Calling for a revolution

When the French call for a revolution you would think that people would stop and listen. After all they have been at the centre of one of the most well known revolutions in history, and who has not heard those famous words “… let them eat cake” which started it all!

This is exactly what French President Sarkozy recently announced at the launch of a report he commissioned into the measurement of economic progress, when he called for world leaders to join in a revolution. According to the report the “Gross National Product” or GDP that is currently used to measure the health and growth of world economies is flawed, and it recommends looking at household income, consumption and wealth rather than national production for a better reflection of material living standards.

“For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into darkness.” Sarkozy said. “The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world? It obliges us to do so!”

According to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who co-authored the report, Governments’ addiction to inflating the GDP of their economies has endangered the planet by encouraging risky behavior that has led to overconsumption. And it is overconsumption that is at the root of the large scale environmental damage that is causing alarm bells to go off all over the world.

The report further advises that more prominence be given to non-market activities such as house cleaning, crime statistics, the distribution of income and wealth, as well as access to education and health. According to Stiglitz, France’s ranking would rise in comparison to the US because of better access to health care, and because it has a lower percentage of people in jail.

So far it does not look as if the rest of the world is very impressed by this “second” French revolution, but the French President is unperturbed and will be implementing measures to change the way it measures progress. It seems as if the lessons of history has not been lost on the French.

“Vive la révolution"!”

The online revolution

Can you believe that people are still referring to the online revolution almost 40 years after the internet made its modest appearance way back in 1969 as a US Department of Defense communication system. But according to companies that keep their finger on the pulse of what's hot and what's not the online community has now become so influential that the offline world has started to mirror the online world, and when a few start to dictate trends to the rest of the world, what else do you call it but a revolution.

Examples of how this revolution is changing our offline world can be seen in the way we interact on a social level with Facebook as a perfect example; the way we entertain ourselves as reflected in the phenomenal growth of online virtual reality games like World of Warcraft; the way we navigate our world by using devices like Garmin and Tom Tom right down to the pixilated patterns we print on our furniture and the fingerprint-less design of our gloves.

Perhaps it is not surprising if one consider that statistics showed a total of 21.9% of the world population was connected to the internet in June 2008. Such a huge market share must make some impact on the world we used to call real.

The online revolution is changing the world as we know it, even to the depths of our feelings and emotions. And if the last comment found you shaking your head in total disbelief you may be convinced after a visit to the latest innovation in mapnavigation mania where visitors to London can discover the sites of the city through navigating by mood.

If all this has pushed you to the edge of sanity you can rest assured that you will always find plenty of online support, like the recently launched website where you can fill in a questionnaire that will predict your risk for depression in the next 12 months. Or perhaps you would rather like to know how well you do in the Happiness Test?

Online or offline the only thing you can be sure of is that our world is changing, and with it so are we.