Sunday, April 11, 2010

Incompatibility Issues in the Information Age

Millions of years of evolution has created and shaped our bodies. While our bodies have changed little in the last 200,000 year, our lifestyle is dramatically different. For 95% of our existence we lived as hunters and gathers. At this time technology consisted of only the control use of fire and crude tools. It was a harsh life that did not last much more than 30 years.

As our technology improved so did our lifespan. The Bronze Age (about 5000 years ago) showed great improvement in man's progress. Now man could grow his own food and domesticate animals. Tools were becoming more sophisticated and made from more durable metals. These advances increase the average life by ten to 30 years.

In the early part of the Information Age (30 years ago), the average American lifespan was almost two and half times more than our early ancestors. It was not uncommon for people to live 90 or more years. It would not be unreasonable to think the average lifespan would soon each 100 years. Yet in recent years a new phenomenon is occurring, the American lifespan is decreasing.

For the first time in more than 200 years, children are not expected to live as long as their parents. The rapid rise of childhood obesity is expected to shorten lives. Diseases (type II diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure and cancer) associated with obesity are likely to strike younger ages leading to earlier deaths.

Why are our lives so radically different from 30 to 40 years ago? What can we do about it? In the next few blogs we will explore incompatibility issues of eating, moving and plugging into the virtual world.