, engaged in menial work, with little opportunity to effectively offer one of their greatest gifts:  their knowing and sensibility of the incoming dominant mass consciousness attention paradigm.

These and other topics will be covered in future posts.

*ZG Maps:  ZG for Zeitgeist and Maps or Mapping for orientation or orienting