Basically, the 20th century was the age of business. Lots of products had to be made to accommodate mass consumption. That’s why organizations were structured like pyramids, with whatever the boss at the top said being absolute. The structure was so efficient in that regard that some young kid who had just joined a company couldn’t initiate any of their own ideas. It has been said that this made innovation impossible. A lot of products had to be made efficiently, so business operators were reluctant to do what they thought of as wasting money on innovation. Anything different would only reduce productivity.

Since the rise of the internet, however, that structure has changed completely. Smartphone users can obtain transportation and places to stay from each other. By providing these customer-to-customer services, the middleman is removed, making hotel, taxi and transit businesses all obsolete. Even banks won’t be needed once everything becomes cashless.

The hierarchy of command may have been required in the 20th century, but the structure of society has been flattened by the internet, with the very essence of that structure changing completely in the era of the sharing economy. Society that was once structured vertically has become horizontal.

In other words, society has become diverse. To deepen our understanding of this diversity, we trace it to the past. Without a common understanding, there will be a generational gap when it comes to long-standing ideas, like it being better to join a big corporation or well-known design company. If you look at a student who has grown up around the internet and takes it for granted, they might not understand what their teachers are telling them. In this era, the structure of society is changing at its very core.

(To Second part)