Since the invention of the steam engine, the pace of human development, as well as rapid industrialization, has been dazzling, and the spontaneity of groups is increasing every day. Each civilization is striving for its own democracy. In addition, we have upgraded humanity through the infinite expansion of information in a very short time. And now we are moving towards the concept of hyper-connected. However, there are two sides to every story. The rapidly evolving environment surrounding us is pushing us towards a new era of isolation. The Internet is paradoxically contributing to this. Hyperconnectivity can be traced back to the time of Genghis Khan, one of humanity’s millennial heroes. It is the reverse of Genghis Khan. It is today’s information infrastructure, logistics system, and military highway. It was a kind of horse station, but it was not centralized, but rather decentralized. Using ‘horses’ that could run from the grasslands of Mongolia to Hungary in Europe, it is said that not only the victory of the war but also various information could arrive in a week. It was a kind of “horse highway.” The “horses” of that era are the information networks of today. In that sense, hyperconnectivity is a counterpoint to the protocol era.
The term hyperconnected was first coined in 2007 by the American IT consulting firm The Gartner Group. A hyperconnected society is one in which humans are connected to humans, humans to objects, objects to humans, and objects to objects, and all objects are connected to humans as tightly as a spider’s web. The hyperconnectedness of humanity has rapidly led to a basic leveling of information and an expansion of influence. However, as Matthias Horst wrote in The End of Technology, it is not “either this or that” but “not only this, but also that”. New technologies and methodologies still require a margin of time. And within that, we need the wisdom to recognize human unmet needs rather than technology first.
Humans have always hidden their most detailed and mundane needs for their own survival and protection, and those who discover them have always emerged as the masters of history. People like Alexander, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon made their mark on human history by observing themselves and the world around them, understanding what they really wanted, and putting it into action to simplify the planet.
Simplification requires observation and the determination to eliminate the unnecessary and get back to the essentials. But for most of us, it’s hard to make it a habit. Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics, calls confirmation bias the tendency to readily accept information that agrees with one’s beliefs and ignore information that disagrees with them. We see only what we want to see, and we naturally eliminate many facts that actually exist from our thinking. This is why it’s difficult for the average person to achieve greatness. Through hyperconnectivity, humans have acquired a lot of information. We’ve become interested in material phenomena and situations, in “what is”. We have become accustomed to comparing ourselves to others. We have become accustomed to a life of comparing ourselves with others. And then they spit it out unfiltered through hyperconnectivity. Their own matured thoughts and lives are secondary.