I am increasingly convinced that the next decade will be a time of tremendous evolution. (If you’re waiting for things to “go back to normal,” it may be time to make peace with a new normal: constant, unending change.)

At the core of the unrest we feel is an overwhelming distrust of our current institutions. Any institution — finance, politics and government, news media, law, the music “industry,” publishing, corporations in general, higher education — seems to carry with it an inherent dissatisfaction. When it comes to these pillars of  society, the majority of people I talk to carry an irrepressible doubt about them.

We have lost our faith in these institutions to be trustworthy.

We have little to no confidence in their ability to take care of us in whatever way they’re supposed to.

Overall, we’re completely disillusioned.

Whenever this happens, the atmosphere gets charged with a spirit of revolution.

Any and every institution that has confused their business model with their purpose is ripe for being unceremoniously disrupted. The music industry is the go-to example for its baffling blindness, but all our current institutions belong squarely in the same category. Because of what they are and how they were built, they have a vested interest in maintaining the past and not creating the future. This leaves them wide open for a new, more hungry, more nimble, and more human organization to step in and take a big bite out of their business.

If we were to re-imagine the rules, think about how much more efficiently we could organize a community, or deal with questions of law, or educate our children — just as a few examples.

Look for all these things (and more) to start bubbling to the surface of everyone’s awareness.

They’re already happening all around us.

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