22nd Century World (“22CW”) is a website dedicated to discussing the challenging issues we face as a society. 22CW recognizes that the challenges we face today are interdisciplinary and are far more complex than the issues we faced in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The 21st Century is full of complex dilemmas. Many of them are paradoxes as well. For example, as individuals, we have the most information available to us (right at our fingertips), but are we any smarter? Similarly, as a society, we have filled our lives with so many conveniences, but at the same time have amplified our vulnerabilities. Simultaneously, and perhaps most dangerously, knowledge in critical fields, such as information technology or risk management, is being limited to the select few that have made the effort to learn more about these fields.
Think of it this way: if you were using a computer in 1989, chances are you knew some basic DOS commands and used applications such as XTree to do what you needed to do. Today, most people have no idea what is going on in there “computer” (such as their phone) and never get passed understanding the User Interface (if they do that even). The result of this is: yes, we have our conveniences, but no, we likely do not know how to fix something when it goes wrong.
This would not be such a problem is we had redundancies and were resilient…but generally, we are not (for those in the Western world, try to disconnect yourself completely from digital world for a week and you will see this is an impossible task).
The writings on 22CW certainly will have a level of opinion attached to them, but they are research-/factually-based. If something is to ever resemble an op-ed piece, it will certainly be identified as such.
Similarly (and this point cannot be overstated enough), timeliness of postings is of the utmost importance. Concepts may stay the same or require modification over time, but many of the statistics are changing faster than we can record them in many cases. That is why this 22CW really means: The World Has Changed Since You Entered This Site.
Furthermore, because the world has changed, it also means ideas and viewpoints can change. In the hyperactive world of Faceboook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the rest, coupled with the increased trend of malicious actors “trying to find out what you said in 2006 so it can come back to haunt you”, a cautionary note to readers: look at the date of when something was written (not published). Situational awareness is everything, especially when the world around you is always changing.
Therefore, the purpose of 22CW is to make people aware of the issues and help bridge the gaps that keep on getting bigger and wider as each nanosecond passes. 22CW rarely has answers. The world changes too fast to have answers. But 22CW does have some suggestions. Perhaps they will help you in your efforts.