It's not surprising that in a society where consumption is treated as the ultimate human opportunity, we define quality of life in terms of how many things people have. We talk about the need for people to have housing, jobs, health care, mobility, education, technology and entertainment. This has been the Industrial Age conversation, the age that celebrated identity as consumption. The conversation shifts in the Information Age in ways that elevate information and connections as core to quality of life and identity. These don't negate the Industrial Age essentials, they reframe how we think about them. We think about how housing, jobs, health care, mobility, education, technology and entertainment can be catalysts and intersections for information and connections rather than simply objects of utility or symbols of success.
This shift has interesting and important implications for how we think about building and transforming communities. It's already shifting our emphasis to the smartification of just about anything you can imagine. We're also thinking about how anything related to quality of life can also be animated by quality of connections.
