¶ Ninety-Two Elements: Chart of Rate of Acquisition
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shown on the chart, in a wooden sailing ship. It comes after the second isolation. Then there is a gap of 350 years and he now goes around the world in a steel steamship. This is an entirely new magnitude of control, no longer dependent on the wind. Upon this, there swiftly follows the world journey in an aluminum airplane, then in an exotic metals rocket. There is a very great contraction in time between these developments. The wooden ship takes two years to circumnavigate the Earth; the steamship, two months, the airplane two days, and the orbiting satellite just over an hour. We have at least three accelerations of accelerating accelerations involved here.
The consequence of what we have considered then, in relation to our charting is that the next point for a significant new chapter would be around 1975, nine years from now. What that will be we can only guess at-- sending ourselves around the world by radio?
The key realization is the degree of acceleration of change, and that better than 99 percent of all important technologies affecting such change are invisible. Man cannot see what is going on. He cannot ‘see’ the chemistries; he cannot see the
