Patterns of Change When we look at patterns of change on the astronomical scale – from the radiation era to the matter era, from the matter era to the formation of galaxies, from galaxies to the formation of stars and from stars to the formation of planets, we see that the time period between each stage it is shortened after each progression, and continues to shrink, smaller and smaller. We observe the same shortening of time period in the scale of change on earth from the first bacteria 3.5 billion years ago to the first land animals 400 million years ago, and then to early primates 65 million years ago and finally the first humans 200,000 years ago. So far we have seen that pace of change in our universe on any scale is accelerating. In the last 200 years, due to advancements in technology from the printing press to the telegram and the Internet, the speed of information transmission has increased some 100 billion times (Heylighen, 2002). The amount of information that we receive or process today is so great that we can compare it to fast-forwarding a movie; the effect is that we receive more information per second. By reverse analogy, in receiving more information per second, it seems like time itself is essentially shortening, which is consistent with the nature of transition periods. On the human scale, the recent integration of two fundamental components of the universe, information and energy, created the digital era, which is now accelerating the pace of change exponentially. Major scientific paradigms that used to hold for centuries are now shifting almost every year.  Humans can now communicate at a rate never before achieved, resulting in the true globalization of human society. The digital era has integrated every economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental system with its global counterparts, resulting in a complex interdependency of human activity and an even faster pace of change.