Watch this now.

You’re the unborn son/daughter of an entire world – what a heap of expectations – that’s the bad news, unfortunately.

The good news? Well, it’s an amazing time to be alive. And there are so many amazing people to be alive with who are dedicated to making the world a better place during your time with us.

Oh, and the technology… It’s an amazing time to be alive with a pair of thumbs. And you have 6.7 billion pairs of them (give or take a few unfortunate accidents).

But the most fascinating tech isn’t what’s in our hands, it’s what’s in our heads. We, the once predictors of rocket cars, summer vacations on Mars, and robotic sexual partners, we the over-achievers and over-dreamers, we’ve begun to fail at predicting the new pace of technology. Our wildest dreams are now in our nearest grasp.

From Ray Kurzweil, he of the Singularity,

Progress is exponential–not just a measure of power of computation, number of Internet nodes, and magnetic spots on a hard disk–the rate of paradigm shift is itself accelerating, doubling every decade. Scientists look at a problem and they intuitively conclude that since we’ve solved 1 percent over the last year, it’ll therefore be one hundred years until the problem is exhausted: but the rate of progress doubles every decade, and the power of the information tools (in price-performance, resolution, bandwidth, and so on) doubles every year. People, even scientists, don’t grasp exponential growth. During the first decade of the human genome project, we only solved 2 percent of the problem, but we solved the remaining 98 percent in five years.

But Two-Thousand-Teens, let’s not lump you in as the next decade. You’re more than that. You’re our second chance at a new century. We’ve stumbled, we’ve lost the faith in ourselves, we’ve made promises we knew we couldn’t keep, and we’ve spoiled the first few blank pages of our masterpiece. But that’s why you’re here. Again, expectations… but in this endeavor, you are not alone.

But, Two-Thousand-Teens, we have our work cut out for ourselves.

Between 1910 and 1920:

• Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.
• Motorized movie cameras were invented, replacing hand-cranked cameras.
• The crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne.
• Mary Phelps Jacob invented the bra.
• Gideon Sundback invented the modern zipper.
• Stainless steel was invented by Henry Brearly.
• The pop-up toaster invented by Charles Strite.
• Short-wave radio was invented.
• Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays.
• Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, discovering a new source called radium.
• Einstein published his general theory of relativity.

From the most banal experiences of the 21st century to the most sublime, much of the foundation was put in place during that second decade of the 20th century. It’s the same story again – the world we want to build, the society we want to live in, the future we want to dream, it all begins right now.

Like you, our dreams are yet unrealized and perhaps even undreamt. Two-Thousand-Teens, remind us to be hopeful, to be bold, to make ridiculous predictions, and to attempt foolish feats. To borrow a phrase, remind us that he not busy being born is busy dying.

To the inhabitants of the Two-Thousand Teens, let us not make another resolution for another year. Let us make a resolution for the 21st century and let’s use our time here to realize it. For perhaps the first time in our modern history, our vision is small compared to our grasp. Our culture is afflicted with short term thinking, quarterly demands, and our obsession with the present. It’s our future that matters most.

And let us have the strength to weather our mistakes and our misfortunes.

The phrase too big to fail was perhaps first uttered right before the Titanic embarked and sank in those icy waters in 1912.

World War I, the Great War, The War to End All Wars… well, didn’t. But within the decade it took with it over 16 million lives and 16 million possibilities for a different world.

Two-Thousand-Teens, we’ll never know who among us will have the pleasure of seeing you through. But while we’re here, it’s a pleasure to have you, and a pleasure to be your partner.

I promise not to take you for granted.

Had a phone interview today with a gent named David Parsons about the future of the whole social media thing. David is getting his Masters in Interactive Media and also happens to be one of our Fiesta agents.

David asked an interesting question, so I thought I’d pose it to you, dear reader…

What’s your greatest hope and your greatest fear for the next five years when it comes to the intersection of business and digital technologies?

To be fair, I’ll start us off with my answers to David… (before you rip me to shreds, I had all of ten seconds to make these up, you give it a shot!)

Greatest hope: consumers truly control production. Digital technologies allow consumers to cooperate together and communicate their needs to corporations which (using superior production technologies) can service smaller and smaller consumer segments. Aaron also pointed out that wouldn’t it be nice if companies got better at serving those needs of ours we don’t clearly recognize or ask for.

Greatest fear: companies just get really good at faking it. Astro-turfing, town-halling, fabricating consumer opinion and using it to bullshit a demand (we want our guns to be extra shoot-ie)

Think about the 50′s. Society was enraptured in thinking about the future of transportation, everything was a jet pack, rocket car, etc (even our regular cars had space-age fins). As a culture, we seem to be less focused on physical travel, moving from point A to point B, and much more obsessed with the movement of bits and bytes and our place in that world. This is a bit frightening to me in some ways. Our exploration of outer space (the place and the thing) seems to have been replaced by a fascination with inner space.

What do you think? Seriously, I want to know.